WASTING AWAY  By shai sangco tamayo
 

After World War II, the global economy slipped into a coma. The wise economists, Mr. Keynes chief among them, devised a resurrection scheme: Consume, consume, consume. After consume, of course, is "discard." Consumptive theory propagandists postponed the plan for what happens after that, because more important considerations beckoned. Besides, when the problem was solved, they figured there will be time enough to figure out solutions. But no such thing happened, this widespread behavior continued, and spawned the nasty wasteful attitude that shaped the world we know today. And today we reap its bitter fruits. Waste is wasting us away.Headed downhill at full speed, mankind is getting closer and faster towards total environmental degradation. And one of mankind’s most menacing act is waste generation. A painful epitome of this we have seen in the Payatas Tragedy in the Philippines that has been featured in international news since last week. A mountain of trash over fifty feet high buried alive hundreds of people. As usual, fingers got busy pointing at each other, garbage cartels unearthed the powers behind them, “experts” emerged to preach ultimate solutions. Till now, the waste has been treated by burning, dumping, and "sanitary" landfilling. Burning toxic waste gives off toxic smoke and toxic ash—whether it’s done in state-of-the-art incinerators or in someone’s backyard. Dumping is the express way to poisoning the soil and everything connected with it. A sanitary landfill (SLF) is the lay-away plan to poisoning the soil and everything attached to it. Sanitary Landfills (SLF)
Essentially a gigantic bathtub cloaked with a supposedly non-permeable liner made of composites or clay liners, a SLF is a waste bin. These liners, invented by the experts and constantly improved upon over the past decades, were designed to divorce the poisons elemental to such huge waste deposits from the soil. What are these liners anyway? They’re the thick, heavy-duty plastic representative of steel. Get it? Technically, “geo-synthetic liner of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) material,” or sometimes they’re a “combination of synthetic and geo-synthetic liners.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) describes them further: "A liner is a barrier technology that prevents or greatly restricts migration of liquids into the ground. No liner, however, can keep all liquids out of the ground for all time. Eventually liners will either degrade, tear, or crack and will allow liquids to migrate out of the unit." From the Federal Register, the EPA stated: "there is good….evidence that the hazardous constituents that are placed in land disposal facilities very likely will migrate from the facility into the broader environment. This may occur several years, even many decades, after placement of the waste in the facility, but data and scientific prediction indicate that, in most cases, even with the application of best available land disposal technology, it will occur eventually.""Consequently, the regulation of hazardous waste land disposal facilities must proceed from the assumption that migration of hazardous wastes and their constituents and by-products from a land disposal facility will inevitably occur."
All over the world, studies have proven that even the best managed landfills will eventually, inevitably leak and cause untold environmental damage. No landfill in the world can claim to be safe from leakage.In 1998, a study by the NY State Department of Health reported that women living near solid waste landfills have four times more chances of contracting bladder cancer or leukemia. The study investigated the incidence of seven kinds of cancer among men and women living near 38 landfills. Of the 14 kinds of cancer, the seven cancers studied were leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, liver, lung, kidney, bladder, and brain cancer. Women living near landfills showed remarkable increase in all seven kinds of cancer. In men, the study found moderately elevated incidences of lung and bladder cancers, and leukemia.Many other studies of populations surrounding landfill areas have shown the same: Quebec in 1995, Pennsylvania in 1984, Illinois in 1990, and 339 other counties all over the U.S., in Westphalia, Germany, etc.  They all confirmed higher incidences of bladder, stomach, blood, brain, uterus cancers. Another study made in different landfills all over Europe also found common high incidences of low birth weight, birth defects, and very sickly children with stunted growth. Children's health is the most seriously threatened and affected. One cannot imagine the insides of Payatas, Smokey Mountain, and San Mateo residents. 

 

Index