"Radioactive Milk" and International Toxic Waste Trade

Delegates!

“A common way of exporting wastes to non-OECD countries [countries not belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] has been to disguise it. This was the case with the mixing of 1000 tons of copper smelter fumace dust (containing high levels of lead) with fertiliser by a US company. This fertiliser was subsequently sold to Bangladeshi farmers, some of whom had already spread it on their fields before the scheme was uncovered. Some of the waste exports to non-OECD countries have even been labelled as aid and humanitarian assistance. For example, radioactive milk was sent to Jamaica from the EC in 1987, and outdated and illegal pesticides were sent by Germany to Albania in 1992. Waste export firms also thought up other creative ways to disguise their hazardous waste exports, such as the attempt by US companies to convince the Marshall Islands that imported wastes could be used to build up the land mass to ensure the islands would survive sea level rises due to global warming. While the firm which proposed this 'land reclamation project' claimed that no hazardous wastes would be involved, this could not be verified. Mislabelled waste has become a serious problem for developing countries as in nearly all cases they do not have the resources to ascertain the contents of every import container.”

Source: Clapp, Jennifer. "The toxic waste trade with less-industrialised countries: economic linkages and political alliances." Third World Quarterly 15.3 (1994): 505-518. Print.

When I first read Jennifer Clapp’s article, The toxic waste trade with less-industrialised countries: economic linkages and political alliances, her description of how countries disguise toxic waste as a means of exporting it to other nations absolutely shocked me. I mean, selling toxic waste as “radioactive milk” seems a little desperate, and certainly more suited to a spy novel than anything plausible in real-life international affairs! Trying to convince countries that buying toxic waste would help them to build up their land mass and survive global warming - how have we not already heard about this?!

I think that it’s remarkably unfortunate how little the general public knows about the international toxic waste trade. We drop off our old computers and our DVD players, assuming they will be handled according to protocol; when the sad reality is that they might not be. Any one of the computers rotting in a toxic waste dump near a rural village in a developing nation could have belonged to us, and we’d never know it. So, in a way, international toxic waste trade is a problem we’re all responsible for, no matter how indirectly. It’s our garbage, so it’s our responsibility to make sure that it is disposed of safely, and to hold our governments accountable.

I’d highly recommend that you watch the two youtube videos!

A BBC Article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6187358.stm

These two videos both show how toxic waste is disguised and trafficked:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ8nL2RBF4E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWEGhdBLm8E