A study initiated by the National Health Research Institutes in 2013 on the health impact of Formosa Plastics Group’s naphtha cracker on children living in its vicinity found that the urine of students at Ciaotou Elementary School’s Syucuo (許厝) branch contained higher levels of thiodiglycolic acid (TdGA) than students in Fongan (豐安), Mailiao (麥寮) and Lunfong (崙豐) elementary schools, as well as Ciaotou’s main campus.
TdGA is an indicator of exposure to vinyl chloride monomer (VCM). According to the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, VCM is classified as a Group 1 carcinogen. Furthermore, it is a common pollutant from petrochemical processes.
The Syucuo branch was within 1km of the naphtha cracker.
As early as Aug. 22, 2014, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, in conjunction with the Ministry of Education, convened a meeting with the Yunlin County Government, the Environmental Protection Administration, the Industrial Development Bureau and experts in related fields to discuss plans to relocate the school in Syucuo. The meeting concluded with the decision that students should be temporarily relocated to avoid further exposure to pollution.
As a result, the Yunlin County Government relocated the students to the main campus of Ciaotou Elementary School for the spring semester, but let them return to the Syucuo branch the following semester.
On Aug. 22, 2014, the health ministry said the students’ right to health should be safeguarded and the Cabinet announced plans to relocate them. On the same day, National Taiwan University public health professor Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權), together with several pediatricians and members of medical and environmental groups, held a news conference at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, urging the government to shut down the naphtha cracker to protect the children’s health.
The next day, Formosa Plastics Group claimed at a news conference that it has strict standards for regulating and managing pollutants. Citing tests conducted by the Yunlin Environmental Protection Bureau, the conglomerate said that pollution levels resulting from its complex are far below national standards.
A parent at the Syucuo branch said: “We did nothing wrong, why are we the ones who have to pay for it?”
Both sides have a point. From the perspective of environmental health, the point of contention lies in the level of relevance between health conditions and the environment, as well as how well that can be proved.
Depending on the level of relevance between a disease and an environment, there are different approaches:
In the most extreme cases, when a disease has at least a 90 percent chance of having been caused by environmental factors, people who contracted the disease can press charges against the person responsible for them.
If an environment increases the chances of contracting a disease by twofold or more, similar to the general rule for occupational diseases, the affected person can apply for compensation from the Bureau of Labor Insurance.
When an environment increases the health risk by 20 to 30 percent, there should be warnings about the risks, as well as educational programs and public policies designed to lower such risks.
An example would be secondhand smoke, with banning smoking in restaurants and bars being a typical measure.
With environmental factors that increase the health risk by less than 10 percent, there should still be protection measures and policies to help regulate their impact. An example would be air pollution. When emissions exceed acceptable levels, coal-fired power plants might be required to cut back their operations, even at the price of reduced electricity supply.
When an environmental factor is found to be related to a disease, and its levels have exceeded criteria set by environmental authorities, the government should take measures to curb its emissions, including possibly closing down factories producing the pollutants.
When an environmental factor has a low health risk — for instance, with a 1 in 100,000 to 1 in 1 million chance of causing cancer — yet the pollution levels found in the environment do not exceed legal limits, there is unfortunately no system at the moment to fix the situation.
However, there should still be measures to protect the public from more exposure.
In the situation when metabolites of an environmental factor are detectable in a certain susceptible population, such as the case of the children at the Syucuo branch of Ciaotou Elementary School, the next important step should be testing air samples to determine the level of pollution in the environment.
Whether the ambient level has exceeded the environmental criteria is critical and governs the regulatory pathways. From there, more plans can be made.
The government faces a dilemma: Although the air could contain carcinogens, the question is whether they were the cause of the higher levels of TdGA found in children at the Syucuo branch compared with children in other locations. Answering such a question is almost always difficult, as it involves many factors in the environment and the human body. In fact, it is impossible to be 100 percent sure that TdGA was a result of inhaling VCM from the ambient air. Nonetheless, the government should do its best to promote measures that can help lower public exposure to pollution.
However, without evidence to prove that the pollution has exceeded legal limits, the options the government can take to vigorously regulate the naphtha cracker are extremely limited.
For this reason, the government decided to relocate the students to other schools as a temporary plan. Considering the circumstances, it could well be the best plan available.
The government’s plan to relocate the children was a precautionary measure, aimed at providing them the best protection.
As Environmental Protection Administration Minister Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) said: “We cannot just wait until something happens to the children 10 or 20 years from now. That would be too late.”
We all have much to learn about how to better balance the nation’s economic and environmental needs. When dealing with environmental health issues, it is especially difficult to make all parties happy.
As there is no system in place for situations such as the one faced by the students in Yunlin County, there have been public complaints about the way the issue has been handled.
Hopefully, the responsible government departments will soon develop a standard mechanism for dealing with such situations to prevent similar disputes and to better protect the public.
Guo Yue Leon is a distinguished investigator and director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at the National Health Research Institutes.
Translated by Tu Yu-an
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