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EPA at fault for dioxins: lawmaker

The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) should work to ease public worries regarding dioxin pollution discovered earlier this month in ducks and duck eggs from Changhua County, legislators said. Also, the source of pollutants must be found as soon as possible, environmental groups and lawmakers added yesterday.

At a public hearing held yesterday by the Legislative Yuan, Wu Tung-jye (吳東傑), chairman of the Green Formosa Front -- an environmental group -- noted that the EPA only shut down one factory that recycles toxic ash collected from steel works. The factory is located near duck farms where the contaminated poultry was found.

Research into how dioxins got into the food we eat is needed, environmentalists said.

"This is not enough. The EPA has to shoulder the responsibility for its failing to appropriately regulate potential dioxin emitters," Wu said.

Wu also said that the lack management of toxic environmental pollutants had to be seriously reviewed.

Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang To-far (王塗發) said that high levels of dioxin emissions from steel works ash indicated the environmental watchdog's failure to regulate industrial emissions.

"Regulations were supposed to be announced last month, but we have yet to see them," Wang said.

Because of the absence of dioxin emission regulations for factories which recycle steel works ash, such companies could have released substantial amounts of dioxin into the environment, and the damage to surrounding ecosystems might be beyond imagination, Wang said.

The dioxin levels at the factory that was shut down by the EPA were as high as 219 nanograms, which is 2,100 times the acceptable level of dioxin emission from waste incinerators regulated by the EPA.

One week after the pollution was discovered in early June, the EPA intended to formulate new regulations on dioxin emissions from factories which deal with the dioxin. But the announcement was postponed due to the pressure from environmental groups that say the regulations might lead to environmental pollution.

According to the EPA's proposal, dioxin emissions from such factories were not to exceed 1 nanogram.

Responding to the concerns raised by lawmakers and environmentalists, Lin Ta-hsiung (林達雄), EPA deputy administrator said that the agency is supervised by both the Executive Yaun and the Control Yuan, and if any administrative fault found, the agency would not dodge responsibilities.

Meanwhile, public health experts said that main source of dioxins are steel works factories which use waste incinerators. However, more than 99 percent of the dioxins that enter the human body is through the food chain.

Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權), a medical professor at National Taiwan University, said that unidentified sources of food pollutants could jeopardize public health.

"If we don't have any research on agricultural and other food products ... we would never know the danger posed by dioxin pollution," Chan said.

Chan said that the Department of Health is working on a dioxin survey based on data collected from more than 100 kinds of food.

The survey, which is scheduled to released by the end of this year, should be taken into account by policy-makers to ensure public health is not threatened, health officials said.
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