Long-time environmental campaigner Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) yesterday expounded on what she said are problems with environmental impact assessment (EIA) meetings, saying that health-risk assessments should be conducted in a more accurate and comprehensive manner, while calling on local governments to dutifully calculate the quantity of pollutants emitted.
Chen said that many EIA committee members readily accept emissions data provided by industrial projects, without really going through the data to analyze their veracity.
The committee should order corporations to calculate not only the emissions from plants that are slated for expansion, but also the total quantity of emissions from industrial complexes, as it is the only method by which pollutants can truly be capped and the concept of “overall amount control” be put into practice, Chen said.
“In doing so, local authorities can avoid areas where emissions are already heavy before a new project is proposed, and disputes can be avoided,” Chen said.
She called on local governments to be more proactive in matters related to the EIA, saying that they often only set emission caps according to the maximum permissible amount of emissions stipulated by the committee, while being negligent about their duties to measure emissions at plants, she said.
In addition, local environmental protection agencies should conduct their own health risk assessments at least once every two years and compare them with assessments conducted by project owners, rather than assuming that all the information in reports required from developers by the Environmental Protection Administration is true, Chen said.
In reference to research by National Taiwan University Institute of Occupational Medicine and Industrial Hygiene professor Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權), which linked emissions from the naphtha cracker complex in Yunlin County to elevated chances of developing cancer, Chen said the EIA committee did not give the research the attention it deserves.
“All government-sponsored epidemiological studies should be treated with due respect and serve as important references during EIA meetings,” she said.
She called for a more clearly defined set of rules on how health risk assessments should be conducted, saying that the current rules have resulted in the lack of a standard operating procedure in approaches adopted by companies while conducting health risk assessments.
Chen, a professor at the Chia Nan University of Pharmacy and Science, is well-known for her active participation in EIA meetings and her unrelenting stance against firms in pollution-intensive industries.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS