On Dec. 23 an environmental protection watchdog group caused a stir with the release of a report that said, according to its own study, nearly half of the fish on the market in Taiwan were contaminated with hazardous chemicals.
The report said most of the tainted fish were caught deep at sea or imported from countries, such as China, where bans on pesticides either don't exist or aren't enforced.
The report, which came only 10 days before the launch of the "small three links," went on to say that fish bought directly from Chinese fishermen, as has been common practice on Kinmen island long before the opening of direct trade links yesterday between Xiamen in Fujian Province and the frontline island, may have been contaminated with diverse persistent organic pollutants (POPs).
The controversial report caused an upheaval in the local fishing industry and cast a long shadow over the launch of cross-strait links.
The Environmental Quality Protection Foundation (
A global trend
Defending the report, Eric Liou (
Liou said the report was intended as a wake-up call for the government which, he said, was shirking its responsibilities in ensuring food on the market was safe.
"Where's Taiwan's own pesticide residue limits for aquatic products?The government should not have risked people's lives," Liou said.
Liou added that the absence of maximum limits on pollutants in aquatic products put Taiwan customers at risk as cross-strait links open and as entry into the WTO will open the door to imports from areas without restrictions on the use of pesticides.
Public alarm
Incensed representatives of fishermen's associations and agricultural officials retorted that the foundation's report provoked unwarranted alarm and was flawed in several aspects, from sampling to analysis.
Public alarm about the report was strong enough to prompt Hu Sing-hwa (
The latest survey by the administration, however, showed that 37 of 264 samples (about 14 percent) of fish in Taiwan showed traces of contamination from a range of pesticides.
Ling Yong-chien (
Environmentalists say POPs are a serious problem in Taiwan as they make their way through the food chain by entering the fatty tissue of fish, birds, mammals and humans.
The global marketplace also allows POPs originating in one region of the world to crop up in distant regions.
Scientists have linked POPs, which are difficult to detect and affect people in unpredictable ways, to birth defects, reproductive abnormalities, immune disorders and cancer.
Last month, 122 countries agreed to ban the so called "dirty dozen," the most hazardous chemicals used by agricultural and manufacturing industries, which include nine pesticides, one group of industrial compound known as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and two types of industrial byproducts, dioxin and furan.
The local situation
Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) officials stand by activists in confirming that POPs used decades ago had entered the food chain and polluted the environment in Taiwan.
"We don't deny that POPs left decades ago have become a threat to health now," Wang Cheng-hsiung (
According to EPA statistics, the concentrations of organo-chlorine pesticides (
Even though concentration le-vels have gone down to less than 10 ppm in 1999 in Taiwan's fish stocks, pesticide residues in fish from other countries exceed the UN's safety limits.
"It takes time to decompose such stable hazardous chemicals. That's why we don't suggest eating fish skin and internal organs," Wang said.
Strategies to eradicate POPs
Although pesticides have been banned in Taiwan for more than 25 years, industries are still generating POPs.
"The ban on pesticides is only part of the solution to get rid of POPs.
"We have to devise more aggressive strategies to avoid creating new and dangerous POPs, such as dioxin and furan," Wang said.
Dioxin and furan are produced by waste incineration and chlorine-using processes, such as paper-bleaching and the making of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) products.
Wang said that before trash incinerators were established, trash was burned when landfills had reached full capacity. "Incomplete combustion produced toxic dioxin and furan, which have accumulated in the environment," Wang said.
Wang said that since Taipei launched its new per-bag waste collection scheme last July, more residents were simply burning household waste illegally rather than purchasing the special trash bags to dispose of garbage.
"The US Environmental Protection Agency concluded last year that the main source of dioxin was not waste incinerators, but people's backyards, where people burn household waste," Wang said.
Environmental protection experts say the government may be grossly underestimating the concentrations of dioxin in Taiwan and EPA officials say the key to eliminating POPs is improved control at the pollutants' source.
The administration this year plans to carry out a comprehensive monitoring and tracing study of POPs and has said that dioxin would be a focus of its study.
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