I have Parkinson’s. My wife had breast cancer. Most of us know someone who has had one or the other. The Peninsula Biosolids Coalition (PBC) wants to examine burning our biosolids. They call it “gasification” or “pyrolysis”. But these are just euphemisms for burning with air pollution.
See “An Industry Blowing Smoke –10 Reasons Why Gasification, Pyrolysis & Plasma Incineration Are Not “Green Solutions” at No-Burn.org. The publisher, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives currently stands by its scientific findings. The Sierra Club’s Zero Waste Committee helped research it.
The PBC correctly says don’t apply the biosolids to land because of industrial and pharmaceutical contaminants in it. However, that’s why it must not be burned either. Just get a sturdy liner at Hartland and keep it from leaching into the groundwater and ocean. Not a big deal.
And do what the film “Living Downstream” calls for. Free-stream with your Greater Victoria Public Library card the film “Living Downstream” (Search at www.GVPL.ca). It talks about the precautionary principle – the idea that industry must immediately halt testing its known and suspected toxins on us, the public, while producing, selling and profiting from them at the same time.
Human blood tests show that more than 40 toxins are in every blood drop. These are the compounds that contaminate the world’s biosolids. The only way to clean up the biosolids is to stop producing the industrial toxins that contaminate them in the first place. “Forever chemicals” such as PFAS are just one of thousands that have been poorly or untested at all before sale.
Industry must allow independent science panels to verify new and current compounds as safe before being allowed to sell their products to world markets. This is not now the case. It will become so with a legal precautionary principle.
Then we’ll spare our kids from getting cancer and brain diseases scientifically linked to the toxins. Contact me to help make this option happen, freeusall@proton.me.
Larry Wartels
Saanich
