A senior scientist has found the detailed environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the proposed mega-incinerator in Broga lacking indepth evaluation, especially key components related to the impact on and risks to public health.

Dr Pat Costner, a senior scientist with Greenpeace in the Netherlands, said the conclusions, including risk evaluations, presented in the environmental health section of the EIA study "must be regarded as invalid" for (several) reasons.

She said the Broga EIA study only considered inhalation when evaluating method of exposure, and cited a 1998 US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) report on the Methodology for Assessing Health Risks Associated with Multiple Pathways of Exposure to Combustor Emissions'.

The Broga EIA, she said, should have addressed more important methods of exposure through food ingestion, soil ingestion, skin exposure to soil, dust inhalation, groundwater, crop irrigation and livestock watering, among others.

"The environmental health impact assessment does not adequately assess the potential health impacts of the proposed facility because it does not include the most important pathways of exposure," she said.

"The health assessment only addresses direct exposure via inhalation even though it has been established for more than 25 years that for such facilities, indirect exposures through food ingestion are commonly far more significant."

Costner's comments were in a six-page document submitted last Saturday to the Department of Environment (DOE) as part of the written public feedback on the Broga EIA.

The DOE is expected to take one to two months to evaluate public comments before deciding on the final report.

Based on the findings of USEPA scientists, she said indirect exposures to dioxins were 30-7,600 times greater than those estimated daily average for direct exposure in a lifetime.

Greater risk

She also listed other toxic emissions which showed that indirect exposure posed a greater hazard.

In other words, Costner said that based on the USEPA study, the proposed Broga plant posed 7,600 times greater risk of dioxin exposure and cancer-related illnesses than those presented in the EIA study.

She also refuted a claim in the EIA study by the consultant, Perunding Utama Sdn Bhd, that certain methodology to conduct health assessments was not "readily available and may need to be given consideration in the future".

"Contrary to this statement, such methodologies have been in existence for 25 years, as exemplified by the most recent version released by the USEPA," she noted.

Another aspect that the Broga EIA failed to even address inhalation exposures to potentially important pollutants.

Costner said the EIA only addressed dioxins, arsenic, cadmium, unspeciated chromium and mercury when the USEPA methodology contained an extensive list of organic contaminants that are released through the incinerator stack or other thermal waste treatment plants, including metals that have been identified in air releases.

She said the study also failed to evaluate particulate matter or fine dust, as the major air pollutant from the thermal treatment process, as a carcinogen.

The World Health Organisation, in its Guidelines for Air Quality, noted that recent studies have shown that an evaluation of a smaller particulate matter or finer dust would be a "better predictor of health effects" than the standard measurement.

Backward step

The senior scientist, who has been lobbying against incinerators around the world through hard facts backed by scientific data, said the Broga EIA failed to consider neither hydrocarbons nor heavy metal species.

She said the study also failed to evaluate the impacts of the 1,500-tonne plant's emissions on the most sensitive of human receptors, namely developing foetuses, nursing infants, toddlers and young children.

The incinerator proposal, the first of several in the pipeline throughout the country, has been condemned by local and international advocates of alternative waste disposal methods as a hazard and a backward step for Malaysia.

Last Saturday, three groups submitted written comments on the EIA study, including memorandums listing down arguments against the implementation of the project.

Early this month, more than 200 civil society groups the world over appealed to outgoing Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad via a global signature petition to scrap the multi-billion ringgit incinerator project.

A local residents committee living in the vicinity of the proposed site have set up a website in an attempt to appeal for local and international support to stop the project.