Environment Writer
SOUTH Africa is being used as a dumping ground for hazardous chemicals banned in the countries that make and export them, Environment Minister Edna Molewa said yesterday.
Addressing the Chemical and Land Remediation Summit in Pretoria yesterday, Molewa said it was a problem that there was currently no legal authority ensuring that industrial chemicals were subjected to a rigorous risk assessment before they were introduced into South Africa.
This needed to be addressed urgently.
“Otherwise we will find ourselves needing to remediate more and more contaminated land in the not-too-distant future. Our approach to the remediation of contaminated land is based on the polluter pays principle.”
The World Health Organisation had estimated that chemical-induced disease contributed to 25 percent of the global burden of disease.
In South Africa, most of the chemical contamination of land was from mining, agriculture and the petroleum and steel industries.
Chemical management was complex, not least because the three main types of chemicals – industrial and consumer; agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals – were spread across a number of governments. This meant there was fragmentation of chemical management.
In addition, South Africa was a signatory to several international environmental agreements on chemical management and safety, but these agreements had not been translated into domestic legislation.
Another problem was the illegal possession and trading in hazardous chemicals and chemical waste across borders, locally and “on the streets”.
“Some companies within the industrial and agrochemicals industry are selling hazardous chemicals on the streets in un-decanted packaging, thereby compromising public safety. There are those who import huge amounts of chemicals, resulting in stockpiling. When these chemicals become obsolete, they then expect government to clean up the mess,” Molewa said.