Filthy ‘Blue Med.’ to get a clean-up

Press, 12 July 1980, Page 16

Filthy ‘Blue Med.’ to get a clean-up

By

ROSS BROWN.

on holiday from Oslo

Many a New Zealander has relaxed in what is scientifically described as “the world’s largest rubbish dump,” without being aware of its health hazard. For the Mediterranean may look blue and inviting, but it is the receptacle for 430 million tons of waste annually. Not that any visitor can be blamed for unawareness of this situation. One-third of the world’s tourists go to the Mediterranean yearly, and splash contentedly in this septic tank.

One in seven picks up a skin disease, an eye or ear infection, enteritis, even hepatitis. Many return next vacation. Some doctors claim there is danger of a typhus or cholera epidemic around the Mediterranean’s shores, while the oceanologist Jacques Cousteau fears that people will be swimming in pure bacteria and virus in the next 50 years if nothing is done.

The warning signs become more obvious each year; In 1979 20 beaches near Alicante in Spain were polluted by a sewer; the pollution was visible, and the authorities had to close the beaches.

Marseille gained the Mediterranean record for a concentration of intestinal bacteria with 900,000 per 100 milliliters of water. Guards held swimmers away from many Italian

beaches; 80 per cent of the Italian coast is polluted. But at last there Is an international agreement that something must be done. A recent conference in Athens, organised by the United Nations Environment Committee, was attended by 15 countries. Only Egypt, Syria and Albania would not support the resolution that within the next decade about $l5 million be spent to clean up the Mediterranean. The signatories will help reduce the pollution by 85 per cent recognizing that it can take up to three years to change regulations and make them effective.

Meanwhile experts will continue to meet, attempting to define what the new regulations can mean for the respective countries.

For example, what is “safe water” in which to bathe or to cultivate shellfish? What degree of pollution can be permitted? Already two lists of dangerous substances have been presented. On the

black list are mercury, cadmium, radio-active deposits, used lubricants and synthetic wastes.

These cannot be disposed of by nature and are found in seafoods. ' On the grey list are zinc, lead, titanium and crude oil, considered less menacing yet worthy of strict control.

“The sea didn’t become

a rubbish dump in a few days,” said Dr Stepan Keches, a Yugoslavian oceanologist. “And it may take 15 years to purify it.” About 2400 years ago Plato commented that people had accumulated

around the Mediterranean like frogs around a puddle. In recent years, oil refi-

neries, nuclear power stations and industry (mainly chemico-metallurgical industries) have ignored environmental warnings and simply dumped their wastes. The authorities were powerless because of

inadequate regulations.

Among the waste each year is 90 tons of DDT, 100 of mercury, 2400 of chromium, 2500 of radioactive materials, 3800 of lead, 21,000 of zinc, 360,000 of phosphorus and one million of nitrogen. Much of this is brought down by the rivers Rhone in France, Po in Italy and Ebro in Spain.

Oil-tankers clean their tanks and dump the slops at will, while only five of the 16 large ports in the area have the necessary (and compulsory) equipment to deal with oil pollution.

“If a supertanker came to grief and lost 200,000 tons of crude oil,” wrote the Spanish weekly “El Pais Semanal,” “that would be the end.”

Tourist hotels have multiplied, often without planned sewage disposal. Waste sometimes runs

directly into the ‘ sea, and the bather with a bandage of toilet paper is no longer a figure of fun.

For tourists the stink that drifts in from the stagnant sea means a disastrous holiday. But locals have to live with the worsening conditions, and the smells.

In places where the fish are relatively plentiful a chain reaction is set in motion. Plankton absorb lead or mercury. Some die, others are eaten by fish. Some fish die, others are eaten by humans. The agreement to cleanse the sea sounds positive, yet a change of attitude must occur in the authorities, in the captains of industry, and in the millions of residents who cheerfully toss their domestic waste into the one-time benevolent ocean.