11. Initial Curiosity
Despite being accused of going to far when I made my controversial comments in 1989, I know I showed less emotion that existed inside me. I’d grown used to hiding my real feelings about the toxic waste trade and I bottled up much of the annoyance I’d accumulated during years of research on the subject. The first step in reaching that level of dissatisfaction with the situation came during my enquiries with the regulatory authorities and with Rechem, after the seeing the smoky scene from the bedroom window. There were various Clean Air Acts and Public Health Acts but these didn’t appear to touch what Rechem was doing. The Health and Safety at Work Act was quite powerful, but it was there to protect people within the plant’s boundary rather than those than outside it. Then, in ReChem’s case, the relationship between state regulation and local authority controls on the plant seemed particularly puzzling, not least in relation to the Alkali Acts. Emissions of some simple, old fashioned industrial substance came under strong State control, but for many of ReChem’s complex 20th century compounds, including PCBs and dioxins, the regulation was less rigid because it hadn’t caught up with the chemicals. Then, whilst the Industrial Air Pollution Inspectorate was supposed to watch over what went up the incinerator’s chimney stack, Torfaen Borough Council was responsible for checking the local environment. Because the plant had been designated a “Registered Works” under the Alkali Acts, the Council wasn’t allowed to interfere with the activities that may be causing environmental contamination. I quickly concluded that a small local authority like Torfaen was having to deal with too much technicality and too many legal pitfalls. The confusing, complex situation was compounded when the 1974 Control of Pollution Act appeared to provide the Council with additional responsibilities but without any additional powers. To make matters more awkward, it wasn’t Torfaen Council who issued the original planning consent for the incinerator. Permission was actually granted in 1972 by the old Monmouthshire County Council in response to application number 4861. The consent included vague conditions, such as: “(9) The applicant shall use continuously the most efficient methods which may for the time being be practicable for the elimination of smoke, fumes and grit to the satisfaction of the Local Planning Authority, and (11) . . . site . . . to be kept . . . free from the accumulation of all waste and chemical materials to the satisfaction of the Local Planning Authority.” One condition was clearer: “(15) Pipelines transmitting fluids or sludge to be of steel with welded joints and to be laid high above ground level where they cross the Trunk Water Mains.” Yes, the toxic waste plant was right on top of the valley’s water supply. Since that considered to be an acceptable way of doing things, I wasn’t surprised when I saw nothing in the planning consent related to atmospheric emissions from the incinerator, nor to environmental contamination, nor to controls on imports of waste from overseas. I quickly came to view the plan t as a regulatory anomaly, with immunity from controls such as the 1982 Seveso Directive, and as an anomaly that persisted alongside the later precautionary principle and then the polluter pays principle.
When the incinerator started burning in 1974, it was actually the same year that local government reorganisation gave birth to Torfaen Borough Council into whose lap ReChem then fell. It was also the year of the Control of Pollution Act, an instrument that appeared to have had little bearing on the operation of the incinerator. The Act eventually clashed with the Council in an encounter that spotlighted ReChem’s natural resistance to regulation. Under those regulations, the plant needed to have a licence and the idea sounded a good one with the licence duly being issued by the Council on 25th July 1977. However, like the planning conditions, the licence was also vague and ineffectual and turned out to be a pit for the poor Council to pour its energy into. After my first discussions with officials from the various regulatory bodies in 1984, I concluded that the local authority’s controls could but scratch the surface of ReChem whilst pretending to exert control over the plants emissions.In contrast, the plant appeared to be able to exercise some control over the Council when, at one point in 1982, and regardless of the promise of no smell or smoke, a Council judgement on an appeal against residential planning refusal notice P/6077 said:
“The appeal site lies close to the chemical incineration works of ReChem International Limited which is registered under the Alkali Act and is liable to suffer from the effects of emissions from the main factory stack and odours about the works. The site is, therefore, not considered suitable for residential purposes and this view is also held by the Health and Safety Executive”
I could understand the contradiction between ReChem’s promise of producing pure air and the hapless Council’s more realistic residential planning judgement, but I couldn’t make sense of the Health and Safety Executive’s judgement when the same body was reluctant to acknowledge the existence of emissions from the plant. I certainly found that the staff at the HSE.’s Industrial Air Pollution Inspectorate showed little concern about the incinerator’s anti-social behaviour. However, I got the impression that the body’s officials were slightly more familiar with what ReChem was doing than Torfaen Council appeared to be and the Inspectorate was proud to point out that the ancient Alkali Acts did provide powers of control over the emission of hydrochloric acid from the incinerator.I wasn’t impressed with that assurance because the Alkali Acts, born in the 19th Century, seemed to be the main reference point whilst the incinerator itself had arrived in the modern age of complex chemicals.
The British Alkali Act of 1863 arose out of the need to curb the hydrochloric acid emissions that were a by-product of the Le Blanc process for producing “alkali.”The specific alkali resulting from the Le Blanc process was calcium carbonate, but it was one of a number of chemicals generically termed “alkali” and which were important in many industries at the time. I was familiar with that and subsequent Alkali Acts from my work in industry and I knew they weren’t appropriate for the myriad of different emissions that toxic waste plant was capable of producing. After talking with the Inspectorate, I felt that the regulators needed to catch up with the products of the petrochemical revolution and new forms of waste. In addition, I wasn’t happy about the Pollution Inspectorate’s organisational position within the Health and Safety Executive under the Department of Employment and I didn’t like the imbalanced incentives in the waste business. All in all, I couldn’t help forming a view that the incinerator was a large and poorly monitored, experiment. There was no prescribed measuring of the countless pollutants that could be conjured up by the cocktail of chemicals inside the furnace and even the theoretical understanding of what could be occurring in there was incomplete. What made things worse was that the small amount of regulation in existence actually tended to mask the inadequacies, since a good grade awarded for part of the process was seen by some to imply that everything else was OK. Amongst the few regulatory documents specifically relating to incineration were the 1980 Special Waste Regulations, which established a system for formal notification of the movement of those wastes.In instituting a procedure for the authorisation of hazardous waste movement, that document was a forerunner of a ludicrous international charter that made hazardous waste shipments legitimate.
Another example of the way the disjointed beginnings of regulation actually disguised the dangers, lay with 1981’s 200 page Waste Management Paper No 23, in which hazardous wastes were classified. The paper did mention PCBs, dioxins and furans, together in the group called halogenated polynuclear aromatic compounds, and it acknowledged that they were problematic. Toxicity also got a mention in the book, with acknowledgement that PCBs were proven animal carcinogens and less than one-millionth of a gram of one particular dioxin could kill a guinea pig. Then it camouflaged the dangers by applying the inoffensive term “Special Wastes” to such scary substances.That term replaced its forerunner, Controlled Wastes, so I speculated that the use of controlled had been abandoned because it was more of a wish than a statement of intent. As for the new adjective Special, I often quipped that the euphemism may have been designed to make the sufferers from ReChem actually feel privileged to inhabit a region where waste that was so special could be disposed of. The 1981 Waste Management Paper was only one of my first encounters with a style of language that seemed more likely to sooth the conscience of the waste business than to aid public understanding.
In addition, and even more annoying, I could already saw signs of a more serious hi-jacking of science in some guinea-pig data that was relied upon in the government guidance. Occasionally, I found that what should have been a warning was transformed into a clean bill of health and the 1981 paper appeared to accept the logical fallacy that because a substance is harmful to guinea pigs, and humans are not guinea pigs, then the substance is safe for humans. I became intellectually interested in those first frustrating encounters, where I could see such flawed logic being used to distort scientific facts and I developed a mini campaign to get the science straightened out. The study of formal logic hadn’t been compulsory for me in the areas of Mathematics I embarked on at Bristol Polytechnic, but I’d jumped at the chance to study the extra subject and it wasn’t just because logic was relevant in the interesting new fields of electronics and computers. My main motivation for pursuing logic in Bristol was my interest in “Alice in Wonderland”. I’d always admired the quirky reasoning that reflected the author’s important contribution towards the mathematical representation of logic.I wasn’t a professional scientist, like some of my opponents in toxic waste, but I felt my affinity for logic helped to place me on a playing field where I could compete with the professionals in working out what could and couldn’t be inferred from facts. Disappointingly, I continually encountered examples of scientists letting science down, by not protecting their findings from incorrect inferences. I aimed to help rectify that by applying logic to the various dimensions of toxic waste.
In the year that dangerous waste became Special, the publication “BPM 11 Chemical Incineration Works Notes on Best Practicable Means”, from the HM Alkali and Clean Air Inspectorate of the Health and Safety Executive, made a forlorn attempt to catch-up on the control of chemical waste incineration.The publication defined chemical incinerators as “works for the destruction by burning of waste produced in the course of organic chemical reactions . . .” and said “the owner of a registerable works shall use the best practicable means for preventing the escape of noxious or offensive gases . . . emissions should be maintained free from visible smoke and in any case not more than shade 1 of the Ringlemann scale . . . .”. I thought that these were superficial and somewhat subjective standards. There was still very little about specific chemicals and limits for their emissions. In scouring all official sources for something with a more direct relationship to Rechem’s branch of burning I was pointed in the direction of an older piece of guidance. It was Waste Management Paper No. 6: Polychlorinated Biphenyl (PCB) Wastes, published back in 1974, when PCBs were still being widely used as dielectric fluids in electrical transformers, capacitors and hydraulic fluids. PCBs had formerly been used in materials from paints to plastics but such applications had been voted out by OECD countries in 1973 and Monsanto, the only UK producer, had voluntarily restricted PCB sales to dielectric applications in 1971. In the 1974 PCB paper, the Department of the Environment illustrated discoveries of PCBs in plankton, lobsters, mussels and a whopping 900 parts per million in the liver of a UK heron. Then it claimed: “Fortunately the end of this food chain is not of importance to man. In the great majority of his foods in the UK, the level is well below 0.05 ppm.”I noticed an air of arrogance, in the conclusion that the poisoning of herons could be dismissed simply because we didn’t eat them. Keeping the government’s house in order, the document did point out that transformers sold after 1971 were labelled with a warning about their PCB content and it stressed the need for their careful disposal when they became redundant. For “careful disposal” I read “ReChem, Pontypool”
Actually, between the lines of the official publications, there was a coded concern about PCBs, but warnings aimed at the removal of PCBs didn’t seem to be repeated for the relocation of the chemicals in Pontypool. Furthermore, whilst government guidance had declared that PCBs were unacceptable in transformers for underground transport systems because of the density of the fumes they produced in a fire, I found that there was a regulatory reluctance to relate the black smoke coming out of ReChem to PCBs in the incinerator.
Along with the implication that PCBs were an important part of the toxic waste market, Waste Management Paper No. 6 also contained another tell-tale sign of a possible trend in ReChem’s business. The UK’s annual disposal needs for PCBs from transformers and capacitors as well as from PCB manufacturing waste was put at only around 1000 tonnes per year whilst the paper indicated that importation from Europe was already underway. Another useful piece of information it included was on the adoption, in the United States, of maximum levels for PCBs in food. There was no parallel measure in the UK and the influence of such differing national standards of environmental protection on toxic waste movement became an important focus for our campaign, as PCB imports rose through the 1980sCountries who were strictest over concern for contamination generally wanted to export PCBs whilst the more relaxed UK regulators would find PCB importation more acceptable. One element of the government guidance, imported from the U.S.A., became pivotal in the operation and control of the incinerator and it related to temperature. The temperature standard chosen for Waste Management Paper No. 6 became the incineration equivalent of a biblical reference. It was that: “satisfactory destruction of PCBs may be obtained by incineration for two seconds at 1100C with 3 percent excess oxygen. . . .”The satisfactory was qualified by the requirement that stack emissions of PCBs should not exceed 1 milligram in a cubic metre of emitted gas. Obviously, here was an acknowledgement that the destruction of the PCBs would not be total, yet whenever the “satisfactory” bit of the guidance was reiterated it was often without the PCB emissions figure.The temperature, time and oxygen stipulations may have been meant to impress, but I remained underwhelmed because of my feeling for difficulties in simultaneously controlling those operating conditions. Surely black smoke wouldn’t arise periodically if the stated conditions were constant? As I went on to learn more about the Pontypool Plant, which was now operating in a creaking regulatory climate, I came to regard the standards and controls that existed as working more to protect the company than the public. The essence of this contradiction may have been rooted in the simple purpose of the 1974 document whose aim was to reduce levels of PCBs in the environment. There was a view that this could be achieved by burning them in Pontypool rather than letting the chemicals loose in landfills. This laudable but ironic truism rolled rapidly off the tongues of powerful people and in that simple paradigm I saw Pontypool as both saviour and sacrifice.
As if the pitfalls in the planning for the burning of PCBs themselves weren’t enough, there was the complication that the emerging knowledge of di-benzo dioxins and their relatives, the di-benzo furans, had been overlooked. Information about the toxicity of these substances was only just feeding through in the 1980’s. One reason for this was that the substances were never purposefully made but instead appeared as by-products during the production of other chemicals. A very early indication of the dangers of dioxins arose after an accident in the production of herbicide at a Monsanto plant in West Virginia in 1949. Later, the effects of the dioxin contaminated Agent Orange in the Vietnam War brought the danger of dioxin to the world before the Seveso disaster in 1976 showed that the threat could be more immediate. When ReChem arrived in Pontypool in 1974, the production of dioxins and furans in the burning of commercial PCB mixtures PCBs tended to be an obscure esoteric issue until, in 1981, a PCB-containing transformer caught fire in the basement of New York’s Binghamton Building. The resulting contamination, by dioxins and furans as well as by the PCBs, caused the closure of the State office block.The cost of the 13-year cleanup is reputed to have been $47 million, which was far more than the original cost of the building. Binghamton was well publicised in America, but I found that in mid-1980’s Britain, the creation of substances with greater toxicity than those attempting to be destroyed was still not a talking point.
With a lot of catching-up to be done in UK regulation, and with the regulators running against the political tide, I was glad that environmentally progressive people were not entirely absent from our institutions. Emerging on the sidelines of regulation in Britain was the new Hazardous Waste Inspectorate. This young body was established in 1983 as a branch of the Health and Safety Executive, to investigate prevailing practices, to support local authorities in the uniform application of standards and to advise the government. It had no executive powers and initially it didn’t appear to be engaged in anything of relevance to Rechem. The HWI was set up against the background of the ostensibly unifying Control of Pollution Act 1974. The Act sounded revolutionary, but the revolution hadn’t yet reached Pontypool if the 1977 site licence issued to ReChem was anything to go by and it wasn’t until 1986 that the Act really appeared to be taking hold, with the requirement for local authorities to develop waste disposal plans. I soon as I merged my idea that the incineration plant was somewhat experimental with my impression that the new regulatory system was also feeling its way, I concluded that it would be a long time before the environmental revolution really impacted on Pontypool.
In European initiatives however, I found more hope of legislative progress though little sign any impending trickle-down of action into the EEC-averse United Kingdom. The 1975 Council Directive on waste (75/42/EEC), termed The Waste Framework Directive, had put waste as a whole on the political map and established the fundamental principles for the management of waste in Europe.It recognised the need to protect human health and the environment from any harmful effects of the generation, movement and processing of waste. The directive wanted all aspects of the business to be subject to regulation and it included a coherent plan for waste management in the future. However, by promoting recycling, recovery and waste reduction, it also paved the way for the conversion of waste to energy by burning - a position that could be taken as a thumbs-up for incineration. The Directive incorporated the Polluter Pays principle and contained a requirement for Member States to report national progress on waste to the EEC every three years. However there was no mention of waste imports or exports. Optimists might have assumed that this was because they weren’t allowed. Unfortunately, and although self sufficiency was hinted at, the directive contained no real restrictions on the movement of waste between countries. Therefore 75/442/EEC effectively gave the go ahead for an approved exodus of waste from Europe to Pontypool. I wondered whether EEC officials had appreciated how many member states would later be taking advantage of that opportunity. The oversight was part of a pattern in a regulatory system that continually found ReChem’s role difficult to grasp and this feature contributed to the company’s booming import business.
In recognition that PCB waste was particularly dangerous, the frustratingly flexible “Waste Framework Directive” was soon augmented by another, more PCB-specific Directive. Less than a year later, this supplementary Directive 76/403/EEC was passed by the council of Ministers but still it didn’t work in our favour. It accelerated the movement of PCBs into the waste market by demanding that redundant PCB-containing equipment should be sent for disposal. Yes, the Directive qualified that demand with a requirement that all Member States should have their own authorised PCB disposal facilities within two years. It was a nice thought but not one readily turned into action. Also, the polluter pays principle was reiterated and a tri-ennial PCB report was called for. It was unlikely that this would have any significant impact on Pontypool in the near future.Most of all, as I reviewed this Directive in 1984 after learning of European PCBs in Pontypool, I could see that incentives in the industry would easily overcome the good intentions of the European regulators.
Reflecting on the continued urgency for the chemicals to leave the continent, a few months after PCBs made their debut in European legislation they were again centre stage in the EEC. In a Directive which restricted the marketing and use of a number of substances, subject to Member States derogation, PCBs were top of the hit list. At the end of my analysis of the EEC’s two-year blitz, I made a note saying “What’s happening in the UK?” By having a ReChem, Britain was meeting its own obligation to self sufficiency and at the same time was helping other member states to delay addressing their responsibilities.There appeared to be little incentive to change the mutually convenient state of affairs. The rush to offload PCBs was greeted by Britain as a promising business opportunity. ReChem’s incinerator, with our government behind it, provided a perfect excuse for other countries to ignore the principle of national self-sufficiency in hazardous waste disposal.The EEC’s work on PCBs appeared to have overlooked the possibility that one member state, such as the UK, would actually volunteer to import the waste of the others. By 1984, although it wasn’t public knowledge in South Wales, the waste had consequently started to make its way across the channel. Fine principles and recommendations were running like water off a duck’s back in a climate where the government left British business to decide what was best for the public. Even some members of the British scientific community seemed to fall under the spell of the nation’s rampant individualist ethic. “Dioxins: I have them on my Cornflakes” was how one newspaper described that scientific stance. The position of poor Pontypool was pitiful and Europe had gone more backward than forward, but at least in its stuttering approach the EEC was trying to make progress whereas Britain was not. Therefore the promise provided by the cumbersome and naive European directives would have to be our main hope, albeit one calling for plenty of patience.The undoubtedly impressive aims in EEC literature needed to blossom into binding practices with little leeway for re-interpretation or avoidance and we were many years away from that.My sorrowful view of the situation surrounding ReChem in 1984 was so frequently reinforced by subsequent events, that when I referred to British regulation as “second rate”, on the BBC in 1989, I honestly felt that many of my supporters in the campaign would see that comment as over-generous.