Mexico Awash in Untreated Toxic Waste

by Diego Cevallos

Alarmed at the threat to human health and the environment, activists fight attempts to set up toxic waste storage facilities in areas where local residents have not been consulted and adequate environmental impact studies have not been carried out.

Less than 30 percent of the 100,000 companies in Mexico that generate toxic waste report the hazardous contaminants. And those that have begun to register the toxic material as required do not include what they stored years ago in their own backyards or dumped or buried in clandestine pits.

There is no reliable official data on dangerous waste in Mexico. But studies estimate that at least eight million tons of chemical, industrial and hospital refuse accumulates every year in this Latin American country of nearly 100 million, where existing treatment and disposal facilities have the capacity to process less than five percent of the total.

Experts say most of the waste goes untreated, and is merely buried haphazardly, or dumped into toxic waste lagoons, landfill sites, rivers or the sewer system.

After the media reported last month on clandestine pits filled with lead that were found in the capital and the northern state of Zacatecas, the government of Vicente Fox announced that it would begin to tackle the problem.

The discovery of the lead dumps "was not an isolated incident," and gives an indication of the gravity of the problem, acknowledged Environment Secretary V’ctor Lichtinger.

The government will begin tracking the sources, amounts and destinations of the hazardous waste, and design a global policy for the disposal and treatment of toxic material, said the official, although he did not mention specific timeframes.

Environmentalists, however, responded with skepticism to the announcement, pointing out that similar promises have been made over the past 14 years, and nothing has yet been done.

Activists and local residents have blocked every attempt by the government or private firms to set up toxic waste sites in the past few years, arguing that they were being installed in unsafe places, or behind society's back.

A U.S. waste-disposal company, Metalclad, which had won approval by the Mexican government in the early 1990s to set up a hazardous waste treatment and disposal site in San Luis Potosi, a state in central Mexico, saw its plans thwarted by local officials.

The company filed a complaint that its investor rights within the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which links Mexico with Canada and the United States, were violated.

A NAFTA tribunal under the International Centre for Investment Dispute Settlement, an arm of the World Bank, ruled that Mexico had to pay Metalclad $16.7 million in damages.

Under the government of Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000), proposals were set forth for the installation of at least 11 toxic waste storage facilities. But the plans never got off the ground, due to the opposition of environmentalists and local communities.

Since Fox took office in late 2000, no plans for hazardous waste disposal sites have been announced, although Lichtinger said there would soon be developments on that front.

Dumping radioactive or chemical waste in open-air lagoons or landfill sites or burying it near the water table and without the appropriate safety precautions poses a grave public health threat, warned the Health Secretariat.

Populations exposed to toxic materials have been found to suffer from higher rates of cancer, genetic alterations, birth defects, diseases of the heart, liver and nervous system, leukemia and other serious health problems, the Secretariat noted.

The National Institute of Ecology, a government agency, has records on the toxic waste generated by 27,280 companies, which accumulate 3.7 million tons a year. But there are some 100,000 companies that produce such hazardous material in Mexico, which means most of it is never officially reported.

Many say the estimate of eight million tons a year is overly conservative, although that is the figure generally accepted by the government and independent experts.

Fernando Ortiz, author of the book "El manejo de los desechos peligrosos" (Hazardous Waste Management), said that if the amount of toxic waste generated in the United States is taken as a reference point, Mexico must produce more than 20 million tons of dangerous waste a year.

Fox administration officials have acknowledged that the problem is serious, and must be addressed.

In the past 10 years, the maquiladora or export assembly plants operating in northern Mexico have dumped more than 8,000 tons of toxic effluent in the U.S.-Mexico border region, according to a study by the Autonomous Metropolitan University.

The study found that while one-third of the maquiladora companies reported that they had sent the waste back to the United States -- the country of origin of the raw materials used to assemble the products for export -- there are no records of what happened to the rest of the toxic material.

The maquiladoras use toxic substances like acetone, hydrogen fluoride and fluorite, which have been proven to cause higher rates of miscarriage, congenital defects like hydrocephaly, and respiratory problems.

But equally dangerous substances are dumped by the power and oil industries, as well as hospitals, which create huge clandestine dumps of untreated toxic waste around the country.