Due to the toxic pollution after the earthquakes in Turkey, a “secondary disaster” may occur which will be more serious than the earthquakes themselves. On this subject writing Reuters, citing environmental experts.
From the rubble of the collapsed homes that killed more than 54,000 people, thousands of toxins including asbestos, silicon dioxide, mercury and lead enter water, plants, human lungs and other organs. Their exposure can cause serious health problems for years to come, according to the agency.
“According to optimistic estimates, I would say that 3 million people will get sick,” says Mehmet Şeyhmus Ensari, a civil engineer and president of the Turkish Association of Asbestos Removal Experts. He warns that the first to suffer will be the people who, without any means of protection, dismantled the rubble immediately after the buildings collapsed.
In Turkey’s worst-hit province, Hatay, which has a population of 1.7 million, a group of doctors, environmentalists and lawyers filed a complaint in April with authorities demanding an end to the “indiscriminate dumping rubbish” near houses, hospitals, temples, olive groves and bodies of water. The lawsuit said that at least 15 of those facilities were dumped construction debris containing 85,000 toxic substances. The court has not yet made a decision. The local government website says that by early May more than 70% of the rubble had been cleared.
How Turkish cities changed after the earthquake. Photo gallery
The Association of Asbestos Experts said it had submitted “multiple requests” to Hatay authorities as volunteers to oversee the demolition and garbage collection, but all “remained unanswered”. Turkey’s Environment Ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment on the matter.
The head of the delegation of the Turkish Association of Doctors in the earthquake-affected areas, Ali Kanatli, believes that the harmful effects of construction waste toxins will manifest for decades, causing malignant neoplasms, kidney disorders and nervous, respiratory diseases, respiratory allergies, lung problems and asthma, as well as eye diseases. “We will face these problems in the years to come”, is convinced the doctor. According to him, the most negative impact of toxins will affect children.
Emrah Gurel/AP
Turkish Deputy Environment Minister Mehmet Emin Birpinar tweeted on Feb. 25 that authorities would separate hazardous or recyclable materials from the rest of the garbage. He also claimed that dust suppression systems were used to prevent the circulation of harmful substances such as asbestos.
Reuters journalists have personally witnessed how in some towns, including Antakya and Osmaniye, construction waste was sprayed with water before being loaded. “But in many other cases, no such action was taken,” the agency said in the document.
Turkey’s Environment, Town Planning and Climate Change Minister Murat Kurum said in March that more than 300,000 buildings in the quake-hit areas had been badly damaged and needed to be demolished or destroyed. were already collapsed. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) estimates the volume of rubble formed at 100 million cubic meters – about 10 times more than what was left after the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010. “If you add it up, this will equal 38 huge stacks, each the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza,” Reuters explains.
The deadliest earthquake in the last five years. infographics
Turkey’s former deputy environment minister, Professor Mustafa Ozturk, said much of the rubble removed from Antakya is being stored in nearby temporary dumps, raising concerns about contamination. Four of those locations surveyed by Reuters were close to farmland or human settlements.
Ali Odman, a lecturer at the Faculty of Urban and Regional Planning at Mimar Sinan University, noted that of all the hazardous materials in Turkish legislation, the issue of asbestos was the best regulated, but that in Due to the earthquakes, the relevant regulations have been suspended and the government does not say when it will resume. Odman and other experts say contractors who win tenders to demolish damaged buildings are guided by the terms of the orders, not public health regulations.
According to the Turkish Chest Society, asbestos-related diseases generally take several years to develop – between 10 and 50 years after exposure – and the risk of disease increases with the amount of asbestos fibers inhaled during exposure. a life.
It will be extremely difficult for Turkish workers, the military, security forces and rescuers who in the future will suffer from the impact of asbestos suffered during the removal of the debris, it will be extremely difficult to prove the cause of their illnesses and receive compensation, Ali said Odman. “They won’t be able to document evidence of where they were when they were exposed to the toxin, because by then they will have changed many construction sites and jobs,” the expert explained.
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