THE birth of Britain鈥檚 Environment Agency, which opens on 1 April, promises
to be a lot more troublesome than the government had hoped. The agency has been
hailed by ministers as a revolution in pollution control, unique in Europe for
its holistic approach to managing the environment. But less than two weeks
before the official launch it is facing its first controversy.
The row concerns the discovery that pollution inspectors have drastically
relaxed safety standards for some toxic emissions, with the result that cement
manufacturers can now burn chemical wastes as fuel in their kilns.
Environmentalists claim that with the new figures the wastes appear to burn more
cleanly than coal, the traditional fuel for kilns. The 鈥渘ew fuels鈥濃�攚hich are
much cheaper than coal鈥攁re now being burnt, permanently or on trial, at a third
of Britain鈥檚 cement works.
The changes to the safety standards are the work of Her Majesty鈥檚
Inspectorate of Pollution (HMIP), which next month becomes part of the
Environment Agency. HMIP has not published the new standards, but they were
obtained by the Cambridge clean air pressure group Cam-Air, which found that the
limits for one toxic metal鈥攖hallium鈥攈ave been raised by a factor of 40 000.
Safety levels for arsenic and nickel have also been substantially
increased.
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HMIP does not deny that there have been changes. The standards 鈥渁re in a
state of evolution, and are being revised in the light of our knowledge鈥�, it
says. But the huge rises have created confusion in the industry and prompted an
outcry from environmentalists. They say the revelations call into question the
new agency鈥檚 independence, and how its founding philosophy of 鈥渋ntegrated
pollution control鈥� will be put into practice.
The new safety levels emerged after HMIP gave permission last November for
Rugby Cement, one of Britain鈥檚 three largest cement makers, to burn chemical
wastes at its Barrington works, south of Cambridge. British cement firms are
being undercut by cheap imports from Europe, where kilns have been burning
chemical wastes since the 1980s. HMIP allowed Rugby to replace up to a quarter
of the conventional fuel in the plant鈥檚 kiln with a blend of waste solvents from
the chemicals industry, including contaminated methanol, toluene and
ethanol.
There is a logical case for burning the wastes. Cement kilns require large
quantities of fuel to create the high temperatures鈥攁round 1500 掳C鈥攁t which
calcium in limestone and silica in clay fuse to form calcium silicate, or
cement. The fuel normally used in British kilns is a mixture of coal and
petroleum coke, a dirty coal product.
The chemical wastes being burnt at some cement works have calorific values
similar to coal and coke. But because they contain much less sulphur they emit
less sulphur dioxide, a major cause of acid rain. Differences in the way they
burn in the kiln mean they also produce less nitrogen oxides, another source of
acid rain, and many harmful compounds in the wastes are destroyed at the high
kiln temperatures. For these reasons David Evans, Rugby Cement鈥檚 environmental
affairs manager, calls the new fuel 鈥減ositive in every respect鈥�.
But the wastes contain potentially harmful components, including chlorine
compounds which can generate poisonous dioxins when they burn, and volatile
metals such as mercury and thallium. The vital question for HMIP has been
whether damage from these emissions outweighs the benefits of the reduced
emissions of acid rain gases.
It decided in favour of the new fuel, saying it was 鈥渦nlikely to pose a
greater risk to public health than conventional fuel鈥�. But it turns out that
HMIP made this judgment only after radically changing its safety, or
鈥渁ssessment鈥�, levels for some toxic metals.
Assessment levels lie at the heart of HMIP鈥檚 鈥渋ntegrated pollution control鈥�
(IPC) philosophy. IPC is a system for comparing the damage done by different
forms of pollution. A standard assessment level is set for each pollutant: this
is not strictly a safety limit, but more a measure of a pollutant鈥檚
significance. When inspectors assess the effect of an industrial process, they
give each pollutant a score according to how much of it the process emits
compared with the standard assessment level. The overall environmental impact of
the industrial process is calculated by adding up these scores to give an
鈥渋ntegrated environmental index鈥�.
At Barrington, HMIP ruled that the environmental index for the new chemical
fuel mix was better than the index for the original coal-based fuel. But
according to Andrew Bott, scientific adviser to CamAir, in trials the new fuel
emitted such a large quantity of heavy metals that they initially dominated the
index and 鈥渙utweighed the benefit of any reduction in acid rain gases鈥�.
Bott claims that 鈥淗MIP simply changed the troublesome assessment levels鈥� for
some metals. Thallium鈥檚 rose from 0.25 nanograms per cubic metre to 10
micrograms, a 40 000-fold increase. The arsenic level rose by a factor of 667,
and nickel by a factor of 80.
Moving goalposts
The effect of shifting the goalposts so dramatically was to 鈥渧irtually
remove the impact of these three pollutants from the calculation鈥�, says Bott. It
reduced the apparent environmental impact of burning chemical wastes at
Barrington by about a third. Soon afterwards HMIP approved the new fuel,
claiming that emissions of heavy metals 鈥渨ere very small in total and made only
an insignificant contribution to the environmental impact鈥�, while the acid gases
鈥減redominated鈥�. Rugby Cement takes a similar view. 鈥淗eavy metals are not an
issue,鈥� says Evans. 鈥淭hey have always been present in our emissions. The
majority end up in the product.鈥�
HMIP does not dispute the impact of the new standards on its calculations. It
told New 杏吧原创: 鈥淲e need to continually review our figures by
reviewing national and international guidance values.鈥� These levels have not
been published, it says, because they are 鈥渄rafts for consultation鈥�.
But Roger Lilley, industry campaigner at Friends of the Earth, comments: 鈥淲e
seriously doubt the current methodology which places a high loading on acid
gases, and a relatively low loading on metals and organic compounds, which are
highly toxic and linked to a range of symptoms in humans.鈥�
Two main types of chemical waste fuels are made in Britain. Castle Cement鈥檚
Cemfuel contains wastes from the manufacture of paint, ink, pharmaceuticals and
petrochemicals. Secondary Liquid Fuel is blended for Rugby and Blue Circle from
waste supplied by Leigh Environmental, a waste disposal firm, in collaboration
with the company Aerotech US, which develops fuels for American kilns.
Since November, HMIP has given permanent permission for the new fuels to be
used at three works: Rugby鈥檚 Barrington factory, and Castle Cement鈥檚 plants at
Ketton, Leicestershire and Ribblesdale, Lancashire. At Ribblesdale, permission
was given despite hundreds of complaints from local residents during trials
that plumes of dust and dark smoke billowed from the kilns and engulfed people
on the ground. The government has asked Castle Cement to 鈥渟ubmit firm proposals
for the resolution of plume grounding鈥� by the end of April.
Iain Walpole at Castle Cement says the plume grounding was largely from a
kiln which no longer burns Cemfuel. And according to HMIP, many of the problems
experienced with Cemfuel at Ribblesdale existed with the old fuel. The plant鈥檚
emissions have always been dark, it claims, because of the amount of ammonia in
its limestone feedstock. But critics point out that during the trials dust
emissions were 40 per cent higher and metals such as chromium, manganese and
nickel increased up to nine times.
Experience in the US suggests that Ribblesdale鈥檚 difficulties are not just
teething problems, says Friends of the Earth. According to Edward Kleppinger, an
industry consultant in Washington DC, emissions from cement kilns are a major
source of metals in the US environment. 鈥淭oo little is known about the process
of combustion,鈥� he says. 鈥淓fforts by cement companies to suggest that they are
really recyclers have backfired.鈥�
Using waste solvents as fuel may be just the beginning. Cement companies in
Britain have now started to burn scrap tyres and are looking at sewage sludge,
paper and plastics. The government supports such methods of generating energy
from waste, but Friends of the Earth says it undermines technologies for
recycling such materials. The group is also concerned that many of the tough
rules which govern incinerating plants do not apply to cement kilns.
The controversy over assessment levels and cement kilns could be very
damaging for the Environment Agency, which will combine the work of HMIP, the
National Rivers Authority and 83 local waste regulation bodies.
Environmentalists have already labelled it a 鈥渓apdog鈥� agency, because government
rules say it must not place undue burdens on industry. In addition, the
principle of IPC, enshrined in the 1990 Environmental Protection Act, is likely
to become an increasingly controversial inheritance. The agency must consider
the impacts of pollutants on three separate environments: air, water and land.
This will make calculating the environmental indexes even more difficult and
controversial.
The agency鈥檚 chief executive, Ed Gallagher, admitted at a conference last
month: 鈥淲e will need to establish our credibility and independence so that the
public will trust our judgment.鈥� This latest wrangle threatens to undermine the
agency even before it opens its doors for business.
