Watch out Port Adelaide - deadly waste heading our way!

It’s time to stand up and say NO we are not a sewage dump location

“HIGH – LEVEL contaminated waste from the new Royal Adelaide Hospital site – deemed too dangerous to stockpile in Adelaide – will be stored out doors in Wingfield,” (Advertiser 17^th September 2011)

The 11,000 tonnes of high-level waste containing arsenic, lead and other carcinogens will be treated along with 80,000 tonnes of low and intermediate-level contaminated waste from the former Adelaide rail yard site.

The Wingfield site will store the highly toxic earth out doors next to the Port River Expressway and close to densely populated suburbs and high density traffic.

Stop treating residents like mushrooms keeping them in the dark

1. Most of the contaminated soil would contain Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are highly carcinogenic. Benzene can cause central nervous system (CNS) dysfunction. Toluene also attacks the CNS. Other toxins are less harmful but combined effects could be significant.

2. Lead is well known to reduce children’s IQ levels and Arsenic a well known poison.

All residents in the Port Adelaide area will be exposed

Dust particulate of 10 microns or less (about half the thickness of a human hair) can be blown to any part of the North Western Suburbs. Toxic substances can cause disease at the site where they enter the body – the lungs, skin, and intestines, in the blood that carries them through the body, in the organs that remove them from the body – the liver, kidneys, and bladder.

What should we do?

Residents must put as much pressure onto the state government as possible to stop using our environment as a sewer dump, write to the press, and take the issue up with the local council, local politicians. To reduce the high health risks the toxic dirt must be completely enclosed including transport trucks to prevent wind blowing dust and rain washing toxins into ground water. The shed housing the toxic dirt must have appropriate filters on exhaust systems to capture at least 99% of any toxic substance being discharged into the outside air.