MYSTERY TOXIC APPEARS IN ARMENIAN FOOD CHAIN
By Arpine Galstian
Environment News Service
March 29 2007
YEREVAN, Armenia, March 28, 2007 (ENS) – Armenian doctors and
scientists are sounding the alarm after discovering traces of toxic
substances in patients, including the mothers of young children. Yet
despite the potential health implications for the Armenian public,
no one can identify the sources of the problem with any certainty.
In tests, doctors have found evidence of chlorides which could lead
to serious medical problems.
One strong suggestion is that the chemicals have found their way into
the food chain from pesticides used in farming.
"Chlorine compounds are present not just in the soil and in water, they
are also detected in a human biology – in sweat, saliva and mother’s
milk," said Albert Hairepetian, director of Armenia’s Institute of
Environmental Hygiene and Prophylactic Toxicology. "This is just
unacceptable."
Organochlorines such as the notorious pesticide DDT were used in
Armenia until they were banned across the Soviet Union in 1972.
The poisoning could have come from a residue of DDT still left in the
ground, but some experts suspect the banned chemical is still being
used illegally by farmers.
A worker with an obsolete pesticide eradication program funded by
the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs finds bags of DDT on an
Armenian farm. (Photo courtesy Milieukontakt) "We carried out research
to find out whether the presence of these toxic substances in humans
was due to the use of DDT in Soviet times," said Lilik Simonian, an
expert with the organization Armenian Women for Health and a Healthy
Environment. "We established that there are fresh traces of DDT as
well as old ones."
Hairepetian and his colleagues studied milk samples from 40 mothers
in maternity wards in Yerevan and the town of Ashtarak, and concluded
that the toxic substances are being passed on to newborn babies.
This information was not shared with those tested. "It’s pointless to
subject people to unnecessary stress, because at the moment there’s
nothing we can change," said Hairepetian.
Simonian’s group came to similar conclusions when it carried out a
parallel study in 2004 in 10 villages in the Ararat region south west
of Yerevan.
Farms in the Ararat valley, which supply markets in the capital
Yerevan, are seen as the main source of these toxic pesticides.
At one Yerevan food market, 37 year old Nora said she heard on the
television recently that food grown in the Ararat valley may be
unhealthy. "Now I ask where vegetables come from before I buy them,"
she said.
But market trader Gayane said her sales have not suffered from the
alarming media reports.
"Sometimes the customers ask where the vegetables come from, but
later on it all gets forgotten," said Gayane, adding that as she is
not buying her produce direct from the farmers she doesn’t know what
it contains.
Of 15 shoppers interviewed at the market, only one of them knew about
the toxic issue.
"We breathe such poisonous air that a little bit more poison or a
little less won’t make a lot of difference," said 55 year old Vardges.
A grocery store in the Armenian capital Yerevan. (Photo courtesy
Geir Engene) Experts say that the toxic substances involved will be
discharged from the body naturally, but that they do some damage to
the nervous and immune systems along the way.
"There is practically nothing doctors can do about this," said Nune
Bakunts of the Anti-Epidemiological Institute for Hygiene, run by
Armenia’s Health Ministry. "It’s the job of those who own the land.
"We have to ban the use of toxic chemicals containing chlorine. They
have been labelled as ‘persistent’ as they are present in the
environment for a long time, and now they have entered the human
organism."
The Ministry of Agriculture insists that banned pesticides – however
cheap and effective they may be – are not on sale in Armenia.
"These [included] the acaricide group which have a sulphur or nitrogen
base," said Garnik Petrosian, head of the ministry’s plant cultivation
department. "You see we do not use trichlorfon, methyl parathion,
DNOC or DDT, which are considered dangerous."
Petrosian said that pesticides are sold only after they had been
approved by a special licensing commission.
His words were echoed by Environment Minister Vardan Aivazian, who
said, "We carry out checks, we question the customs authorities and we
consistently get the same answer – these substances are not imported
into the country."
However, Elizabet Danielian of the World Health Organization’s Yerevan
office suggested that regulation of imports is lax. "Research done by
various nongovernmental organizations shows that there is no record
of all the toxic chemicals imported into the country and that we
don’t know what substances they actually contain," she said.
The environment minister believes the toxic traces may come from
Soviet-era accumulations of pesticides in the soil, but he said it
was also possible that villagers still have stores of old chemicals
left over and may be using them.
Experts from Armenian Women for Health and a Healthy Environment say
they have evidence that this is the case. They say chicken farmers
are using DDT, so toxic substances make their way from the soil into
the eggs.
As an alternative to agriculture as the source of the problem, Aivazian
pointed the finger at two industrial plants as possible suspects –
the Nairit chloroprene rubber factory and the gold extraction plant
in the town of Ararat, which uses cyanide as part of the process. He
also suggested a further possible cause – a toxic waste dump in the
village of Nurabashen outside Yerevan.
The Nairit plant was closed in late Soviet times but has since
reopened. The head of its environmental department said that the
factory is running at low capacity and there is no evidence it is
causing any damage.
{Published in cooperation with the Institute for War and Peace
Reporting, IWPR. Arpine Galstian is the pseudonym of an Armenian
journalist. IWPR’s Armenia editor Seda Muradian contributed to this
report.}