NATO MISSILES’ LEGACY IN SERB TOWN
MORE THAN 1,400 TONS OF POISONOUS VINYL CHLORIDE BURNED
07-23-99
PANCEVO, Yugoslavia (AP)--The grass is bleached to a scary pale gray and little Ana has trouble breathing when she plays in the park, weeks after NATO wreaked environmental havoc by bombing key industrial sites.
Pancevo, an industrial town 5 miles northeast of Belgrade, was the town worst hit during the air raids, and doctors and environmental experts say the aftereffects of the bombing will be felt for years--and maybe generations--to come.
Huge amounts of chemicals and poisonous fumes have polluted the air, the ground and the water in and around Pancevo.
The damage dates back to April when NATO missiles struck Pancevo's three major industrial sites--an oil refinery, a nitrogen fertilizer factory and a chemical plant, releasing hundreds of tons of toxic materials which spread over the entire region.
Weeks after the bombing ended, a visit to the fertilizer factory still produced a stinging sensation in the nose and throat. A sticky, yellowish fluid, apparently a leaked chemical, stank and slowly solidified under the blazing summer sun near the front gate.
``I am afraid to even think what we breathed in, what chemicals got into our bodies,'' said Tamara Radjenovic, a 32-year-old teacher, as she watched her 5-year old daughter Ana play in a park. Every few minutes the girl came to her mother to rest, gasping for air.
``She gets tired so easily, she has dark circles around her eyes. ... It wasn't like that before the bombs. She is not the child she used to be,'' Mrs. Radjenovic said of her daughter with a deep, sorrowful sigh.
Local doctors who examined the girl said the symptoms were caused by the chemicals and that there was nothing they could do now.
Pancevo's municipal authorities have compiled a day-by-day list of dangerous leaks, fires and explosions since March 24 when the air raids began. The town of 70,000 was targeted from the beginning.
At least 25,000 tons of fuel, mostly from the bombed refinery, burned into the atmosphere, blanketing a wide area with a layer of tar.
More than 1,400 tons of poisonous vinyl chloride burned and spread noxious fumes when NATO bombs hit a storage tank at Pancevo's Petrohemija factory. The substance, normally used to produce plastics, is carcinogenic, and 2 percent of it turns into even more dangerous phosgene when burned.
A hundred tons of mercury, almost as much sodium hydroxide and tons of other chemicals, including nitric acid, burned up or leaked into the Danube River.
Those substances almost invariably cause respiratory problems, nausea, diarrhea, dizziness, skin rashes and blisters when inhaled in even the smallest quantities.
In one of the worst nights of bombing, instruments measuring pollution in Pancevo showed a vinyl chloride concentration of 0.43 milligrams per cubic meter, or 8,600 times more than recommended maximum levels.
Doctors in Pancevo said there were about a hundred cases of acute intoxication, mostly among nightshift workers, security and firemen who were at the sites during the nighttime raids. Three of them have died.
Health authorities are preparing a comprehensive report expected to be released later this year. While doctors have been instructed to withhold details, they do acknowledge a sharp increase in patients suffering from pollution-related symptoms.
``I had a patient who was treated for infertility last year. She wanted a baby so much, she was two months pregnant when the bombing began,'' said a local gynecologist, insisting on anonymity. ``She got so terrified of possible birth defects that she had an abortion last month.''
The woman made her decision after a surge of miscarriages in the town in late April, he said.
Milan Borna, head of the environmental protection department in Pancevo, said, ``The full extent of the damage will show in coming years. ... We fear that the worst effects may be degenerative changes in future generations.''
Meanwhile, a 17-member expert team, assembled by the U.N. Environment Program, arrived in Yugoslavia this week and immediately headed to Pancevo to take samples of water and soil for analysis in two mobile laboratories.
A preliminary report is due later this month and a broader one in September. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will then decide on possible follow-up measures.
A mission member, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a chief motive for the U.N. visit was the health of the Danube River which flows through Yugoslavia and into neighboring Romania and Bulgaria, carrying a share of the toxic chemicals downstream. |
