Toxic environment

It’s a good thing that teachers and kids at the Leonald Conner School experienced hindrance from something in the air. Not that we wish this on anyone, but the nuisance has forced the government to take immediate action.

This is interesting in the context of the troubles we are experiencing with the fires on the dump. As we all know, or at least should know, these fires emit toxic dioxins. The stuff has the potential to cause cancer.

Here is the thing: those darn dioxins are odorless. In other words, the poison is in the air every time the dump is on fire, but you don’t really smell it.

Okay, one may say, we do smell that the air quality is bad during these fires. That is true, but mostly, people experience this as a nuisance, something that affects their breathing and makes their eyes water.

But that’s not all folks. The real danger is in the dioxins that could, in the long term cause cancer, long after people have left the island, or even the environment of the dump to go and live in healthier environments.

So why is the government not taking any action to deal with this problem? Surely, this is of a magnitude that exceeds the problems the Leonald Conner School is experiencing.

Let there be no misunderstanding: those problems at the school are real and they warrant all the emergency measures the government can think of. Nobody wants to send his or her kids to a school in a toxic environment. If we had kids at that school, we would keep them safely at home until the problem has been resolved.

But at the same time we accept that the dump keeps sending poison into the air – over and over again. We are even sending civil servants into the new government administration building soon, right next to the dump.

It will be interesting to see what the unions have to say about this.

All eyes are now on the new Council of Ministers. The UP had as one of its campaign slogans Let’s get rid of the dump. Sounds like a great idea, but now we would like to hear how the party thinks to accomplish this.