En­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Marc de Ver­teuil said yes­ter­day that diox­ins from burn­ing plas­tic in land­fill sites are some of the nas­ti­est tox­ins."They con­tain car­cino­gens which can cause can­cer," he said.

De Ver­teuil said the im­pact of the smoke and fumes from the Beetham fires can be a long-term one. He said friends of his who suf­fer from asth­ma said they were hav­ing se­ri­ous prob­lems and called for the clo­sure of the Beetham dump. He said 80 per cent of its waste could he re­cy­cled. Fish­er­men & Friends of the Sea (FFOS) said that gas­es es­cap­ing from the Beetham dump con­tain tox­ic pol­lu­tants that di­rect­ly cause asth­ma and oth­er se­ri­ous res­pi­ra­to­ry ail­ments."Well proven stud­ies link liv­ing near land­fills with can­cer, where es­cap­ing gas­es will typ­i­cal­ly con­tain a cock­tail of tox­ic chem­i­cals, in­clud­ing volatile or­gan­ic com­pounds," a FFOS re­lease, signed by sec­re­tary Gary Aboud and pres­i­dent Ter­rence Bed­doe, said.

The FFOS said all dumps like the Beetham leak tox­ic leachate and even "en­gi­neered" land­fills will even­tu­al­ly leach and pol­lute near­by ground­wa­ter."The Beetham was start­ed in a man­grove swamp with shal­low ground wa­ter, the worst place for a land­fill. When land­fills catch fire the par­tial­ly com­bust­ed smoke can be dead­ly if there is per­sis­tent ex­po­sure."It said for al­most two decades the FFOS had point­ed out the un­sat­is­fac­to­ry sit­u­a­tion at the Beetham dump.It added: "Ad­min­is­tra­tions have come and gone and noth­ing has ever been done. Un­qual­i­fied per­sons have been re­peat­ed­ly ap­point­ed to the board and man­age­ment of SWM­COL.

"Any vis­i­tor head­ing to the Hy­att on­ly has to dri­ve by the Beetham to know how third world our rich lit­tle oil/gas econ­o­my ac­tu­al­ly is. Pover­ty on the right and pol­lu­tion on the left."The FFOS is plan­ning to mount an un­prece­dent­ed pub­lic aware­ness cam­paign to force en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues on­to the po­lit­i­cal plat­forms in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion."We shall not stand by while un­qual­i­fied and self-serv­ing politi­cians con­tin­ue to ru­in the health of in­no­cent and un­sus­pect­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Pol­lu­tion must join pover­ty, crime and cor­rup­tion cen­tre stage in the next elec­tions," it added.