Kali­fa Clyne

Smoke fil­ter­ing in­to the cap­i­tal city as a re­sult of the re­cent fires at the Beetham land­fill less­ened yes­ter­day while the En­vi­ron­ment Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) con­tin­ues to guard the de­tails of the ex­act lev­els of pol­lu­tants in near­by ar­eas.The au­thor­i­ty yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, di­vulged which pol­lu­tants were be­ing checked and said the Draft Air Pol­lu­tion Rules were used as a bench­mark for the tests.

Man­ag­er of Emer­gency Re­sponse and In­ves­ti­ga­tion Ria Ra­moutar in a tele­phone in­ter­view said the EMA had done air mon­i­tor­ing for the pol­lu­tants which it felt would have been most per­ti­nent to the sit­u­a­tion.As such, the EMA me­ters were used to test lev­els of six of the over 30 sub­stances list­ed in the Draft Air Pol­lu­tion Rules, name­ly am­mo­nia, sul­phur diox­ide, car­bon monox­ide, ni­tro­gen diox­ide, hy­dro­gen sul­phide and volatile or­gan­ic com­pounds.

The au­thor­i­ty al­so con­duct­ed vi­su­al sur­veil­lance, pay­ing spe­cial at­ten­tion to "sen­si­tive ar­eas," such as Laven­tille, Sea Lots and down­town Port-of-Spain.De­spite the fact the EMA was work­ing as part of an in­ter-agency re­sponse team, in­clud­ing the Health Min­istry, Fire and Po­lice Ser­vices, the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and the Port-of-Spain and San Juan Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tions, spe­cif­ic de­tails of the air-mon­i­tor­ing tests were not shared with these or­gan­i­sa­tions.

"We shared our re­port with them," Ra­moutar said.Asked if the re­port in­clud­ed the re­sults of the lev­els of pol­lu­tants, Ra­moutar said no."All of the tests came back with low­er lev­els than the ac­cept­ed lim­its pro­vid­ed in the Draft Air Pol­lu­tion Rules," he added.

Chil­dren, se­nior cit­i­zen­sat risk–doc­tor

Pae­di­a­tri­cian Dr David Bratt told the T&T Guardian that se­nior cit­i­zens and chil­dren were at risk from the smoke in the city and said the EMA should be telling the pub­lic the pre­cise lev­els mea­sured."Se­nior cit­i­zens (over 65) and chil­dren (un­der 18) are at risk... se­niors for heart at­tacks and bron­chi­tis/pneu­mo­nia and pre­ma­ture death," Bratt said in an e-mail.

He said every­one else were at risk for si­nus, ear in­fec­tions, con­junc­tivi­tis, bron­chi­tis, pneu­mo­nia, bronchial asth­ma at­tacks and dis­or­ders of the res­pi­ra­to­ry tract, man­i­fest­ing ba­si­cal­ly in cough, chron­ic cough, spasms of cough, lead­ing to poor sleep, day­time ir­ri­tabil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly stu­dents.He said preg­nant women were es­pe­cial­ly at risk for pre­ma­ture labour and birth. He said peo­ple need­ed to "stay away from the ar­eas of pol­lu­tion.

"Don't send the chil­dren to school in Port-of-Spain. Don't go shop­ping down­town or wear a mask," he warned.

SWM­COL re­sponds

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er of the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (SWM­COL) George Elias said in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day the fires were very close to be­ing com­plete­ly doused.

"We are not 100 per cent fin­ished but we are very close. The land­fill was re­opened on a lim­it­ed scale to­day (yes­ter­day)," Elias said.

Asked whether the EMA had pro­vid­ed SWM­COL, the com­pa­ny re­spon­si­ble for the land­fill, with a copy of the air qual­i­ty re­ports, Elias said he had not seen the re­port but as­sumed they would have done that.While Elias main­tained that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the cause of the fire had not been com­plet­ed, he said in­ves­ti­ga­tions had re­vealed they had been de­lib­er­ate­ly set.That sup­ports state­ments by En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Gan­ga Singh on Tues­day that the fires were de­lib­er­ate­ly set.

How­ev­er, he said, the mo­tive for the fire re­mained un­der fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion.The com­pa­ny dis­missed sug­ges­tions that SWM­COL stood to ben­e­fit from fires at the Beetham land­fill and said Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment was dis­cussing pro­pos­als to im­prove man­age­ment of the site.

The Draft Air Pol­lu­tion Rules state the fol­low­ing max­i­mum per­mis­si­ble lim­its in mil­ligrams (mg) for the pol­lu­tants mea­sured.

�2 Sul­phur diox­ide: 500.

�2 Car­bon monox­ide: 1,000.

�2 Ni­tro­gen diox­ide: 500.

�2 Am­mo­nia: 50.

�2 Hy­dro­gen sul­phide: 15.

�2Volatile or­gan­ic com­pound: 20.