Joshua Seemu­n­gal

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Home to dozens of beau­ti­ful rivers and sur­round­ed by won­drous ex­pans­es of ocean and sea, T&T's cul­ture is syn­ony­mous with wa­ter.

And while wa­ter is a source of life, sus­te­nance and recre­ation, be­low the sur­face is an­oth­er sto­ry–one of­ten not told.

As sup­port­ed by the find­ings of more than two decades of sci­en­tif­ic re­search, there are heavy met­als and oth­er en­vi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tants present in many of our rivers and seas/oceans.

Heavy met­als are tox­ic en­vi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tants that linger in the en­vi­ron­ment, ac­cu­mu­lat­ing in or­gan­isms. The ac­cu­mu­la­tion of tox­ic heavy met­als pos­es a se­ri­ous health threat to or­gan­isms.

And, ac­cord­ing to the British Med­ical Bul­letin, this tox­i­c­i­ty can af­fect hu­mans in many ways. It can af­fect cen­tral ner­vous func­tion­ing, lead­ing to men­tal dis­or­ders and it can dam­age vi­tal or­gans, pro­mot­ing dis­eases. Long-term ac­cu­mu­la­tion of heavy met­als may slow the pro­gres­sion of phys­i­cal, mus­cu­lar and neu­ro­log­i­cal process­es, and may al­so lead to can­cer.

They can come from nat­ur­al sources like met­al-bear­ing rocks and vol­canic erup­tions or an­thro­pogenic sources like min­ing, agri­cul­tur­al/in­dus­tri­al ac­tiv­i­ties, and dis­charge from sewage and land­fills.

Heavy met­al pol­lu­tion is an in­creas­ing prob­lem in the Caribbean, ac­cord­ing to both the Group of Ex­perts on the Sci­en­tif­ic As­pects of Ma­rine En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion (GESAMP) and the Unit­ed Na­tions En­vi­ron­ment Pro­gramme (UN­EP).

In its re­search on ma­rine pol­lu­tion in the Caribbean, UN­EP has re­peat­ed­ly claimed that there is a lack of leg­is­la­tion con­cern­ing the im­port, ex­port, use and dis­pos­al of heavy met­als in the re­gion.

As Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­gates ma­rine pol­lu­tion in T&T in the se­ries Be­low the Sur­face, we be­gin by ex­am­in­ing the heavy met­al con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of wa­ter in, and near, the Sea Lots com­mu­ni­ty.

Two boys pull a fishing net in a river in Sea Lots, Port-of-Spain, on Friday.

KERWIN PIERRE

Res­i­dents un­aware

As the cost of liv­ing in­creas­es, and the strug­gles caused by the glob­al pan­dem­ic and as­so­ci­at­ed pub­lic health pro­to­cols per­sist, few things of­fer a fleet­ing es­cape from stres­sors like the sea.

But for Sea Lots res­i­dents, the sea is far more than just that.

It is a per­ma­nent part of their com­mu­ni­ty, lo­cat­ed next to the Gulf of Paria and near the Ca­roni Riv­er.

Many res­i­dents boast that they know the sur­round­ing wa­ter like the back of their hands. But there’s some­thing that most liv­ing there don’t know.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the com­mu­ni­ty last week, we asked res­i­dents if they were aware of the pres­ence of pol­lu­tants in the har­bour and wa­ter off of the com­mu­ni­ty.

While many res­i­dents were aware of pol­lu­tion, main­ly plas­tic, com­ing down from the East Dry Riv­er, they were not aware of the pres­ence of heavy met­als.

Are res­i­dents fa­mil­iar with prob­lems as­so­ci­at­ed with, what they call, runoff from the Beetham Land­fill? Do you be­lieve any­thing is wash­ing away from the land­fill and com­ing in­to the wa­ter around here? We asked a res­i­dent liv­ing in Sea Lots for close to 40 years.

“Nah. Nah. I nev­er see that. That nev­er comes down in the riv­er. The most that hap­pened is the Ca­roni Riv­er and this riv­er bounced up and it used to be re­al rub­bish long time ago,” the res­i­dent, who pre­ferred not to share his name, said.

“So res­i­dents be­lieve that it’s com­plete­ly safe to eat the fish, the crab and oth­er seafood here?” We asked.

“Yeah, yeah. Man does still catch their crab, their conch, oys­ter and all those things out there. Yeah, we're ac­cus­tomed to that,” he replied.

“Sea Lots peo­ple healthy. Sea Lots peo­ple don’t get sick and thing so.”

How­ev­er, while res­i­dents may not be aware, there are heavy met­als present in the wa­ter around Sea Lots; es­pe­cial­ly in the Sea Lots Har­bour.

Mounds of garbage at the Beetham Landfill site.

Kerwin Pierre

Re­searchers de­tect­ed heavy met­als in 2012

In 2012, a team of lo­cal and for­eign re­searchers de­tect­ed heavy met­als in sed­i­ment in the Sea Lots Har­bour.

The study was au­thored by Dr Azad Mo­hammed of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. The study en­ti­tled, “Met­als in Sed­i­ments and Fish From Sea Lots and Point Lisas har­bours, Trinidad and To­ba­go” found that the lev­els of the heavy met­als–cad­mi­um, cop­per, mer­cury, lead and zinc all ex­ceed­ed the In­ter­na­tion­al Atom­ic En­er­gy Agency’s (IAEA) tol­er­a­ble lim­it.

*Cad­mi­um had an IAEA tol­er­a­ble lim­it of 0.15 mi­cro­grams per gram dry weight, but the av­er­age con­cen­tra­tion of cad­mi­um in Sea Lots was found to be 0.40 mi­cro­grams per gram dry weight.

*Cop­per had an IAEA tol­er­a­ble lim­it of 30.8 mi­cro­grams per gram dry weight, but the av­er­age con­cen­tra­tion in Sea Lots was found to be 57 mi­cro­grams per gram dry weight.

*Mer­cury had an IAEA tol­er­a­ble lim­it of 0.17 mi­cro­grams per gram dry weight, but the av­er­age con­cen­tra­tion in Sea Lots was found to be 0.22 mi­cro­grams per gram dry weight.

*Lead had an IAEA tol­er­a­ble lim­it of 26 mi­cro­grams per gram dry weight, but the av­er­age con­cen­tra­tion in Sea Lots was found to be 49 mi­cro­grams per gram dry weight.

*Zinc had an IAEA tol­er­a­ble lim­it of 101 mi­cro­grams per gram dry weight, but the av­er­age con­cen­tra­tion in Sea Lots was found to be 246 mi­cro­grams per gram dry weight.

These find­ings meant that the lev­els of those heavy met­als in the Sea Lots har­bour were haz­ardous to hu­man health.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­search, “The high lev­els of met­als de­tect­ed at Sea Lots may be as a re­sult of ef­flu­ent runoff from the near­by Beetham Land­fill and oth­er land-based sources, as well as derelict ships with­in the bay…The main fac­tor that may con­tribute to the move­ment of sed­i­ment met­als in Sea Lots would be dredg­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.”

Health woes

One of the lo­cal re­searchers on the 2012 re­search team was Prof John Agard.

The Pro­fes­sor of Trop­i­cal Is­land Ecol­o­gy said in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last week, that he projects the heavy met­als are still present in Sea Lots.

The lead au­thor of the Unit­ed Na­tions’ In­ter-Gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change 4th and 5th as­sess­ment said the study showed that there are car­cino­genic com­pounds in the Sea Lots Har­bour, but no sim­i­lar tests have been re­peat­ed in the area since.

Prof Agard said the tox­ic com­pounds are com­ing from the near­by Beetham Land­fill.

“It’s leak­ing out from there, so that’s why. There hasn’t been any study done as to what/where it’s com­ing from, but peo­ple are just dump­ing every­thing there (at the Beetham Land­fill). There’s no con­trol,” he said.

“It’s quite in­tense. You will see that it’s not on­ly killing off wildlife and plants and stuff around, but the ad­di­tion­al ef­fect is that it’s leak­ing out in­to Sea Lots, around the har­bour. It’s get­ting in­gest­ed by things like oys­ters–who are fil­ter feed­ers. The oys­ters are tak­ing out of the wa­ter things that are dan­ger­ous and then oys­ters are be­ing sold in oth­er places as well, even around the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah…When you eat a raw oys­ter, you could be in­gest­ing things that are car­cino­genic.”

Prof Agard said there was a re­search that sug­gests heavy met­als are present in fish tis­sue from the area and the Gulf of Paria as well.

“That’s ex­act­ly cor­rect. There was a PhD stu­dent who had done work on that as well. That’s part of the spread, in­to fish as well.

“There seems to be lit­tle like­li­hood that change is ac­tu­al­ly go­ing to hap­pen (at the Beetham Land­fill) be­cause this has been brought up be­fore–about rules and reg­u­la­tions and so forth. Years ago, it was nec­es­sary that it would be test­ed first, and then pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly by the pub­lic health lab­o­ra­to­ry, but none of that is hap­pen­ing now.”

Prof Agard ad­vised peo­ple to take con­trol of their be­hav­iour and avoid in­gest­ing any­thing that they may think is dan­ger­ous.

Ac­cord­ing to the Jour­nal of Chem­istry, heavy met­als ac­cu­mu­late in liv­ing or­gan­isms and are trans­ferred up the food chain.

De­pend­ing on the met­als' rate of ac­cu­mu­la­tion, heavy met­als may en­ter the body of an or­gan­ism di­rect­ly from wa­ter, sed­i­ments or soil, or may en­ter an or­gan­ism’s body from its food or prey.

For ex­am­ple, heavy met­als may en­ter a fish’s body di­rect­ly from wa­ter or sed­i­ments through its gills or skin.

An Iran­ian 2021 re­search ar­ti­cle–en­ti­tled Tox­ic Mech­a­nism of Five Heavy Met­als: Mer­cury, Lead, Chromi­um, Cad­mi­um and Ar­senic–said that acute and chron­ic tox­ic ef­fects of heavy met­als af­fect dif­fer­ent body or­gans.

Ex­am­ples of the com­pli­ca­tions of heavy met­als tox­ic ef­fects were list­ed as can­cer, ner­vous sys­tem dis­or­ders, birth de­fects, vas­cu­lar dam­age, im­mune sys­tem dys­func­tion, skin le­sions, as well as gas­troin­testi­nal and kid­ney dys­func­tion.

The ar­ti­cle said low-dose ex­po­sure is a sub­tle and hid­den threat, which may be di­ag­nosed by com­pi­la­tions, in­clud­ing neu­ropsy­chi­atric dis­or­ders like anx­i­ety, fa­tigue and sig­nif­i­cant im­pacts on the in­tel­lec­tu­al func­tion of chil­dren.

In an­oth­er study done on sed­i­ments from Sea Lots in 2011, a re­search team–com­prised many of the re­searchers who test­ed for heavy met­als in the area in 2012–found that a high­ly tox­ic, man-made chem­i­cal called poly­chlo­ri­nat­ed biphenyls (PCBs) and a high­ly tox­ic pes­ti­cide organochlo­rine were al­so present in the sed­i­ment.

The lev­els of poly­chlo­ri­nat­ed biphenyls de­tect­ed were high­er than the Cana­di­an in­ter­im sed­i­ment qual­i­ty guide­lines for ma­rine sed­i­ments.

En­vi­ron­men­tal ex­perts said the tox­ic chem­i­cal was still like­ly to be present in the har­bour to­day, giv­en the lack of rules and reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing dump­ing prac­tices at the near­by Beetham Land­fill.

The Unit­ed States fed­er­al­ly out­lawed PCB pro­duc­tion in 1978.

PCBs are used in in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial ap­pli­ca­tions, in­clud­ing pig­ments, dyes, plas­ti­ciz­ers in paints, plas­tics and rub­ber prod­ucts, as well as in elec­tri­cal, hy­draulic and heat trans­fer equip­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed States En­vi­ron­men­tal De­fense Fund, PCBs can build up in the fat­ty tis­sues of fish and oth­er an­i­mals.

Stud­ies, ac­cord­ing to the US En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency, found that the de­vel­op­ing ner­vous sys­tems of foe­tus­es and young chil­dren were par­tic­u­lar­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to the im­pact of PCBs.

Some stud­ies found that chil­dren of moth­ers who ate fish with large amounts of PCBs had small­er head sizes, de­layed mus­cle de­vel­op­ment and re­duced vi­su­al recog­ni­tion. A moth­er’s ex­po­sure to PCBs and oth­er chem­i­cals was linked to ef­fects on her child’s learn­ing, short-term mem­o­ry and birth weight. Old­er adults who ate fish con­tain­ing PCBs and oth­er con­t­a­m­i­nants had low­er scores for learn­ing and mem­o­ry.

Ex­am­in­ing the EMA's role

Un­der the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act 2000, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty was cre­at­ed to man­age the en­vi­ron­ment.

Among the EMA’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, it con­ducts air, soil and wa­ter analy­ses to de­ter­mine pro­gramme pri­or­i­ties; it de­vel­ops and im­ple­ments en­vi­ron­men­tal poli­cies and pro­grammes; de­vel­ops na­tion­al en­vi­ron­men­tal stan­dards; mon­i­tors com­pli­ance with the en­vi­ron­men­tal stan­dards; and as­sists the Gov­ern­ment in im­ple­ment­ing glob­al and re­gion­al en­vi­ron­men­tal agree­ments in­clud­ing the Stock­holm Con­ven­tion on Per­sis­tent Or­gan­ic Pol­lu­tants.

EMA re­sponds

Guardian Me­dia asked the EMA:

*Whether they ac­knowl­edge the pres­ence of tox­ic heavy met­als in the Sea Lots Har­bor and parts of the Ca­roni Riv­er and Gulf of Paria?

*If reg­u­lar test­ing for car­cino­genic com­pounds and en­vi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tants were be­ing con­duct­ed?

*What pro­grammes are in place to at­tempt to mit­i­gate the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact?

The EMA did not con­firm whether it is aware of the pres­ence of heavy met­als or oth­er car­cino­gens in wa­ter­cours­es in Sea Lots, the Gulf of Paria or the Ca­roni Riv­er.

In­stead, it said it con­ducts test­ing of wa­ter­cours­es pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly, con­tin­gent on ei­ther a needs as­sess­ment or in re­sponse to re­gion­al or lo­cal con­cerns.

"It is not­ed that the EMA has strong link­ages with part­ner agen­cies for in­for­ma­tion and da­ta shar­ing in the event that fur­ther in­for­ma­tion is re­quired," a re­sponse from the EMA’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment said.

"In 2018, the EMA com­menced the Base­line Eco­log­i­cal Risk As­sess­ment for the Gulf of Paria, the first study of its kind in the re­gion. In June 2020 the find­ings of this as­sess­ment were pre­sent­ed to key stake­hold­ers and part­ner agen­cies. The ERA was ini­ti­at­ed by a qual­i­ta­tive Screen­ing Lev­el Eco­log­i­cal Risk As­sess­ment, dur­ing which a desk­top scop­ing re­port was de­signed.

"Two En­vi­ron­men­tal Base­line Sur­veys were con­duct­ed to ex­am­ine the qual­i­ty of the wa­ter, sed­i­ment and bi­o­log­i­cal re­sources with­in the study area. A Con­cep­tu­al Site Mod­el work­shop was al­so con­duct­ed be­tween sub­ject mat­ter ex­perts and key stake­hold­ers.
"The work­shop iden­ti­fied po­ten­tial stres­sors and val­ued ecosys­tem com­po­nents po­ten­tial­ly at risk in the Gulf of Paria and en­abled the quan­ti­ta­tive Base­line ERA to be con­duct­ed."

The EMA said with re­spect to the leg­isla­tive frame­work, T&T en­act­ed the Waste Man­age­ment Rules, 2021 and the Waste Man­age­ment (Fees) Reg­u­la­tions, 2021 which es­tab­lish a le­gal frame­work to im­prove na­tion­al waste man­age­ment, in­clud­ing haz­ardous and non-haz­ardous waste, by re­quir­ing gen­er­a­tors and han­dlers of waste to ap­ply for and ob­tain per­mits be­fore car­ry­ing out their waste-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties.

"Com­ing in­to op­er­a­tion on May 31, 2022, these rules ap­ply to the gen­er­a­tion, pro­cess­ing, treat­ment, pack­ag­ing, stor­age, trans­porta­tion, col­lec­tion, dis­pos­al, re­cov­er, re­cy­cling, or oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties re­lat­ed to treat­ing waste oth­er than ra­dioac­tive waste," the EMA said.

"Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the amend­ed Wa­ter Pol­lu­tion Rules, 2019 and the Wa­ter Pol­lu­tion (Fees) Reg­u­la­tions, 2019, are in ef­fect…The pri­ma­ry goal of the WPR is to en­sure the lev­els of wa­ter pol­lu­tants from point and non-point sources, there­by im­prov­ing the over­all qual­i­ty of in­land and coastal wa­ter re­sources."