Lebanese oil spill poses cancer risk
Wednesday, 09 Aug 2006 08:54
Lebanese oil spill poses cancer risk
The oil spill caused by Israeli attacks on a Lebanese power plant poses a cancer risk to people in both Lebanon and Syria, the United Nations has warned.
Some 10,000 tonnes of fuel oil spilled from the Jiyyeh power utility in Lebanon, situated 15 miles south of Beirut, after Israeli aircraft bombarded it on July 14th.
A further 20,000 tonnes have leaked out since the attack.
Simonetta Lombardo of the Mediterranean Action Plan, an agency working under the auspices of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), told journalists yesterday: "The presence of the fuel oil on the coasts of Lebanon and Syria exposes people in the zones affected to a heightened risk of cancer."
Ms Lombardo said at least 75 miles of coastline in Lebanon and Syria had been polluted.
She described the spill as "a high-risk toxic cocktail made up of substances which cause cancer and damage to the endocrine system".
She said fuel for power stations and not oil per se contained substances such as benzene, categorised as a class one carcinogen.
Yesterday, two UN experts arrived in Syria to evaluate the consequences of the oil spill.
To date, clean-up operations have been hampered by the tit-for-tat retaliation between Israel and Hizbullah guerrillas.
UNEP has compared the oil spill in Lebanon to the disaster in 1999 off the coast of France when the Erika tanker spilled some 13,000 metric tonnes of oil into the Atlantic Ocean.
UN executive director Achim Steiner said: "We are dealing with a very serious incident and any practical steps are still constrained by the continuation of hostilities.
"We are glad that two of our experts will now be able to provide advice from Damascus, even though much more is needed."