Companies that pollute face international sanctions as the Green Scorpions step up their campaign to root out guilty parties. Highveld Steel’s Vanchem plant in Mpumalanga may have its international certification revoked if an investigation finds that it lied about its environmental management.
Vanchem is one of 40 factories in South Africa accused by the Green Scorpions of illegally pumping dangerously high levels of toxic sulphur dioxide, ammonia and dust into the air, endangering its workers and residents in adjacent low-income communities.
Green Scorpions investigators also accuse Vanchem of ground and water pollution at the plant in Emalahleni (formerly Witbank).
The toxic pollutants include vanadium, which causes heart disease. Other pollutants include ammonia, which was up to 15 times above the legal limit and dust, which was up to 27 times above the limit. Ammonia can cause severe skin, eye and throat irritation, while dust can lead to tuberculosis (TB).
‘[Our] inspectors also found excessive emissions of sulphur dioxide of between 40 and 60 tons being released into the air from the plant every day,†says Green Scorpions spokesperson Mava Scott.
The legal limit is just 26 micrograms per cubic meter a day, because excessive levels of sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere cause acid rain that contaminates and kills vegetation.
But Vanchem was not just pumping chemicals into the environment, it also operates an illegal toxic waste dump that is leaching vanadium and other heavy metals into local groundwater — contaminating the environment for decades.
‘We are concerned that [Vanchem] and many other companies we found to be non-compliant continue to be certified by the International Standard Organisation [ISO] National Accreditation System,†says Scott.
Vanchem cannot export its products to Europe and other world markets without ISO certification that confirms it is environmentally responsible.
Vanchem is certified as having world-class environmental management systems in place that meet the strict global ISO 14001 standards.
‘We have launched a formal investigation into all the Green Scorpions’ findings and will compare these findings with the claims originally made by companies when they were audited for ISO certificates,†says local ISO auditor Josef Peters, who is also the director of TUV Rheinland, which audited Vanchem and awarded it the ISO 14001 certificate.
Peters stresses, however, that ISO regulations do allow certification if companies can prove that they have voluntarily alerted authorities to environmental transgressions and are in the process of rectifying the problem.
Vanchem’s owners, Highveld Steel and the Vanadium Corporation, have declined to comment on the specific charges pending the outcome of its written technical response to the Green Scorpions report. — African Eye News Service