Category: Global

Rock wool, whilst sold as an eco-friend­ly prod­uct, is a dirty thing to make. In the USA, Erin Brokovich is inves­ti­gat­ing claims that a now-closed Rock­wool Group fac­to­ry is respon­si­ble for the high rate of can­cer local­ly. Mean­while, the res­i­dents of the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Pican, Croa­t­ia are protest­ing against a new fac­to­ry which was built ille­gal­ly. The fac­to­ry reg­u­lar­ly floods the val­ley with thick smoke.

Read their press release below:

URGENT APPEAL FOR HELP

In Octo­ber 2005, Rock­wool Adri­at­ic (part of the Dan­ish-based Rock­wool Group) bought land in Croa­t­ia for 1.98 Euro per m2 – a gift from the Croa­t­ian Gov­ern­ment, which was falling over itself in eager­ness to accept for­eign invest­ment, no mat­ter what the future costs would be. Rock­wool had already estab­lished a head­quar­ters in Zagreb before the land was bought! They do not have to pay ANY income tax for the next TEN YEARS!! The agree­ment states that Rock­wool will be made 10,000 Euros a month if for any rea­son they are pre­vent­ed from nor­mal pro­duc­tion.

But many facts point to an obi­ous con­clu­sion: The multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion moved in under false pre­tences. Local res­i­dents were ini­tial­ly told a blan­ket mak­ing fac­to­ry would be built (in the USA, build­ing insu­la­tion is labelled ‘insu­lat­ing blan­kets’). The site was pre­sent­ed as a green­field project and there is evi­dence that the EU is black­mail­ing the Croa­t­ian gov­ern­ment to this fac­to­ry. It is in fact being used to pro­duce rock wool, which is a fibrous sol­id (an amor­phous sil­i­cate to be pre­cise) man­u­fac­tured from slag met­al and used as insu­la­tion. Whilst unde­ni­ably safe as an end prod­uct, and iron­i­cal­ly enough, praised as an ecofriend­ly means of insu­la­tion, the pro­duc­tion process is a dirty one.

The fac­to­ry was built in Pican, which lies in a region at the top of a large penin­su­la called Istria (Istra in Croa­t­ian). Istria is next to Italy and is a pop­u­lar tourist loca­tion, but for how much longer? Pri­or to the fac­to­ry’s arrival, the state offered incen­tives for rur­al devel­op­ment and growth. The fac­to­ry itself is built in the midst of an agri­cul­tur­al area, on pro­tect­ed nation­al water reserves which are the only source of drink­ing water on the penin­su­la.

Rock­wool’s modus operan­di appears to be to pro­duce for 10 to 15 years and then movE on before encoun­ter­ing prob­lems, that is to say, before the con­se­quences of pol­lu­tion become visible.The impe­tus in Croa­t­ia may be a new EU law that pro­hibits the use of formalde­hyde. Rock­wool multi­na­tion­al con­tin­ues to use this chem­i­cal in Croa­t­ia, which is still not under EU laws. The fac­to­ry has trans­ferred parts from Poland, where rumour has it the work­ers have start­ed get­ting all sorts of dis­eases.

In 2007, a com­plaint was filled against the Rock­wool fac­to­ry by the Inspec­tor for Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion for using the emer­gency chim­ney (in con­tra­ven­tion of the Envi­ron­ment Pro­tec­tion Law). In Sep­tem­ber 2007, a legal com­plaint was made for break­ing the Waste Man­age­ment Law for improp­er dis­pos­al of waste. Both of these legal actions have failed in the low­er courts.

In Novem­ber 2007, a legal com­plaint was made for emit­ting pol­lut­ing sub­stances into the air — SO2 and ammo­ni­um above the the lim­its pre­scribed by Croa­t­ian (and EU) laws.

Laws were bro­ken or bent to the max­i­mum to get the fac­to­ry run­ning. There were changes made to the loca­tion and con­struc­tion per­mit which fun­da­men­tal­ly altered the con­di­tions of fac­to­ry pro­duc­tion; but no new Envi­ron­men­tal Study was made (July 2008). The fac­to­ry has no legal agree­ment on water use – they need vast amounts of water and right now they buy it pri­vate­ly, lit­er­al­ly pump­ing water from an adja­cent aban­doned busi­ness site.

Activists have made inde­pen­dent mea­sure­ments. The results are shock­ing, but the state refus­es to ver­i­fy them. The mea­sure­ments: CO2, CO and methane por­tions in the air were way above the allowed lim­its. There was not enough oxy­gen, where­as CO2 and CO were way above the mea­sured num­bers on Rock­wool’s “offi­cial” mea­sur­ing sta­tions.

Zdravko Beric, sci­en­tist and a direc­tor of the firm that did a mea­sur­ing with a non-pilot fly­ing ves­sel (his licence is not acknowl­edged in Croa­t­ia although he is one of eight peo­ple in Europe that is qual­i­fied to make such mea­sure­ments), stat­ed: K — 40 (Kalij): lim­it­ing val­ue 3000 Bk/kg, val­ue mea­sured above Rockwool:11.730 Bk/kg, for Ra — 226 (Radi­um) lim­it­ing val­ue 300 Bk/kg, val­ue mea­sured above Rock­wool: 2.570 Bk/kg. He also found 7 hard met­als and 29 car­cino­genic sub­stances. Fur­ther on, salts of nitrates, sul­fides, sul­fates, acetates of mer­cury’s com­pounds anti­mone and cad­mi­um that fall on the earth con­t­a­m­i­nate the agri­cul­tur­al area 100%. Con­sump­tion of fruit and veg­eta­bles con­tain­ing these sub­stances at 0,53 gr/m2 caus­es health prob­lems, but WITH con­sis­tent expo­sure, can­cer is caused by 1.430 gr/kg of veg­eta­bles or fruit. [1]

Beric com­ments “With this amount of radioac­tiv­i­ty we guar­an­tee that in 10 years all the pop­u­la­tion will start get­ting ill from throat, thy­roid and bronchial can­cer, get­ting skin aller­gies, and for every month of the fac­to­ry’s pro­duc­tion 10 years of decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion will be need­ed.” [2]

Beric’s obser­va­tions are inter­est­ing in the light of the sit­u­a­tion in the USA where Erin Brokovich is cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing a case to sue Rock­wool on behalf of 87 peo­ple with brain tumours who live near the site of a for­mer Rock­wool fac­to­ry in Cameron, Mis­souri. [2]

By any intel­li­gent stan­dard, every facil­i­ty of this type needs to be based on a legal-sci­en­tif­ic doc­u­ment — this study was done by the firm Ekon­erg, hired by Rock­wool and the Envi­ron­ment Pro­tec­tion Min­istry. It is full of false data, com­prised of incom­plete and esti­mat­ed mea­sure­ments. For exam­ple, the near­est set­tle­ments are said to be 3.5 km away, when in fact they are 300 to 500 metres away. The study says that the pop­u­la­tion resides in this area only tem­porar­i­ly. The data from the cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis are also false. The study was not done by qual­i­fied inde­pen­dent sci­en­tists who were famil­iar with atmos­pher­ic con­di­tions, geog­ra­phy and demog­ra­phy.

The local com­mu­ni­ty here is spon­ta­neous­ly resist­ing; the last big­ger protest was Novem­ber 30 (approx­i­mate­ly 1000 peo­ple) and before that August 31st (1500 peo­ple). The entire pop­u­la­tion of the imme­di­ate sur­round­ing val­ley and hill­sides is only 2,500.There are three eco­log­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal asso­ci­a­tions fight­ing against it, but it feels like we are fight­ing some­thing that is big­ger than us. The week after the last big­ger protest the fac­to­ry fumed like hell and smelled of urine, fire­crack­ers and sawn iron. The fac­to­ry works main­ly by night, since the smoke is less vis­i­ble. 200 pro­tes­tors spon­ta­neous­ly appeared in front of the fac­to­ry every night until the oper­a­tion was shut down. Heavy police escorts were deployed to pro­tect the work­ers and the poice also intim­i­dat­ed pro­tes­tors. Neigh­bour­hood fam­i­lies com­ing out in the mid­dle of the cold and rainy night prompt­ed politi­cians to rein­vent them­selves as ‘con­cerned’.

WE NEED HELP URGENTLY!

An inter­na­tion­al cam­paign is just begin­ning, we can­not let Rock­wool get away with this!

Con­tact:

Croa­t­ia -
antirockwoolakcijaATgmail.com
narodprotivrockwoolaATnet.hr
istra.nasazemljaATgmail.com
00385/92–2317331 (Hele­na or Tihana)

Eng­land -
welovenatureATpressured.plus.com

Webin­fo:
Eng­lish infor­ma­tion: http://www.pressured.plus.com/

Face­book groups:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=39557279076
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6010983923

Online peti­tion — http://labin.info/10,9,stop-za-rockwool.aspx

NOTES

1
Zdravko Beric’; e‑mail: tzr@prvomajska-tzr.hr

2
http://www.glasistre.hr/?d5acf51e174775f956966b162325aa5c,TS,3952„19681„245390

3
Brock­ovich talks tumors in Cameron
http://www.stjoenews.net/news/2008/oct/28/brockovich-talks-tumors-cameron/
Erin Brock­ovich Brings Hope To Cameron
http://www.kctv5.com/news/17819947/detail.html
Test­ing Starts On Plant Sus­pect­ed In Tumor Cas­es
http://www.kmbc.com/health/16881894/detail.html