Environment Protection: How to Destroy Tons of Medicines?

AIM Banja Luka, May 21, 2001

A few days ago, the general manager of the Clinical Center in Banja Luka, Risto Kozomara, made it known that 60 tons of medicines with an expired date of application, hazardous to health and the environment, have been stored within the compounds of the Center for the past 6 years. Although years have gone by since they were first - supposedly merely temporarily - stored, neither a new location nor a way to dispose of them permanently have yet been found. Up to now, again devised as a transitional measure, the medicines were "encapsulated" (hermetically sealed) in 300 barrels of 200 liters. "There is no permanent solution to the problem, and the temporary one will not hold out much longer. The barrels, already corroded by rust, have started to deform and swell due to the chemical reactions caused by the decomposing medicines", says Kozomara.

To make things worse, the barrels with the deadly waste are presently located in the immediate vicinity of the technical block of the Clinical Center, thus endangering the patients and staff. Furthermore, they are but a few meters away from the water pipes of the city's waterworks. "We fear the barrels will eventually burst. If that happens, toxic substances will pour out into the city's water-supplies", warns Dr. Kozomara.

The department minister, Milorad Balaban, believes the general managers of the hospitals and clinics are to blame. In his opinion, they should have found a way to prevent the piling up of expired medicines over the years. At one time, a possible way out could have been to burn the poisonous waste, a procedure that is out of the question now. The minister, too, now opts for "encapsulatization" as the only feasible solution at present. "Our sanitary inspectors have been ordered to find a location for depositing these medicines", he says.

Co-minister Borislav Jaksic explains that the verification of the ministry's strategy for dealing with solid waste (a category expired medicines belong to) and the drawing up of a set of regulatory rules concerning the protection of the environment is presently under way in the RS. Co-minister Jaksic says that a survey of 62 municipalities in RS which served as a basis for the proposed strategy shows that, almost without exemption, all other medicinal institution in RS are confronted with a similar affliction.

As for the response of corresponding authorities on other levels of rule, none seem to have a solution for the problem. Up to now, not a single section of the municipal authorities in RS has ever been indebted with the task of protecting the environment.

While the citizens of Banja Luka are struggling to somehow get rid of the long-expired medicines in their midst, the citizens of Novi Grad and their neighbors from the Sisak-Moslavina district in Croatia and those residing in the nearby townships of Velika Kladusa, Buzim and Bosanska Krupa in the B&H Federation, are staging joint protests against the announced establishment of a nuclear and medicinal waste dump to be situated on the slopes of Mount Trgovska in Banija (Croatia). The mayor of Dvor Na Uni, Franjo Juranovic, says representatives of the Sisak-Moslavina district are determined to continue their struggle against the creation of any such dump in Croatia before the Parliament. Considering the fact that the rest of Croatia is naturally protected from the dangers of a waste dump on Mount Trgovska by means of a natural barrier in the form of Mount Zrinjska, the well informed estimate that merely an insignificant part of Croatian territory would be endangered by the realization of such a project. Quite the contrary would prove to be true in the case of B&H. So why have all relevant government institutions here chosen to remain silent on the matter?

The RS co-minister of environment protection believes one or two utilities for the disposal of toxic waste - be they in the form of a depository or incinerating site, devised so as to prevent air-pollution

• would be the best solution to the problem of medicinal waste in B&H. "Urgent steps that may be taken even prior to the adoption of the law are the localization, isolation and registering of such locations", says Jaksic. According to him, local authorities should investigate whether solid waste dumps might serve as a solution of the medicinal waste problem in the country. Until the time competent authorities decide what to do with the poisonous substances endangering the lives of B&H citizens, the "encapsulated" medicaments are to, so it seems, endure yet another infernal summer with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees centigrade...

Since not a single location suitable for depositing medicinal waste is to be found in B&H, for a time, the idea of storing them in an abandoned coalmine shaft, isolated from any underground water-springs which could spread the poisons around, circulated within RS. But, nothing came out of it.

Up to the present, 4 tons of lysol, a disinfectant banned by the World Health Organization, have been sent from RS (more precisely, from the Banja Luka Clinical Center) to Germany to be destroyed there. Furthermore, a humanitarian-aid consignment in the form of 50-percent lysol was sent from FR Yugoslavia to RS during the war. Incidentally, at the moment, Yugoslavia is the sole country in the world in possession of 100 tons of the prohibited toxic substance.

As if all this was not enough, a couple of days ago the public was alarmed by yet another scandalous discovery. In Karakaj near Zvornik, in the backyard of one Dusan Mitrovic, the police discovered 700 barrels of toxic waste containing 140 tons of a highly inflammable mixture of toluol, xyluol and mineral oil. The said waste is a dilutant classified as a tertiary poison, a by-product of the cleaning-up process in the industry of paints and varnishes, suitable solely for recycling purposes. All Mr. Mitrovic had to say was that he had rented his backyard as a storage site, completely ignorant of what his clients intended to discard there. Police sources claim the contents of some of the barrels have, in the meantime, even been spilled into the Drina and Hoca rivers... Allegations that a number of unsuspecting passers-by have ruined their footwear while treading the grounds soaked with the residues of the dilutant were also to be heard...

The relevant customs declarations indicate that a private firm from RS, Kurtuma Komerc, had imported 412 tons of the said toxic waste from the Industry of Paints and Varnishes in Belgrade, 140 tons of the consignment being stored in the backyard of a private home in Karakaj. An investigation carried out by the police showed that the said company did not posses the required permits for the import of toxic wastes, at the time issued by the RS Ministry of Health. Meaning no sanitary inspector has ever had a chance to take a look at the dubious consignments. To make the whole story even more intriguing, on none of the customs declarations accompanying the murderous shipments transported into RS, has the final destination of the poisonous cargo ever been properly designated. Most interestingly of all, the entire consignment managed to somehow vanish into thin air, minutes before the RS sanitary authorities intervened...

Cited examples should be regarded as the final warning to the citizens of B&H regarding the environmental catastrophe confronting them. What the response of the authorities will be remains to be seen.

SANELA ZIVKOVIC

(AIM)