Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!watmsg!sccowan
From: sccowan@watmsg.waterloo.edu (S. Crispin Cowan)
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: Re: Attikamek-Montagnais Protest PCB Plan
Message-ID: <28880@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Date: 5 Sep 89 13:22:01 GMT
References: <2324@yunccn.UUCP> <620791816.24086@telly.on.ca>
Sender: daemon@watmath.waterloo.edu
Reply-To: sccowan@watmsg.waterloo.edu (S. Crispin Cowan)
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Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
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In article <620791816.24086@telly.on.ca> evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
>Maybe this is overly simplistic, but why isn't the company which used the
>PCBs soley responsible for their disposal? Perhaps if the companies
>which use hazardous materials had to factor in the cost of using (and
>disposing) such materials without leaning on the public purse, perhaps
>hazardous materials would just become too expensive to use.

Because PCBs have been used as electrical transformer coolant for 30
years, and only relatively reci8ently have they been discovered to be
dangerous.  Used to be that they would spray the surplus stuff on dirt
roads to keep the dust down.  No one produces any of the stuff at all
any more (to my knowledge); precisely because it's so dangerous and
expensive to get rid of, and we have other stuff now that does the
same job.  But in the mean time, an awful lot of large electrical
transformers were built in the last 30 years (just think about the
expansion in the electrical grid since, say, 1960).

In most other respects, I agree with you; I don't see anything
particularly wrong with storing PCBs in tis particular region.  It has
to be stored somewhere.  On the other hand, I don't think the Welsh
get off so quite so easily.  They have a disposal plant, and they
accept large sums of money to dispose of other people's waste, that's
why it was being shipped there.  For some bizzaro reason, this
particular shipment seemed to get a whole lot of public attention, and
the locals and dock workers started preventing the disposal plant from
carrying on international business.

>-- 
>  Evan Leibovitch, SA, Telly Online, located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario
>evan@telly.on.ca / uunet!attcan!telly!evan / Director & editor, /usr/group/cdn
>   If you'll be my Dixie chicken, I'll be your Tennesee lamb - Little Feat
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