Environmental Science & Engineering - www.esemag.com - November 2005
Comments? send them to the editor.

Wacky, scare and breakthrough – a costly media trio

by Tom Davey

Tom was a 'Rapporteur' at the International Association of Water Pollution Research meeting in the Sydney Opera House where this photo was taken in 1974. In an earlier visit he had worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as a reporter and editor.
Eons ago, on a second trip to Australia, I witnessed an astounding interview take place when a reporter confronted an eminent scientist. Ambush might be a better word. Some of the top environmental scientists on the Planet had gathered in the Sydney Opera House to present and debate their learned findings among their global peers. One scientist had noted that the water quality of Sydney Harbour had improved over the years. “So much so”, he quipped, “even the sharks have come back.”

Almost immediately after his presentation, a TV journalist confronted the eminent scientist with a 14-year-old schoolgirl in tow, neatly dressed in the usual attractive Australian school uniform. It emerged that she had written an essay on the environment, which had won a national award. Questioned by the reporter, the scientist reiterated he had not said the harbour water quality was perfect, just that it had improved as defined by scientific instruments and analyses. The girl, egged on by the reporter, said that fish did not live there anymore.

Like their athletes, many Australian reporters have world class impudence, generously laced with an aggressive attitude. This reporter retorted: “Come now Doctor, this girl has just won a prestigious award for her environmental essay. How can you say the water has improved?” The scientist, now clearly flustered, found it hard to explain the complexities of bioassays and analyses of toxins to an abrasive interviewer.

I watched astounded as this farce unfolded. It was absurd. An essay, written by a 14 year old - too young even to take her driving examination - was now being used as a weapon against a scientist who had written scores of peer-reviewed papers on the environmental sciences.

I was reminded of this incident when I read an article in The Guardian, a paper noted for its erudition and in-depth articles, as well as its gutsy coverage. It has spawned The Guardian Weekly which contains a selection of articles, culled from the daily Guardian, then transmitted electronically and printed in Montreal for Canadian distribution.

In a recent article, Ben Goldacre notes that science stories usually fall into three categories: wacky, scare and breakthrough articles. He noted that one university PR department in London, until recently, had never employed a single science graduate. This is not uncommon, he writes. Science is done by scientists, then press releases are written by non scientists who then run it by non scientist bosses, who then send it to journalists without a scientific education who find it difficult to convey complicated ideas to lay audiences. Finally it is edited by a whole team of people who don’t understand it. The Guardian, I believe, must be excluded from this litany of incompetence.

Flashback
When Toronto hosted an international conference on Global Warming over a decade ago I met Tim Radford of The Guardian who covered the conference. His articles have always been easy-to-read distillations of complex issues and devoid of hyperbole. I later met Tim at The Guardian headquarters in London. Tim has won at least three British national awards for his science writing; none of these awards, I’m sure, fell into the wacky, scare and breakthrough trio which were so humorously defined by his colleague.

But Canada has its own brand of wacky, scare and breakthrough stories on environmental issues which has been extremely costly to both taxpayers and the environment. Proposals to harness the thermal properties in waste solvents which were contaminated by a small percentage of PCBs were abandoned following media hysteria.

The temperatures required to make cement are approximately double that of normal incineration processes. Many rotary cement kilns are over 50 metres long, rotating at about three revolutions per minute so the wastes have a long residence time in the incineration process. Both residence times and the high temperatures of the cement kiln process ensure destruction of toxic waste while adding the economic values of free fuel. Federal Government studies found the residence times and temperatures in the studies were approximately double that necessary to safely dispose of PCBs and other liquid wastes.

But concerns about air pollution have tainted any incineration of wastes. Ironically it has resulted in Toronto using some 150 diesel trucks to travel, daily, to Detroit, Michigan, to dispose of Toronto’s garbage in landfill where it must be noted, the resultant methane emissions are oblivious to political boundaries. The long highway trips and idling time on visits to transfer stations must be added to this absurdity. One Ontario Minister of the Environment once stated: “Toronto must look after its own wastes.” It would take a satirist to have envisioned an expensive farce such as the Detroit fiasco.

Then too, incineration technology has evolved so that biosolids could be processed so that they would burn autogenously, investing the process with thermal properties which could be used to provide energy in the waste treatment process, again transforming a problem into an asset.

Both these methods were tested well over two decades ago, yet abandoned in the face of fierce opposition. The result. Cement manufacturers use imported coal to make cement while the sludge deposition on land arouses fierce opposition from the same groups who fought sludge incineration and the use of PCB contaminated solvents in the safe manufacture of cement. Municipal garbage, too, might be destroyed this way economically using kiln technology in an acceptable manner.

The decision to abdicate the dual benefits of PCB and biosolids incineration technology must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars with, ironically, negative impacts on the environment and government budgets which continue to this day.



See our home page on how to order your subscription. We regret we can only accept orders from Canada.