By Adriana Thomasa |
Quintero-Puchancaví (Chile) (EFE) ”, which this week once again intoxicated a hundred people, forced the closure of schools and the cessation of activity.
An umpteenth “pollution peak” that launched the “sanitary alert” protocol in this Pacific bay where for decades some twenty highly polluting thermoelectric, oil and chemical plants have been concentrated, and which is considered the “ zero zone” of industrial pollution in Latin America.
On Tuesday, about a hundred students had to be treated with headaches and vomiting. The night before, the Valparaíso Regional Ministerial Health Secretariat had already issued an environmental alert for excessive concentration of non-metallic hydrocarbons suspended in the air in the towns of Concón, Quintero and Puchancaví.
“It is a sustained and systematic situation that comes from many years, but particularly detected last year. And interestingly, cases tended to be strongest or most frequent in July, at the onset of winter. But this year it started in March, when the school year started,” Guillermo Trejo, director of one of the affected schools, told EFE.
“It is difficult to determine if it corresponds to a higher index of polluting agent. Or to a greater awareness regarding the fact or to the capacity that we now have to measure by the devices delivered by the Government ”, he adds.
Social look at the “Chilean Chernobyl”
For Trejo, a large part of the problem comes from the fact that “discomfort has become part of daily life and that makes it difficult to have concrete and hard data on the level of impact that we are having at the community level.”
He believes that the “Government has taken important steps in measurement processes”, but that they need to “measure as much as legislate”.
“The bay also represents an important source of economy, not only for the town, the region and the country. Therefore, the measures that are being taken also have to do with the economic perspective. But for the first time we have seen that a trend is being set towards a social look at what is happening with our children, with our families, ”he underlines.
He reflects that “it is complex to be able to establish a balance and legislate against what” is contaminating them. “Between the social view of what is happening and the industrial view and the development of the economic focus”, he explains.
Months ago, Chilean President Gabriel Boric once again criticized the so-called industrial “sacrifice zones” existing in Chile, led by Quintero-Puchancaví, and insisted on his willingness to fight something that he said embarrassed him.
Some steps have been taken, such as the definitive closure on May 31 of the Ventanas Smelter, owned by the state-owned Codelco, the world’s largest copper company, responsible for previous episodes of contamination.
eventually they will die
For Jorge Cerda, vice president of the Chile NGO childhood network, this social perspective should include the “violation of the right” of children living in these areas to grow up and educate themselves in an environment free of contamination.
“This in the future can bring a serious injury. Including death. And no one tells people that. (They say) this is going to happen because they are already used to living here, in that contamination. But in the long run, they are going to die. And who is going to be responsible? The municipality, the State or the companies? They always silence people with money, ”she denounces.
The children of José, a resident of Quintero, are one of the many examples of chronic respiratory diseases reported by the aforementioned NGO.
Both adolescents are asthmatic, and in the case of the daughter, she had to spend two months hospitalized at risk of life in the distant Viña del Mar. The son has already been detected with a strong deterioration in one of the lungs.
“If it is not treated on time, you will end up using an oxygen tube,” he laments before putting on the table another of the great deficiencies of this worker “sacrifice zone” given to the industry: the lack of hospitals and medical specialists in respiratory diseases.
Patricio Vergara, another of the residents, also believes that, despite the promises, little progress has been made, and that polluting episodes will continue to be repeated.
Although measurements are made “it is difficult to know who it was, we cannot blame anyone. It is something that we experience daily, in silence, and what we want is a solution”, she concludes.