Dialogue: Circumstances alter cases under a blood-red moon

Environmental scaremongers should be having second thoughts about their priorities after the September 11 terror attacks and the Sydney bushfires, writes OWEN McSHANE.

Many New Zealanders look forward to spending a few summer evenings sitting around a driftwood fire on the beach singing, chatting and enjoying freshly caught mussels and fish. Our masters in Wellington will have none of it.

A cute little package called The Environment Basket of Knowledge and published by the Ministry for the Environment warns us that when driftwood is burned on a beach bonfire, sea salt in the wood turns into dioxins that are toxic to humans and animals.

Therefore, they direct, we should take portable barbecues and our own fuel to the beach.

Of course, burning barbecue fuels contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, so even this will no doubt be condemned if we sign up to the Kyoto Protocol. I suppose we can always rip a few branches off a nearby pohutukawa.

These helpful hints from the ministry came to mind as I watched the blood-red moon rise over the haze-shrouded hills around the Kaipara Harbour.

These spectacular sunsets and moonrises were caused by the Sydney bushfire smoke which had been blown across the Tasman and blanketed New Zealand in a mix of chemical gases and particles produced by these conflagrations.

No one died from the fires. But if the ministry and similar organisations are to be believed, thousands of Australians and New Zealanders must soon suffer from all manner of diseases, cancers, birth defects and untimely deaths.

Dioxins, which are evidently so dangerous that we should not sit around driftwood fires on the beach, are produced by any normal combustion of organic matter.

So while dioxins are produced as a byproduct of many industrial processes, scientists all acknowledge that forest fires, compost heaps, peat beds and landfill fires make a major contribution to global dioxin levels - more than the paper mills and medical incinerators which Greenpeace and other alarmist environmentalists love to target.

Volcanoes are also high on the list. But Government reports on the health effects of dioxins are remarkably coy about these natural contributions to planetary dioxin.

The ministry's inventory of dioxin sources in New Zealand does not even mention volcanoes. It's those beach bonfires that count.

The Australians simply could not avoid the bushfire issue. Their Environment Ministry reports that bush and grass fires contribute some 75 per cent of all dioxin released into the Australian environment, which included us this summer.

Cars contribute less than 1 per cent. Total manmade emissions account for less than 5 per cent of dioxins in Australia.

Even these high bushfire contributions depend on low estimates of dioxin produced per tonne of biomass - about 1 part a billion.

But whatever numbers you plug into the equations, the haze that blanketed New Zealand contributed more to the ambient levels of dioxin than beach bonfires lit from one end of the country to the other.

Curiously, none of the reporting on these huge and catastrophic bushfires has mentioned the dioxin threat to public health, or even to the health of the firefighters.

A few hours after the World Trade Center fell, the American media were reporting that the north tower had contained 40 floors of asbestos, all of which was now swirling around downtown Manhattan.

City health officials, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency rushed to conduct air-quality tests.

Americans waited for the dreadful news. Remarkably these agencies all announced that it was perfectly safe to go downtown. I hope Manukau City residents living on the old asbestos tip have heard the good news.

For decades, government bureaucrats everywhere have adopted zero-tolerance policies toward any carcinogenic substances, whether they be pesticides, dioxins or asbestos.

But the events of September 11 forced the Environmental Protection Agency to change its mind. Faced with a public health scare, it finally decided to come clean about asbestos. Circumstances truly alter cases.

The anthrax attacks which followed the World Trade Center disaster made any piece of mail a potential threat to life. I e-mailed the United States Postal Service asking why it did not simply irradiate all suspicious mail. Machines which sterilise food using gamma radiation have been developed to enhance food safety and would, similarly, kill off any anthrax spores in letters.

It soon became clear that American officialdom had bowed to the safe-food fanatics and had effectively rejected this potent technology. They also feared a panic response from the postal unions. But reality prevailed and it was soon announced that federal Government mail, and White House mail in particular, was being irradiated by newly commissioned machines.

Before these sensible precautions, only 10 per cent of Americans accepted that irradiation of food was safe. Now that the President's mail is irradiated, about 65 per cent accept the technology is good for food, too. Circumstances alter cases.

I hope we follow the American example. Food-borne disease in New Zealand is at an unprecedented level, and rising.

In 1998 there were 11,503 cases of campylobacter and 2069 of salmonella; a year earlier, there were 8848 campylobacter and 1169 salmonella cases. These food-borne illnesses can be serious and in rare cases cause death.

Some foods, such as spices and uncooked chicken, carry a high risk of bacterial contamination. Spices are treated with ethylene oxide gas to rid them of potentially harmful bacteria. But it is not always effective and leaves residues.

New Zealand guards against the importing of exotic insect pests by requiring a post-harvest disinfestation of some fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, cereals and grains. Methyl bromide is the most widely used quarantine treatment.

Sue Kedgley, of the Green Party, prefers methyl bromide to irradiation, although many countries have undertaken to phase out its use by 2005 because it depletes ozone. Green priorities are hard to fathom.

The asbestos scare, the anti-irradiation campaign and the dioxin panics have frustrated scientists and epidemiologists. They point out that untold sums of public money have gone toward eradicating nonexistent health problems, using precious money which could have treated and prevented real diseases and risks.

Every moment we waste scaring our children about hypothetical risks, such as those posed by trace exposure to asbestos, is a moment we could be focusing on real health risks, such as smoking, not wearing seat-belts or not using cycle helmets.

September 11 put things in perspective. In the face of international bio-terrorism, plane hijackings and falling skyscrapers, wondering whether we might get cancer from a beach bonfire seems a particularly silly question.

Where did this piece of environmental stupidity come from? It turns out that a Canadian working party on dioxins suggested that the Canadians stop using high salt content hogwood in the furnaces which drive their timber mills and drying plants. This makes some sense since 80 per cent of logs in Canada are transported by sea and hence soak up quite a bit of salt. The more salt in the wood, the more dioxin is produced during combustion.

But it takes a remarkable frame of mind to convert this Canadian conjecture into a Government policy against driftwood bonfires on our beaches.

Did any of the Ministry for the Environment scaremongers have second thoughts about their priorities when they watched this summer's spectacular sunsets and blood-red moons?

* Owen McShane, of Kaiwaka, is a research consultant and public policy analyst.