Phthalates and other industrial substances are present in Moravian rivers. Arnika asks: „Will Members of Parliament cancel monitoring of their sources?

The analysis of the samples from Moravian rivers only underlines the necessity of monitoring of the potential sources of releases of substances such as various additives and plasticizers used in plastics. „In light of these findings, the step being under preparation by the Integrated Pollution Register Act is not understandable. It proposes to cancel monitoring of releases of hazardous substances from various manufacturing plants, including plastics manufactures. However, the Register is, in practice, the only database from which the state administration could obtain information on substances released from such plants,“ said Arnika's chairman RNDr. Jindřich Petrlík, on today's press conference. Because of that, Arnika decided to appeal to Members of Parliament of the Czech Republic to not adopt the act in the proposed form, but, on the contrary, to support the amendment proposition submitted by their colleagues RNDr. Libor Ambrozek, Věra Jakubová, and MVDr. Přemysl Rabas. This proposition aims at maintaining available information from all polluters.

Saving of the right to information on toxic substances is required also by the petition Toxics Free Future II signed by over 16 thousand people, including a number of municipal and regional deputies. „Exactly the copies of the petition signature sheets are what we will hand over also to a representative of the South Moravian Region, and member of the Environmental Committee of the Czech Chamber of Deputies, Ing. arch. Václav Mencl, and we will ask him to support the right of people to information on toxic substance releases during voting in the Chamber next week,“ added Petrlík (2). If the government proposal of the act was accepted without changes, people in 21 municipalities in the South Moravian Region would lose a significant part of information on hazardous substances released by industrial companies into environment, or contained in their wastes. From the ten biggest environmental polluters with carcinogenic and potentially carcinogenic substances in 2005 in the South Moravian Region, six, including the biggest of them, namely the plant Tusculum, a.s. in Rousínov, will not be obliged to report the data into the Integrated Pollution Register (3).

For more information look at website https://arnika.org/soubory/dokumenty/toxicke-latky/IRZ/IRZ_CR_2007zebricek.pdf

Notes:

(1) The study drawn up by Jakub Sochůrek, Jana Hajšlová and Vladimír Kocourek from the Department of Food Chemistry and Analysis of the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague states, concerning the results of the analyses: „Especially PAHs (polyaromatic hydrocarbons), technical additives and plasticizers - phthalates, phosphates, di-iso-propylnaphthalene (DiPN) - were detected here. Presence of pesticides, medical drugs, and PCBs in the extracts from the passive samplers was very low, and they were present in low levels. Discovery of seldom monitored substances from industry and households is interesting, for example of N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP), N butylbenzenesulfonamide (NBBS), and N,N,N´,N´-tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED).

The tables below summarise the main results of analyses of the samples from four localities of Moravian rivers:

Table No. 1. Selected environmental contaminants in the given localities of sampling for ChemCatcher Polar and Non-polar. For the individual substances, relative responses are stated (range 1 - 2000; n.d. means that the given analyte was not detected). Data are stated in ng/sampler.

(2) Today, the Arnika Association is handing over copies of the petition signature sheets in the Region of Ústí nad Labem (to the Member of Parliament Vladimír Šoltys) and in the Vysočina Region (to the Member of Parliament František Bublan). In the next days, it will hand them over also to Members of Parliament in other Regions of the Czech Republic. For more information concerning the issue of curtailing of the Integrated Pollution Register please see https://arnika.org/soubory/dokumenty/toxicke-latky/IRZ/IRZ_CR_2007zebricek.pdf.

(3) Loss of data from the Integrated Pollution Register for the South Moravian Region after intervention of the new act is best demonstrated by the following tables:

Table No. 2: Top ten plants in the South Moravian Region according to the amount of substances or their compounds classified by IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) as carcinogenic (1), probably (2A) and possibly (2B) carcinogenic to humans, contained in the total releases to air, water and soil according to the data published in the Integrated Pollution Register concerning the year 2005 (https://www.irz.cz/), as we published on November 7, 2006.

Table No. 3: The same table after intervention of the new act. In the Region of South Moravia, there will disappear data on two thirds of plants producing substances classified by IARC as carcinogenic (1), probably (2A) and possibly (2B) carcinogenic to humans.