Eight weeks after a chemical spill closed beaches in Durban, test results from a laboratory in the United Kingdom have confirmed many people\u2019s worst fears: the Ohlanga river, Umhlanga lagoon and the surrounding wetland have been contaminated with highly toxic chemicals including arsenic, atrazine and bromoxynil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The chemical spill is the result of a fire that broke out on the night of 12 July, when the UPL warehouse in Cornubia was targeted as part of the widespread unrest in KwaZulu-Natal. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The warehouse contained millions of litres of herbicides, insecticides and fungicides, including carcinogens and agricultural products that are classified \u201cvery toxic\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n The fire and firefighting efforts resulted in a soup of toxic chemicals flowing from the warehouse into the Ohlanga river, passed the informal settlement of Blackburn village which flanks the river, and from there to the sea, leaving a horrific wave of dead fish and crustaceans in its wake. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Within days, the Ohlanga river and the Umhlanga lagoon turned an unnatural bright blue, likely the result of 15 000kg of blue dye stored in the UPL warehouse, although the company has refused to make public a full inventory. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n On Wednesday, provincial authorities provided amaBhungane with the results of the initial tests taken in the days and weeks after the fire. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n The belated chemical analysis reached South Africa on 20 August, more than a month after the first tests were collected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And while beaches were initially closed as a precaution, the results prompted the eThekwini municipality to issue an urgent public alert, warning that 40km of beaches from Umgeni estuary to Salt Rock would remain closed until the contamination had cleared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The results, produced by Element Material Technology, confirm soil along the river contained \u201cextremely high concentrations\u201d of dangerous pesticides and also arsenic concentrations that raise \u201chuman health and environmental health concerns\u201d \u2013 according to UPL\u2019s own toxicologist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other chemicals found in relatively high concentrations, like the herbicide bromoxynil, may present a \u201cpossible risk of harm to the unborn child\u201d \u2013 according to its official toxicological classification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The results, which can be downloaded from amaBhungane\u2019s website (via the Evidence docket<\/em>), provide the first hard evidence of which chemicals escaped from the UPL warehouse. Until now it has remained largely uncertain what danger residents around the waterways have been exposed to, especially Blackburn village which flanks the river.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Are the beaches safe?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n At first blush the results from Element paint a surprisingly rosy picture of the damage done to Durban\u2019s beaches by the catastrophic chemical fire and resulting spillage \u2013 even quite soon after the disaster. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n But letters disclosed with the results show that UPL\u2019s own experts made starkly opposing interpretations of the data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A review of the results by Dr. Gerhard Verdoorn, the expert toxicologist contracted by UPL, made light of the low concentrations of UPL pesticides found in the affected beach sand and sea water when samples were collected at the end of July. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, the deadly and widely banned atrazine was perceptible but allegedly so thinly spread that you would need \u201coral ingestion of an impossible quantity of 16 kg beach sand per day to reach the ADI [allowable daily intake]\u201d he wrote in a 24 August letter to UPL. The concentration found in sea water would require you to drink \u201c667 litres of sea water per day to reach the ADI\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [sidebarContentSingleImage target=modal url=https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Beach-closed-2.jpeg]Ethekwini Municipality has closed roughly 40km of beaches in Durban in reaction to the spill. There is fierce debate, even amongst UPL\u2019s experts, about whether it was safe to open to beaches. Supplied by: Nicole Bollman, ward councillor for Umhlanga and Blackburn Village [\/sidebarContentSingleImage]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately Verdoorn\u2019s sanguine interpretation of the seaside results was contradicted the next day by another expert consultancy working for UPL, Apex Environmental. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n After reading Verdoorn\u2019s report, Apex wrote to UPL on 25 August arguing that the timing of the samples made the results for the beaches and sea water highly misleading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In reality the beaches would soon be anything but safe, it argued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The estuary opens and closes, depending on river flow and tides, and may stop flowing into the sea for several weeks at a time. The samples were taken at the end of July when the mouth was closed. As a result the toxic soup was accumulating inside while the chemicals on the beach and in the sea water were being diluted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe estuary mouth had been closed for approximately one week prior to sampling,<\/p>\n\n\n\n and the results therefore do not represent the concentrations of chemicals during or directly after an estuary mouth opening event,\u201d reads the Apex letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe estuary water and sediment itself continues to be regarded as highly toxic\u2026These results offer the specialist teams little confidence that the intertidal zones [the part of the beach exposed during low tide] outside of the buffer zone would be safe should the mouth re-open again (and which is predicted to occur this week).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It appears that Verdoorn was overruled because on the 26 August, the eThekwini municipality issued its urgent public alert announcing that the beaches would stay closed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Apex seemingly also criticised Verdoorn\u2019s opinion that the chemicals that reached the beach had undergone \u201cdissipation to a point of no concern for human exposure at the date of sampling\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe chemical cocktail in the estuary is complex and may extend to (pose a risk of) additive and synergistic human health effects\u2026Public health concerns must extend to the old, infirm, young, and immune compromised, who may react unpredictably to even small concentrations of chemicals,\u201d reads its letter to UPL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To Verdoorn\u2019s credit, he did point out the dangerous toxic build-up upstream from the beaches, but he did not expressly link it to a potential later contamination and risk downstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is that arsenic safe?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n One aspect that Verdoorn\u2019s report dwells on is the very noticeable presence of arsenic, not only upstream but also in the otherwise \u201csafe\u201d beach sand and sea water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The high levels of arsenic likely originate from the 30 000 litres of monosodium methylarsonate (MSMA) that UPL was storing in its warehouse. MSMA is a common herbicide used on cotton but is banned in the US because of it is considered carcinogenic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He produced a more detailed analysis of the arsenic levels at the seashore for UPL which he \u201creverse calculated\u201d to instead find a level of MSMA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe MSMA at the date of sampling posed no acute risk to people and most probably no chronic risk to people either (my personal opinion),\u201d he summarised in his letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The assumption is however that the MSMA, an organic form of arsenic, will not break up to form elemental arsenic which is highly dangerous both for acute and chronic exposure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cElemental arsenic is acutely highly toxic to human beings with a median LD50 of 13 mg\/kg compared the MSMA acute oral LD50 of 900 mg\/kg\u201d he noted. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n LD50 is the \u201clethal dose\u201d at which half of a group of exposed organisms will die from exposure. It is generally measured in milligrams of toxin per kilogram of body mass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, both rats and people can survive higher doses of MSMA. The trouble comes if and when MSMA breaks down into a more deadly form of arsenic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Verdoorn: \u201cThe conditions during the fire and in the environment into which MSMA was deposited are not conducive to total reduction of MSMA to elemental arsenic. The significant difference in sediment and sea water concentration of the MSMA indicates very strongly that MSMA is still intact and has not reduced to elemental arsenic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Upstream the picture was more worrying: while the highest readings of MSMA found on the beach were around 20mg\/kg of sample material, soil taken upstream had readings as high as 443mg\/kg. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is still of human health and environmental health concerns,\u201d Verdoorn noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bear in mind that this was the picture two weeks after the fire occurred. Earlier test results from samples taken just days after the fire broke out, showed exceedingly high levels of arsenic:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whereas the acceptable arsenic level for water used for recreational purposes is between 0.002 and 0.12 parts per million (ppm), according to the report, water samples collected downstream from the torched warehouse found over 500 ppm. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n A similar picture was reflected in soil samples taken on the same day. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n South Africa limits arsenic to 5.8 mg\/kg in soil, substantially more than 0.0015 ppm (or mg\/kg) allowed by the US Environmental Protection Agency. A soil sample taken roughly 700 meters from the warehouse in the days following the fire found concentrations of arsenic at 320 ppm (or mg\/kg).<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cExtremely high concentrations\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n Verdoorn\u2019s letter highlighted 13 other chemicals of concern detected up-stream from the beach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSince there is only one comprehensive set of analytical data available at present, I cannot make any assumptions about the reduction in the pesticide \u2018load\u2019 in the sediments and water of the other sample site, suffice to say that as expected some substances reflect in low to extremely high concentrations in the sediments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among the dangerous chemicals found in very high concentrations upstream was atrazine, the herbicide that is banned in 31 countries because it \u201cmay cause damage to organs through prolonged or repeated exposure\u201d. The UPL warehouse contained roughly 150 000 litres of atrazine-based products and another 30 tonnes in dry form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n