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> But Malaysia gave them a 12 month tax break, and was already cheaper than Australia, so environmental laws don't appear to be the main motivator I don't beli
by sc68cal 14y ago
> But Malaysia gave them a 12 month tax break, and was already cheaper than Australia, so environmental laws don't appear to be the main motivator
I don't believe that the government offering tax breaks to entice a company to relocate their plant implies that. In addition, environmental laws in developing countries are lax, if not non-existent.
Furthermore, if Australia is blocking the shipment of these waste products into the country, surely that implies that this is a serious environmental problem. Australia is willing to lose business over the matter, because they feel there are hidden costs (environmental, health, safety) that are not easily quantified directly.
From the article:
Shipping ore thousands of miles is extremely expensive. But the company says the cheaper labor, electricity, and chemicals in Malaysia make it worthwhile. Malaysians who oppose the plant see a much more troubling dynamic. "Australia is a first-world country that wants the developing world to do its dirty work," says Fuziah Salleh, Kuantan's parliamentary representative and an outspoken critic of the Lynas project. "Our environmental laws are very lax, and Lynas knows exactly where to take advantage of it. If you look at Australia, there are very strict laws about controlling the waste, dust, and air quality. But here in Malaysia—even if we have those laws—it is very hard to enforce."
>It is frustrating that all reporting about this is emotive or otherwise sub-optimal.
We're talking about materials that have half-lives on the order of billions of years and have caused miscarriages and childhood leukemia in residents, decades after a previous plant was closed.
- zokier 14y ago> We're talking about materials that have half-lives on the order of billions of years and have caused miscarriages and childhood leukemia in residents, decades after a previous plant was closed. I find it very hard to believe that materials that "have half-lives on the order of billions of years" produce enough radiation to be noticeable from the background radiation. That is exactly the kind of scaremongering that makes the reporting "emotive or otherwise sub-optimal".
- freshhawk 14y agoYour argument from incredulity is ignoring the mechanisms of health damage from the physical dispersal of materials with long half-lives. Don't complain about fact poor reporting by countering with your own.
- bitcartel 14y agoIt's not scaremongering when radioactive material finds it way into the human body through breathing and eating.
- jlgreco 14y agoOf course it is, if you use "radioactive" as a binary label without specifying the particular parameters.
- bitcartel 14y agoThe residents don't have the luxury of conducting scientific experiments, they are the experiment, and the results speak for themselves. Miscarriages, birth defects, leukemia, early deaths. Pretty binary to me.
- jlgreco 14y agoNot in the slightest. Those things could very likely be caused, at least in part, by toxicity not radioactivity. For example, deleted uranium has been seen to cause very similar issues, but nearly all of the issues associated with depleted uranium come from the fact that it is a heavy metal, not terribly unlike mercury. Issues caused by the radioactivity of the obviously lightly radioactive depleted uranium are minimal (if indeed present) when compared to the other issues. Those people do not have the luxury of conducting scientific experiments, but we still have the responsibility to accurately report what is going on. This is important because inaccurate reporting can cause an unjustified marginalization in the future, if it is later discovered that the radioactive effects of the pollutants were not to blame. For example, if you frame an argument against depleted uranium munitions as "this stuff is radioactive!", you are going to lose valuable support and sympathy when it becomes clear that the radioactivity in depleted uranium does not account for the wide range of symptoms that you originally attributed to it. "The food they are eating is radioactive" by itself, means next to nothing. It is true of all people. At least give us the radioactivity in estimated banana equivalent dosage.
- 14y ago
- adam-f 14y agoI completely agree. The word toxic is used almost interchangably with radioactive, but heavy metal poisoning isn't mentioned as a possible cause at all. Radiation is easy to detect and easier to vilify. But notice that no actual numbers we given in the article. The best they could get was "up to 88 times higher than those allowed under international guidelines." A statement so emotional and devoid of actual content. That said, I wish companies would try to properly dispose of their toxic (and/or radioactive) waste products and not give it to people to paint their houses with.