Tuesday, February 26, 2008

SEPA of China Blacklists 141 Serious Pollutants

by Richard York

The State Environmental Protection Administration or SEPA, the Chinese environmental agency on Tuesday came down harsh on as many as 141 pollutants and blacklisted them due to their serious danger to the environment and serious pollution these pollutants were causing. Deputy Director of the State Environmental Protection Administration, Pan Yue told that the blacklisted items were the products which were connected to the everyday life of people and the blacklisted products included nickel-cadmium cell, mirex, warfarin, and also DDT. The SEPA also recommended taking back the tax refunds offered to 39 of the blacklisted items when they were exported and it also recommended to ban the product’s processing trade.

As per the deputy director of SEPA the polluting products were chosen for blacklisting based on the opinions of the experts and the concerned trade unions. Pan also said that the administration has plans in future to blacklist more items that are highly polluting. The Deputy Director further added that the administration would soon be having a data bank of the blacklisted products and would give public reports of the highly polluting products. He added further that the items thus blacklisted provided a big environmental threat. The chrome sour calcium found in the residue of chrome which is a leftover ingredient in the production of heavy chrome sour sodium posed a even greater threat to the environment since it is not only a serious carcinogen but is also hard to dispose off.

China at present has chrome residue as much as four million tons which it has yet to dispose off. What is even more staggering is that in China the chrome residue of as much as 500,000 tons is being produced annually which will require huge efforts to dispose off. Pan Yue opined that the production of the chrome residue needs to be harshly restricted and also tax refunds to such products should be banned in order to ensure that no more such pollutants are produced. Experts are of the opinion that the expenditure required to fight the pollution created by such blacklisted pollutants accounts to 10% to 30% of the expenditure which goes in their production. The pollution created by some pollutants is quite difficult to deal with and bring it under control. The Deputy Director of SEPA further added that the blacklisting done by the administration will enhance the green trading method which is completely in accordance with the rules of the WTO or the World Trade Organization.

Many of the legal documents that fall within the system of WTO say that every country has the prerogative to implement the needed steps to prevent international trade in the face of protecting life as well as the well being of people, animals and also the vegetation. For China the importance of controlling the production and trading of high polluting items is great. In order to prevent the export of items which were high pollutants the State Council, and the Cabinet want the SEPA to list the highly-polluting items and come up with some controlling measures.

 

 

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