The World - News from Aug. 17, 1989

Liverpool dock owners and longshoremen refused to unload Canadian toxic waste from a Soviet freighter, but the British government insists there is no danger. “There is no reason whatsoever why on environmental grounds these cargoes should not be handled,” Environment Secretary Chris Patten said. The freighter Nadezhda Obukhova prepared to head back to Canada today with a cargo of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, loaded at Montreal. They had been destined for destruction by a high-temperature incinerator in south Wales. The Mersey Docks and Harbor Co., backing longshoremen, refused to handle the cargo after the Greenpeace environmental group succeeded in blocking another PCB cargo at Tilbury, a port in southern Britain.