Kuwait’s Burning Wells Likened to Chernobyl Disaster : Environment: ‘This is a situation that is unique in the history of the world,’ a U.N. official says of the 600 torches in the desert.

A senior U.N. environmental official Thursday compared Kuwait’s 600 burning oil wells to the Soviet nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, saying the scientific world is still unable to even measure the extent of the environmental catastrophe here.

“This is a situation that is unique in the history of the world,” said Michael D. Gwynne, head of global environment for the U.N. Environment Program. “ . . . The only comparable situation, I would say, is Chernobyl.

“When the Chernobyl reactor blew, it created a situation basically the world had never faced before,” Gwynne told a news conference. “We have an environmental situation here that is every bit as extensive and could have considerable impact on countries of the region. But like Chernobyl, we don’t have real data at the moment.”

Indeed, more than a month after thick, black smoke began billowing from hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells sabotaged by retreating Iraqi troops, scientists still don’t know the chemical composition of the smoke, the concentration of the pollutants or the size of the particulate matter.

“Everbody’s running around saying, ‘Isn’t this awful? Why doesn’t somebody do something?’ ” Gwynne said. “But we have no data that mean anything. . . . There is a complete lack of analysis.”

Over the next few months, he said, U.N. agencies, aided by the United States, Britain and France, intend to turn Kuwait into a giant laboratory to test plants, soil, water, animals and the air to monitor the steadily worsening pollution.

“We have to expect the worst in terms of environmental damage,” said Hassen Barudi, head of the World Health Organization’s regional environmental center.

Preliminary tests of air in Kuwait city show sharp increases--sometimes up to 1,000%--in sulfur dioxide levels over that of a year ago, said Ibrahim Hadi, director of environmental health in the Kuwait Ministry of Public Health.

Hadi and other officials ruled out civilian evacuations for now but cautioned sick or elderly people to stay indoors on particularly smoky days.

Kuwaiti oil officials say it may take two years or longer to extinguish all the fires, which are consuming 6 million barrels of oil per day. Firefighters have yet to begin battling the blazes, partially because of delays in getting equipment into the country.

In one case, it took a day for Saudi border officials to allow the passage of only six trucks in a 52-truck convoy of firefighting equipment, according to a senior Western diplomat. He said the convoy took a full week to clear, so most equipment now is being flown or shipped into Kuwait.

“The problem is Saudi Arabia,” the diplomat said. “You get protestations of good faith at the top, and nothing happens at the border. Most everybody is convinced it’s just inefficiency and ineptitude.”

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials have said that preliminary tests of the air indicated no immediate danger to U.S. troops serving in the region.

But officials here said no one yet knows if the eye-stinging smoke that sometimes turns day into night, or the “black rain” that stains concrete and collects in oily puddles, or the thick black grit that blocks the sun and lowers daily temperatures up to 10 degrees pose long-term health dangers to Kuwaiti residents.

“There’s an awful lot of speculation and not a lot of data to back it up,” Gwynne said.

Many wells are burning at such high temperatures, he said, that they likely are burning off the most toxic gases. In other areas, he said, one can smell noxious fumes.

So far, the smoke’s heavy particulate matter appears to collect at relatively low altitudes, reducing the likelihood of its spreading through the upper atmosphere and causing climatic changes outside the Persian Gulf region.

The number of people reporting breathing difficulties has risen, but most of those are chronic cases, not new ones, said Dr. Rashid Owish, Kuwait’s director of public health.

“We think that what we have now is not very dangerous,” he said. “What is going to happen later on, we don’t know.”

But the smoke is only part of the problem. Scores of damaged but unlit wells are spewing toxic fumes, including deadly hydrogen sulfide, and spreading pools of oil into the desert, threatening underground aquifers.

The onslaught of modern mechanized armies has caused countless changes to the fragile desert, although the extent of soil degradation is difficult to gauge. Tracks from tank battles of World War II are reportedly still visible in parts of the North African desert.

Millions of gallons of crude oil, initially released by Iraqi troops during the first weeks of the war, continue to foul the Persian Gulf.

And countless unexploded mines and abandoned ordnance litter the vast desert, already causing two to five civilian casualties a day and posing dangers for years to come. “There is a constantly increasing number of people and children who are being handicapped and will need constant attention,” said Dr. Daniel Tarantola, head of emergency relief for the World Health Organization.