Tanzania Begins to Deal With Toxic Wastelands

Environmentalists in this poor East African nation are spearheading a drive to rid the country of huge stockpiles of agricultural pesticides and veterinary drugs.

The products include such compounds as DDT, and they pose a threat to the environment and to the public’s health. Some stocks are more than 30 years old, and are stored with few or no safety precautions.

Stocks are constantly increasing because there is no environmentally sound way to dispose of them. Environmental and health experts warn that unless quick action is taken, the situation could be catastrophic.

“My biggest worry is that if we don’t take action sooner, then we are going to leave room for the problem to expand,” said Bonaventure Thobias Baya, head of the Directorate of Pollution Prevention and Control at the National Environment Management Council, or NEMC, an environmental advisory agency.

The push to dispose of these pollutants comes at a time when pressure is mounting to phase out DDT worldwide, as the United States did decades ago, and to restrict the use of other compounds.

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, there are several hundred thousand tons of banned, decomposing or unwanted pesticides all over the globe, with more than 100,000 tons in developing countries. About 20,000 tons are in Africa.

Environmentalists estimate that Tanzania has more than 500 tons of agricultural compounds dumped or stored at more than 100 sites. Most of the material was imported more than a decade ago, and the vast majority was donated by countries including China, Japan, Italy and the U.S.

“In the mid-1970s to 1980s, we had a powerful need to improve agricultural production,” said Magnus Ngoile, director general of the NEMC. “That drive went hand in hand with friendly donors wanting to help us. The impact of these pesticides was not known then.”

“The policy at the time was chemicals, chemicals, chemicals,” said Paul Siegel, Tanzania’s representative for the World Wildlife Fund, or WWF, a conservation organization. “Most of the donations were probably made in good faith. I think it reflects the nature of the human spirit rather than the malicious intent of foreign aid.”

The stocks, owned by Tanzania’s Ministry of Agriculture, accumulated and then expired because they had been banned, were no longer needed, were stored inadequately or simply because there was too much.

Today, much is stockpiled in tattered sacks or in leaking and corroding metal drums near settlements. Some of the stores are located near rivers, irrigation schemes or ports; others are stashed outdoors in mountainous piles. Worn or missing labels make it impossible to determine the exact content of some containers.

While the extent of the contamination in Tanzania is unknown, environmentalists say that over the last three decades, pesticides have seeped into the soil, ground water and irrigation projects. Toxins are already known to have passed through the food chain. Animals feed on the vegetation; humans feed on the animals. Both ingest bad air in the vicinity of pesticide storage sites.

“One nightmare scenario would be some cataclysmic meteorological event that would wash [or] disperse large quantities of DDT or another persistent pesticide into the environment, where the effects could last for many, many years,” said Richard Liroff, Washington-based director of the WWF’s Alternatives to DDT Project.

While there are no concrete statistics about the number of illnesses or deaths directly relating to the presence of these pollutants in Tanzania, environmentalists believe that cancer and skin and respiratory diseases could be linked to long-term exposure to or consumption of organic pollutants.

At Vikuge Pasture Seed Farm, about 35 miles from Dar es Salaam, the capital, a shed was built in 1996 to store 40 tons of DDT that had been piled up in a clearing for more than 10 years. Outside, a putrid odor still tingles the nostrils and throat. Vegetation no longer grows on the spot where the bags once lay. Because the bags were rained on over the years, environmentalists suspect that much of the product penetrated the soil, ultimately washing into nearby streams and wells. Some of it could also have been tampered with or stolen by local villagers. There is little ventilation in the warehouse, and it is likely the pesticide is still lethal.

“I don’t think it has lost its potency,” said Baya, the pollution expert.

There are equal fears about scores of metal drums stored in the vicinity of a warehouse in the center of Dar es Salaam. The corroding containers are filled with a cocktail of unknown chemicals and are exposed to rain and direct sunlight. The soaring temperatures in this port city may increase pressure inside the drums.

“This could be a time bomb,” Baya said. “You don’t know what kinds of changes have taken place inside [the containers].”

In the same area, heaps of unlabeled sacks, packages, syringes and plastic bottles--some still containing liquids--withstand the scorching sun.

NEMC officials want all of Tanzania’s agricultural waste to be repackaged and shipped to designated incineration facilities in Western Europe.

However, one Western diplomat in Tanzania who is familiar with environmental issues said that the Agriculture Ministry is reluctant to write off the stocks, and that there is speculation that they are still being sold.

Environmentalists say there is evidence that obsolete pesticides are being bought by small-scale farmers, who often are illiterate and ignorant of expiration dates.

Ngoile and his team estimate that $5 million would be sufficient to begin cleaning up the pollutants in preparation for transportation. But more money would be needed for packaging the products properly for shipping. Technical assistance and better management practices are essential for dealing with more such problems in the future.

“We are very conscious that solving the problem just by cleanup is not enough,” Ngoile said. “We have to review our laws and make sure this doesn’t happen again.”