The Dangers of Open Burning - A Cry for Help to the Rotary Club of Montego Bay

After raising my concerns about the amount of open burning in my community, I was invited to speak at the October 18 Zoom meeting of the Montego Bay Rotary Club, whose president and members are focussing on community and environment. 

     This is what I shared with them: 

     Good afternoon Rotarians. Thank you so much for inviting me to speak at your meeting. I hope you can help us with our problem – smoke coming in our house, smoke from burning household and garden waste in people’s yards, in schools and on the roadside after bushing. I’m going to run through some photos of the smoke, which at times seems like all day and all night all the time. The problem as I see it is that people think there’s nothing wrong with open burning. It’s a common cultural practice. Children are taught to rake up the trash and burn it. Some people can’t even smell the smoke. Sometimes people stand over a fire, breathing in the smoke. 

     Is there anything wrong with it? Yes. At one time people thought that smoking tobacco was harmless. When I first started teaching in 1965, you could hardly see across the staff room for the smoke. Then studies showed that it caused bronchitis and lung cancer. Tobacco companies put a lot of money into denying these claims, but long-term scientific studies showed the link. Now tobacco smoking is banned in most public places. People who smoke, and people who breathe side stream smoke know the risks they are taking. 

      WHAT ARE THE POLLUTANTS AND WHERE ARE THEY PRODUCED?    Is it that most people aren’t aware of the dangers of inhaling smoke from open burning? Many studies have shown that smoke from garden waste has same and worse chemicals in it than tobacco, and smoke from the burning of garbage, especially plastic, has horrible chemicals in it. Depending on what is burned, smoke contains soot and other particulate matter, that falls to the ground and gets washed into rivers where our drinking water comes from, and into the sea where it enters the food chain. Smoke also contains carbon monoxide, methane, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as benzene, semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs) including poly-cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), carbonyls, lead, mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDDs/Fs). Many of these substances are known carcinogens. 

     WHAT ARE THE HEALTH IMPACTS OF OPEN BURNING? Increased infant mortality, low birth weight of babies, onset of childhood asthma, coughs, wheezing, chest tightness, shortness of breath, burning in eyes nose and throat, dizziness, weakness, confusion, nausea, disorientation, exposure to known carcinogens. While the seriousness of these depends on how close people are to fires, how long fires persist and the number of fires people are exposed to open burning increases risk of death among the general population, particularly the elderly, children, and those with preexisting respiratory and cardiac illnesses. When the dump is burning, these impacts are more noticeable, but people don’t apply these impacts to their own habits. 

     WHAT HAVE WE DONE ABOUT IT? My daughter has taken our concerns to Mr. Heroy Clarke, MP; Mr. Richard Vernon, Deputy Mayor of the Montego Bay Municipal Corporation; Ms. Sherika Lewis at the Ministry of Health; and Mr. McKenzie of the Fire Service, none of whom seems to be able to do anything about it. She has emailed them about every 3 months for 3 years and also spoken to them on the phone. 

     I’ve written emails to Ministry of Health, PAHO, President of the Medical Doctor’s Association, The Heart Foundation of Jamaica, and Dr. Michelle Charles but haven’t received any response. I probably need to follow up with a phone call as most likely the emails go into junk. 

     I wrote a blog post "The dangers of smoke and smoking." 

That was 9 years ago. Nothing has changed. If anything it’s got worse.

     WHAT WOULD WE LIKE TO BE DONE ABOUT IT. 

     A public education campaign alerting people to the dangers, in the same way as people are warned that tobacco smoking is bad for their health. People would be very quick to condemn someone who pollutes their water supply, but put up with having their air polluted; (or like us, don’t know what to do about it ). 

     People need to be educated about the alternatives. 

For garden waste: 

Composting, it’s not difficult. Kitchen waste can also be composted. Shredding of tough wood. We import shredded wood. Someone could have a viable business if they had a shredder they rented out or even go to people’s yards to shred. 

For other garbage: 

Recycling of plastic bottles. Put a cess on the bottles of at least $20, returnable when the bottle is returned. 

Improved garbage collection, (the present situation is a national disgrace) - put pressure on NSWMA to improve. Government must make more money available for garbage collection. (But if there was more composting and recycling, there’d be less garbage to collect.) 

Pass laws making open burning an offence. At present, prosecuting somebody for open burning will only happen when an individual reports someone to the relevant authority – who would want to do that in Jamaica today?

 

P.S. There was an interesting discussion afterwards which gave me some more ideas, including that we should visit schools to impart the anti-burning message.