Dust Fear in Georgian Port Town

Residents of the Georgian port city of Poti say dust blown from shipments of aluminium oxide is damaging their health.



Port managers insist the mineral, which is also called alumina and is imported for transhipment to Armenia, is harmless but their assurances do not convince local people.



“When they are loading or unloading aluminium oxide in the port, you can’t even open the windows. We don’t allow the children out on the street,” said Nino Jibladze, a concerned local resident.



“There is dust everywhere. Our lungs and windpipes are sick. We can’t move away but to keep living here is like a death sentence.”



The argument has been simmering for years, and the aluminium oxide was at the centre of a major legal battle over the death of a dock worker in 2002. Medical analysis determined that Arsen Zarkua was killed by high concentrations of aluminium oxide in his lungs.



A court ordered the port to pay his family compensation equivalent to his salary for the next ten years, as well as making monthly payments to his young children.



The case was enough to convince Poti residents that the dust is a hazard. They link the dust to incidences of lung diseases that they say have increased in recent years, including tuberculosis.



Many of them are dependent on the port to make a living and decline to give their names to journalists when discussing the issue.



Some locals said they did not want the port to stop shipping aluminium oxide, which is one of its major earners, just be sympathetic to the local population.



“We are just asking that they do not ship it in open containers. They should transport it packed away, as is the case in civilised countries,” said Nana Tavadze, a local resident and a regular participant in protests over the issue.



According to Jumber Kemularia, head of the non-governmental Society for the Fight against Corruption and for the Defence of Human Rights, safety standards are regularly violated during the loading and unloading of the ore.



“Aluminium oxide is poured out onto the ground in the port from the ships after they arrive, and from there it is loaded into the wagons. This is not safe for the people who work there,” he said.



Academic Anzor Tkebuchava, an expert in environmental issues, said the threat was not only to people in Poti. “Pollution of the local water bodies from aluminium oxide is a threat to the species that inhabit them,” he said.



Local officials have refrained from commenting on the issue, but managers in the Poti port strongly rejected the criticism of the way in which the ore is handled.



“Alumina is a completely inert substance which is used for the production of aluminium. The harm it causes to the human body is a lot less than some of the other substances that are traditionally processed in the port,” said Tamaz Kapanadze, a representative of B&P Limited, which is in charge of loading and unloading the aluminium oxide.



In 2006, in order to try to damp down the protests, the port administration asked a team from the N. Makhviladze Institute of Labour, Medicine and Ecology to study the issue. In the specialists’ report, they said the level of aluminium oxide in the air was not sufficient to harm local residents’ health.



“After studying the concentration of the substance in the air and the work schedule, considering the regulation of the technological process and the safety standards at work, the aluminium oxide should not present a threat to the workers’ health”, or to anyone outside the loading bays, the report said.



But activists and residents say they do not trust the experts’ conclusions.



“These invited specialists knew what to write before they arrived. Instead of make-up, women have aluminium powder on their faces, but it turns out that somehow it does not go inside the body,” Kemularia said.



Lasha Zarginava is editor of Poti’s resume newspaper.

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