By Jhoo Dong-chan
Toxic industrial wastewater is being discharged into waterways due to a lack of government regulation, a study shows.
The National Assembly Research Service (NARS) said in its recent report that “priority toxic pollutants” were being discharged without proper purification.
Priority toxic pollutants, such as arsenic, benzene and lead, are substances directly or indirectly harmful to organisms including humans. Unlike general pollutants, they do not degrade naturally and tend to accumulate inside organisms along the food chain.
The U.S. and Japan designated 126 and 50 priority toxic pollutants, respectively, prohibiting their discharge into the environment before they complete a purification process.
Korea designated only 28 priority toxic pollutants.
Almost a hundred toxic pollutants, including nitrosamines and antimony, which are classified as major carcinogens in a wide variety of animal species, including humans, are omitted from government regulations of substances in Korea.
Moreover, discharge standards for those 28 pollutants have yet to be established, which critics say will lead to the destruction of the water ecosystem.
Firms are abusing the lack of discharge standards, the report said.
The Ministry of Environment conducted a week-long inspection from March 4 on 86 private companies in Gyeonggi Province. Of them, 62 were discharging toxic pollutants, like benzene and chrome, into agricultural waterways without purification.
According to the ministry, 527 of 2428 companies nationwide discharged priority toxic pollutants into sewers 570 times last year.
In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency requires companies to make a report to the agency and its approved sewage facility before discharging industrial wastewater. Regardless of discharging the pollutants to sewers or to the environment, U.S. federal and state laws also require each company to establish its own water-purification facility.
“The government should set standards up for priority toxic pollutants immediately, or the private sector will continuously discharge wastewater, jeopardizing the public health,” the report warns.