Formaldehyde petition

The comments around Corin Smith’s petition about the use of formaldehyde in freshwater lochs in last week’s edition do not begin to do justice to the problems of chemical use in Scottish waters by the aquaculture industry.

Our seas are treated like a huge, uncontrolled chemical and biological experiment, supervised only in local pockets by SEPA. The attitude that a chemical breaks down quickly neglects the questions of what it breaks down into and how these products and it react in a complex environment.

There should equally be concern about the vast uncontrolled use of hydrogen peroxide at open sea farms, about the effect of medicines on the environment outside of the immediate area of a farm and the impact of both excrement and unused fish food on water quality and ecosystems more widely. The likely outcomes of this great scientific experiment are largely unknown.

Regulatory authorities take little or no interest in the relation between salmon farms and toxic algal blooms, dismissed as ‘complex natural phenomena’, or their part in shellfish toxins which are common in the region.

The stubborn refusal of the government, on economic grounds, to take an appropriately precautionary approach to aquaculture will ultimately have a huge negative impact, including economically, on all of us and our descendants. The parallels with global government attitudes to fossil fuels for the past century or so are striking. It’s just about water instead of air.

Dennis Archer, co-convenor, Argyll & Bute

Branch, Scottish Green Party, Oban.