Cancer risk from factory ‘pollution’ inconclusive

> Minutes of 2015 meetings reveal study finding

GEORGE TOWN: A Penang Health Department study in 2015 is inconclusive on whether an illegal sawdust factory in Kampung Sungai Lembu is a risk factor for cancer.

The finding was revealed in the minutes of a September 2015 Central Seberang Perai District Action Meeting and copies of which were distributed to reporters in a press conference yesterday.

According to the minutes, the district health department listed 12 patients suffering from five types of cancer.

These comprise four cases of breast cancer, two cases of lung cancer, two cases of gastro-intestinal tract cancer, two cases of liver cancer, two cases of nasopharynx cancer and a case which eventually was diagnosed as high blood pressure.

“All these patients have never worked at the factory. The location of the factory is also in a remote location and not a main throughway for the residents of Kampung Sungai Lembu,” the minutes said.

Penang Health, Welfare and Caring Society Committee chairman Dr Afif Bahardin (pix) said the study showed that the illegal factory was not the cause of the cancer.

“It is,” he said when asked if the study was valid when approached after the press conference.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said his administration was consistent on the issue and environmental matters vis-a-vis matters of rare earth processing and nuclear power stations.

He said rare earth processing and nuclear power stations were issues of policy, which his government has taken a stand on being against those developments.

“The state government has made a policy decision that whatever the safeguards by the Department of Environment (DoE), the state will not agree.

“As far as the rest is concerned, on technical issues, we will comply with the recommendations as established by the DoE,” he said in response to accusations the Penang government was practising double standards.

On a related matter, the DoE said it cannot verify whether the factory had produced pollution after it was cleared in 2015.

Penang DoE director Rusnani Abdullah said this was because the factory had failed to install a device that would have allowed the department to take samples in determining whether the factory had indeed caused pollution.

She said the device would have ensured any burning process that took place in the factory was done in an enclosed environment, as well as ensuring the containment and release of smoke, such as by directing the fumes through a chimney.

“We can only monitor when the device is installed … (the smoke) would be released through a chimney, and from there can we only take the sample (to determine pollution),” she said.

“We had not taken any sample from the factory (since it was cleared in 2015). We had told them to install the device first,” she told theSun.

The Penang state government on Tuesday revealed a minutes of a Seberang Perai Municipal Council meeting, dated May 6, 2015, which stated that the DoE had found no traces of pollution at the factory.