POLLUTION

The UNEP said 12,000 tons of leaking oil from the Jiyyeh plant, which was bombed by Israel on July 14 and July 15 a few days into its offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon, had already polluted more than 140 kilometres of the Lebanese coast and spread north into Syrian waters.

The Exxon Valdez spilled 37,000 tons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound after running aground on a reef on March 24, 1989, causing massive damage from which some scientists argue the area has yet to completely recover.

The UNEP said two environmental experts had arrived in Syria to begin assessing the impact of the Jiyyeh spill, which it said it feared had already affected marine life, particularly tuna and turtles, in the Mediterranean.

“This oil slick definitely poses a threat to biodiversity,” said Ezio Amato, one of the two UNEP consultants.

In Rome, an Italian environmental agency which monitors the Mediterranean said the spill posed a heightened risk of cancer.

The leakage ‘is a high-risk toxic cocktail made up of substances which cause cancer and damage to the endocrine system’, Simonetta Lombardo of Info-Rac told reporters.

“It is not oil that has flowed but fuel for power stations,” she said. “This contains substances such as benzene, categorised as a Class 1 carcinogen.”