Haifa residents are sick and tired of hearing about the health hazards to which they are exposed. After Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah last week threatened to attack the city's ammonia tank, which contains 12,000 tons of the poisonous material, it has now been learned that the city suffered an irregular doubling of pollutant emissions in 2015.
A check by the Ministry of Environmental Protection of Oil Refineries Ltd. (TASE:ORL) in Haifa revealed hundreds of thousands of leaks of poisonous and carcinogenic materials. The ministry this morning sent the CEO of Oil Refineries subsidiary Carmel Olefins Ltd. (TASE: CRO.B1) a summons to a hearing before issuing an injunction closing down the company's production facilities.
Carmel Olefins operates in Oil Refineries' facilities in Haifa. The company, which uses oil products to create raw materials for the plastics industry, is considered one of the leading producers of unstable pollutant emissions in Haifa Bay.
At the demand of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the company issued a detailed report in recent days listing all the air pollution leaks in 2015, which were double those of the preceding year. The Ministry of Environmental Protection found that 200,000 different production components in the plant caused leaks of unstable, poisonous, and hazardous materials. One of these components is benzene, a known carcinogen that is also hazardous to embryos. When released into the air, land, and water, it accumulates in the living tissue of marine wildlife, and is transferred to the environment.
Studies are published every year about the high level of morbidity in Haifa, especially the incidence of cancer. For example, the Ministry of Heath last week asserted that half of the cancer cases among children under 14 in Haifa were caused by air pollution. A study published by the Ministry of Health a year earlier shows that the cancer rate in Haifa was 15% higher than in the rest of the country.
In view of these exceptional data, the Ministry of Environmental Protection sent the company a summons to a hearing, which will take place this coming Sunday, after which it will be decided whether to issue an injunction with an instruction to fix the leaks immediately. Fixing the leaks means shutting down Carmel Olefins's production facilities.
Ministry of Environmental Protection director general Yisrael Dancziger said, "The summons to a hearing is part of enhanced enforcement and supervision and the overall process in Haifa Bay, in which we are checking all the enterprises and creating new conditions for them in order to preserve the health of Haifa Bay residents."
Oil Refineries said, "The Oil Refineries Group has invested over NIS 1 billion in recent years in continual improvement of environmental protection, with an emphasis on lowering air emissions. The company is careful to comply with the law. The group will continue to do what is necessary in order to reduce emissions from its facilities. It received the summons this morning, is studying its particulars, and will respond in the hearing itself."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 23, 2016
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