Workers and neighbours: ”Your coal is killing us”
Thursday, 28 January 2010
Mine workers become disabled, and neighbours are slowly suffocated by pollution. Despite a promise from 2006, DONG has never checked the mine that supplies one-fourth of Denmark's coal, while Vattenfall calls it ”world class”.
When you switch on your power outlet, it is very likely that you are complicit in spoiling lives, the environment and the health of thousands of workers in the northern Colombia. This has been shown in a report by the ethical watchdog DanWatch, that has visited the Cerrejón mine, from which Denmark imports approximately one-fourth of its coal.
The workers are being disabled by vibrations, cancer-causing chemicals as well as coal and quartz dust, says the trade union, and inhabitants near the mine report of widespread respiratory problems, skin diseases, deformed infants, sterility, and even deaths.
- Today, one-fourth of our workers are sick. The number exceeds 900, says representative Jose Nicolas Brito Mendoza from the mine workers' trade union, Sintracarbon.
- Several co-workers have died because of quartz dust. The company does not acknowledge this connection. Instead, they claim that the workers have died of natural causes.
Workers suffer from lung diseases
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According to WHO, quartz dust can give lung cancer as well as the debilitating and often deadly disease silicosis – also known as Potter's rot. Since 1968, the disease has killed more than 14,000 American workers. One of the people who is joining Colombia's statistic is Eduardo Puche. After 22 years in the mine dust, he has been diagnosed with lung cancer. Now he is struggling with respiratory problems and struggling to pay his medical bills.
- The company exploits you when you feel well, and when you no longer feel well, you are thrown out, says Puche.
In 2002, a study by Sintracarbon showed that he and 45 other employees had beginning silicosis. Nonetheless, the doctors working for CMC, who owns the mines, told him year after year that he was healthy, he says.
- Everything was sent sent by letter, stating: 'Mr. Eduardo Puche's results are satisfactory,' he tells.
- Like that. That was all.
Neighbours to the mine are suffering
Also the neighbours living around what has been called the world's largest opencast coal mine are under pressure. A study of 637 shows that the incidence of respiratory problems is more than twice as high amongst people living near the mine than amongst those living in other places in the region. A doctor in the the area confirms this.
- Our population is very affected by the consequences created by the coal dust, says the doctor.
The people who ought to report this remain passive because it involves a multi-national corporation. Nobody wants problems with this company.
He wishes to be anonymous on grounds of his personal safety and his job.
- The people who ought to report this remain passive because it involves a multi-national corporation. Nobody wants problems with this company, he says.
The reports of diseases are massive all the way around the the mine. In Provincial, a reservation for indigenous peoples situated less than one kilometer away from the outer perimeter of the mine, chief Valentin Ortiz Pushaina ascribes two of his children's deaths to the pollution.
- We used to be healthy, we did not get sick, and the young people grew up without getting sick. It is not like that anymore. Now, there are many diseases amongst our children, he says.
- We suffer, and it is killing us.
Watch video interviews with sick coal mine workers
Experts criticise DONG and Vattenfall
The DanWatch report 'Curse of Coal' (not yet available in English)
