ZOUK MIKAEL, Lebanon — After losing four relatives to respiratory illness, Zeina Matar fled
her hometown north of Lebanon’s capital where she says a decaying power plant
generates little electricity but very deadly pollution.
اضافة اعلان
Thick black smoke
sometimes billows from its red-and-white chimneys, leaving a grey haze in the
air above the
Zouk Mikael industrial district where the toxins remain trapped
by a nearby mountain chain.
Zeina, 40, says
she lost her younger sister and a cousin to pulmonary fibrosis and that two of
her uncles died of lung cancer years earlier.
They all lived
near the plant where, experts and residents believe, air pollution means people
are more likely to develop cancer and respiratory disease than anywhere else in
the crisis-torn country.
“We could die
tomorrow,” said Zeina, who has relocated to Lebanon’s south to escape the
plant’s emissions.
A Greenpeace study
found that the surrounding Jounieh area ranked fifth in the Arab world and 23rd
globally for cities most contaminated by nitrogen dioxide, a dangerous
pollutant released when fuel is burnt.
The environmental
group’s 2018 study singled out the Zouk plant, built in the 1940s, as well as
cars on a busy motorway and privately owned electricity generators as the main
causes of pollution.
The walls of
Zeina’s balconies in her old Zouk Mikael home are blackened by the smoke, and
laundry she used to hang outside would be damaged by toxic chemicals emanating
from the plant, she said.
“Whenever they
refill the station with fuel oil, we would close the windows,” Zeina said. “The
smell is unbearable.”
Doctor says ‘I fled’
Lebanon’s economy has been in free-fall since a financial crisis hit late
in 2019, with authorities now barely able to afford more than an hour of mains
electricity a day.
The Zouk Mikael
plant, one of the country’s largest, now runs at minimum capacity when it
operates at all, but still its emissions are causing high rates of pulmonary
disease, experts warn.
Among them is Paul
Makhlouf, a lung doctor at the Notre Dame du Liban Hospital in Jounieh, who
said he abandoned his local apartment after noticing a rise in respiratory
disease among patients.
In 2014, he found
that lung ailments had increased by three percent in patients living near the
plant compared to the previous year, an annual rise he estimates has now
doubled.
“When I saw the
results, I moved from there,” he said. “I fled.”
Makhlouf mainly
blames the type of fuel burnt at the Zouk Mikael plant, which he says is rich
in sulfide and nitric oxide — carcinogenic chemicals that affect the
respiratory system and the skin.
Compounding the
problem, he said, is the fact the seaside plant is located at a low altitude,
with heavy smoke trapped in the densely populated area by nearby mountains that
overlook the
Mediterranean.
‘Under black cloud’
Pictures went viral online last month of thick black smoke again
billowing from the Zouk plant as it burnt low-quality fuel oil to produce just
one hour of power that day.
The energy
ministry said the plant had been forced to use heavy fuel to “keep supplying
the airport, hospitals and other vital institutions” with electricity.
Since then, the
plant has mostly operated at night.
“Sometimes, we
wake up to a loud noise in the middle of the night” when the station kicks into
action and burns fuel oil, said Zeina’s 80-year-old aunt Samia, who still lives
near the plant.
Elie Beaino, who
heads the Zouk municipality, said a second plant, built without authorisation
in 2014, runs somewhat more cleanly on higher-quality fuel or gas, but that it
has stopped working as its operators cannot afford those higher-quality
hydrocarbons.
“Most residents
want the power plants to close down,” he said.
Lawmaker Najat
Saliba, an atmospheric chemist, said residents near Zouk are at least seven
times more likely to develop cancer than those of Beirut, citing a 2018 study
she helped author for the American University of Beirut.
She said the heavy
fuel oil it uses releases harmful chemicals. “The solution is to import quality
fuel oil and gas,” she said, adding however that Lebanon cannot afford those
fuels.
“We have two
options today,” she said. “To switch the lights off at the airport and in
hospitals, or to sit under a black cloud in Zouk.”
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