| One of the biggest pollution scandals in Sweden |
| In March 1992 a construction company was sighed to do two giant holes, each 8,6 kilometers, to shorten the traveling-time for the passengers in the train X 2000 by ten minutes. The job hade caused much bigger water leak than expected. To keep the water out, a tightening-material was used. It has shown that that tightening-material was very dangerous, after they found one poisoned fish on the 26th of September. |
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| People upset |
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Many people have become upset over the building of the railwaytunnel through a ridge in Halland, in southern Sweden. The ridge is called Hallandsåsen. The water that people are supposed to drink is now pollutioned with a substance that causes cancer.
Fish in the Vadbäcken (a stream) are dying, 50 of them have already died, farmers can't sell their products and the animals' meat can't be used as food.
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| Food poisned |
They weren't able to stop the fright in time so some of the meat reached the stores. Now people are afraid that they might have eaten of it. The tightening-material is called Rôcha-Gil and imported from France by a company called Rhône-Poulenc to the Swedish
construcontion company Skanska.
Acording to the law, no more then 33 liters are supposed to leak out per second, but in Hallandsåsen there are 60 liters of pollutioned water leaking out per second. The people in the area want economic support because of the suffering.
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| "Not dangerous" |
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Skanska never checked if the material was dangerous to the environment but trusted the French company. Workers discovered problem working with the substance not so long after they had begun with the tightening-material. They had some allergic problems. Some
of them have big gashes on the hands or in the face.
But being afraid of losing their jobs or friends they didn't say anything. The workers were getting paid by the hour and |
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the tempo of the work was increased when they started to use the tightening-material. So if they were to tell their employers they would not only risk to get fired but also to lower their own wages.
They did however complain at the man responsible for the working saftey but he said that there was nothing to worry about, and Skanska had assured them that it was no more dangerous then a little too much salt on your food. The French company now admitted that they had lied about how dangerous Rôcha-Gil was. |
| Didn't work as it should |
Rôcha-Gil was to harden to jelly, but that took over a week to happen, so the water continued to leak out, but now mixed with a dangerouse substance.
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| Money-that's why |
Skanska could have used ordinary concrete, but Rôcha-Gil were much less expensive and thought more effective. They even got 800 000 000 SEK extra to be able to use the more expensive one, but despite that they chose the less expensive metode. So now a lar
ge area around the construction has become water-pollutioned, and the stream runs to the sea.
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| The chemical substance | It's very dangerous for both animals and human beings. If you are exposed to it you can get cancer, damage on the DNA or emirget nervous disorders. 4% of the solution contains acrylic amide, and that's dangerous. |
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Writers: Sofie Johansson, Anngelica Kristofersson 97-10-14 SPNA2a Webdesign: Martin Nyberg NVDA2c Picture URL: http://www.skanska.se , http://www.dn.se © FREEWAY 1997 |