The Age (Melbourne, Australia), October 15, 2007

SWEDES CAST DOUBT ON MILL STANDARDS

[Rachel's introduction: "The precautionary principle applies, as persistent toxics should always be prevented if there is an alternative," he said. "Why did it not consider a chlorine-free process?"]

By James Button

Australian Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull says environmental standards at the Gunns' Tasmanian pulp mill will be the world's best, but some specialist observers of the cutting-edge Swedish pulp and paper industry doubt his claim.

Two years ago, three Swedish pulp and paper mills found small traces of dioxin in production. Dioxin is the world's most toxic chemical, potentially deadly to fish and carcinogenic to humans, and produced from bleaching processes that contain chlorine.

The industry moved fast to adopt remedies. "It is unacceptable for us to have dioxins at pulp and paper mills," environmental director of the Swedish Forest Industries Federation Christina Molde Wiklund said.

She exaggerated slightly. All mills that use chlorine dioxide to bleach pulp produce small amounts of dioxin. The issue is what level is safe. Australia's chief scientist has judged the Gunns' mill to be safe.

But the Government's ruling on how much dioxin discharge it will allow before remedial action must be taken raises questions on standards.

Mr Turnbull has ruled the mill can produce up to two picograms a litre of effluent water before it must take action, and 3.4 picograms a litre before it must be shut down.

Tasmanian officials sent the figures for comment to Erik Nystrom, a specialist in pulp and paper production at the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.

Mr Nystrom replied that the dioxin level that would trigger closure of the mill equalled the amount of dioxin emitted in a year by the whole Swedish bleached pulp and paper industry, which produced about seven times more bleached pulp than Gunns would produce.

"I cannot understand how it would be possible to get to that level with modern (pulp) processing. Why they have set their levels at this level I don't know. Any Swedish mill that saw such levels would be alarmed and act immediately," he said.

Sweden does not set acceptable dioxin levels, in part because, as the 2005 case suggests, it seeks to eliminate all but the smallest amounts.

Mr Nystrom does not criticise the use of chlorine dioxide, which the EPA and other regulators see as no more environmentally damaging than chlorine-free production.

The world pulp industry vigorously agrees, arguing that pulp made using chlorine dioxide is environmentally sound, cheaper and makes better paper than totally chlorine-free pulp.

But Rune Eriksson, a longtime forestry consultant who has worked for Greenpeace and the WWF, read the chief scientist's report on the Gunns' mill for The Age. He said the mill's standards on permitted levels of nitrogen and phosphorous were middle of the range and not world-class.

He said there was no safe level of dioxin.

Dr Alain Rajotte, a French-Canadian environmental consultant who worked for the OECD and wrote a PhD on Sweden's pulp industry, shares the concern.

"The precautionary principle applies, as persistent toxics should always be prevented if there is an alternative," he said. "Why did it not consider a chlorine-free process?"

If dioxin is the pulp industry demon, such awareness is only 20 years old.

Until the 1970s, pulp was one of the world's most polluting industries, Dr Rajotte said. But within five years of the discovery of a link between chlorine bleaching and dioxins in the late 1980s, the process was all but eliminated in Europe.

The big polluter, chlorine, has gone. Today, the environmental calibrations were finer, Dr Rajotte said. But he was concerned about the long-term exposure of marine life to even small amounts of dioxin. What was the level of risk one was willing to take for the sake of economic development?