Sunday Herald (Glasgow, Scotland), February 11, 2009

FEARS OVER 'SCANDAL' OF DEMOLITION POLLUTION

[Rachel's introduction: Gases released from foam insulation in old buildings are much more damaging than carbon dioxide, pound for pound.]

By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor

Pollution from the demolition of old buildings could blow a gaping hole in government attempts to tackle global warming, experts have warned.

Ministers have been accused of "a scandal and a cover-up" for failing to devise a strategy for dealing with the huge amount of hazardous chemicals contained in old insulation foam.

If the chemicals escape into the environment when buildings are knocked down they act as powerful greenhouse gases to disrupt the climate. They will also eat away at the ozone layer that protects the earth from the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation.

Most insulation foam used in building panels before 2004 contained chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) or hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs). The use of these compounds is being phased out because they are known to damage the ozone layer.

The relatively small amounts used to cool old fridges are being collected and destroyed. But there are no plans for dealing with the much larger quantities contained in building panels.

A memo last month from the UK government to the European Scrutiny Committee in Westminster revealed that there could be a "bank" of 100,000 tonnes of ozone-depleting substances in UK buildings. Their global warming potential was equivalent, the memo said, to 340 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

This is equal to almost two-thirds of all the carbon dioxide emissions from the whole of the UK in 2007. Emissions from old buildings are expected to rise significantly after 2010 and peak between 2030 and 2040 as increasing numbers of structures are demolished.

Peter Jones, an expert environmental consultant, pointed out that some of the ozone-depleting chemicals had a global warming potential 13,000 times greater than carbon dioxide -- and that the amounts contained in building insulation were 18 times higher than in fridges.

"The government has successfully addressed the fridge mountain' but seems to be doing next to nothing to prevent the release of much larger amounts of the same damaging substances," he said. "I think this is a scandal and a cover-up."

He pointed out that ozone-depleting substances were not included in government targets to cut the pollution that is changing the climate.

Building insulation containing the chemicals should be treated as hazardous waste, he said.

But this often didn't happen, he alleged, because demolition operations were not adequately monitored by the Scottish Environment Protect Agency (Sepa) or other agencies. "No-one is taking responsibility," he said.

Sepa accepted there was "no concerted effort" to recover ozone- depleting substances from building foam. The agency also agreed that building panels containing such materials should be defined as hazardous waste.

The European Union was proposing that ozone-depleting substances should be removed from building foams "where technically and economically feasible", said a Sepa spokeswoman. Further consultations should help clarify what this means.

In 2007, Sepa prevented the disposal of insulation panels from the demolition of the Chunghwa Picture Tubes factory on the Eurocentral business park in Lanarkshire.

"Sepa would remind all contractors that waste from any planned demolition activities must be disposed of legally," stressed the agency's spokeswoman.

The Scottish government agreed that ozone-depleting substances were not included in its climate change targets. They were controlled instead by the Montreal Protocol, and resulting UK regulations.

The government was working with other agencies "to assess methods for recovery or disposal of materials containing ozone-depleting substances from buildings that are being demolished", a spokesman said.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in London insisted that it was taking the issue "very seriously". It had commissioned its own research to assess the potential impacts.

But environmental groups argued that Scotland's buildings were hiding a "potentially target-busting" source of greenhouse gases.

"If we are to deliver on the Scottish climate change bill we cannot afford to ignore these harmful gases," said Dr Sam Gardner, from WWF Scotland.