Widow says toxic methyl bromide should have been banned years ago

Thursday, 31 May 2018

Methyl bromide, an ozone depleting toxic gas harmful to humans, is banned in many countries but New Zealand is using more than ever. In part two of a three part investigation, Tony Wall speaks to a Nelson woman who watched her husband die painfully.

It's never been proven that the motor neurone disease which killed her husband was caused by methyl bromide, but Sue Lindsay has no doubt.

Mike Bull, a marine biologist who helped develop New Zealand's scallop fishery, worked for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) from an office at Port Nelson in the 1990s.

Methyl bromide, a neuro-toxin, was used at the port for many years to fumigate equipment imported by MAF and log exporters.

'The fumigations there were quite frightening because…all the logs were stacked alongside the access roads that everyone uses,' Lindsay says. 

'We had horrifying accounts from some of the workers there - they had no protective gear, no breathing gear, they were told to just run with the canister, put it by the logs and pull the pin, so to speak. It was just barbaric.'

Bull was diagnosed in 2000 with motor neurone disease, a neurological condition which causes degeneration of brain and spinal-cord nerve cells. He died two years later.

'He first noticed he couldn't turn the keys on his boat, and he was limping, couldn't speak properly, because the muscles in his throat were dying,' Lindsay says.

'You virtually become paralysed, you can't talk, you can't eat, you can't do anything - you're locked into a body that can't move. It's a horrible way to go.'

Mike Bull was one of at least six people associated with the Nelson port who died of motor neurone disease in the 2000s.

A public health study found the cases were probably due to chance but recommended methyl bromide be investigated further.

A 2005 report in the New Zealand Medical Journal by toxicologist Ian Shaw concluded that methyl bromide exposure could have been a factor in the cases - the rate of motor neurone disease among port workers was many hundreds of times higher than normal, he said.

Shaw's research found a reaction when mixing methyl bromide with a protective chemical found in human cells, but he told Stuff he has not done any additional research since 2010. 

Studies by the Centre for Public Health Research at Massey University found a heightened risk of motor neurone disease in agriculture and horticulture workers, the types of industries where soil fumigations occurred with methyl bromide in the past.

The centre's Dr David McLean says studies have also found an elevated risk of some cancers among people exposed to the gas.

He says there's a lack of information about the toxicant in medical literature and there's unlikely to be more evidence because it's being phased out around the world.

'I would struggle to do a study because I wouldn't be able to find enough people exposed,' he says.

After Mike Bull died, Lindsay joined a group of other widows of motor neurone disease victims campaigning to have the substance banned.

Their efforts paid off when Nelson City Council tightened its air quality plan in 2005, which fumigation company Genera challenged in the Environment Court two years later.

The court imposed a range of conditions ensuring methyl bromide is more tightly controlled in Nelson than anywhere else in New Zealand.

In 2010, the Environmental Risk Management Authority (Erma) tightened regulations around the fumigant's use nationwide, including minimum buffer zones, air quality monitoring and for residents to be notified.

It also gave log exporters 10 years to move to full recapture, where the gas is destroyed rather than released into the atmosphere.

But Sue Lindsay says the fact that methyl bromide is being used in record quantities in other parts of New Zealand is shocking.

Erma's successor agency, the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), is showing a 'lack of spine', she says.

'It's the worst ozone depleting chemical still in use, it's banned right through Europe and many other countries, we signed the Montreal Protocol to get rid of these chemicals and yet…the Government is still allowing it to be used.'

Former Green Party MP Steffan Browning, who has campaigned against methyl bromide use at ports around the country, says the EPA's decision to give the forestry industry 10 years to move to full recapture, knowing there would be a spike in harvests and exports in the meantime, was typical of its priorities.

'Its balance between environmental and community protection and economic issues - the economics win hands down every time,' he says.

'Unless people are dropping like flies in an acute way, the EPA ticks things through.'

Browning says the forestry industry has a 'lousy' environmental record and log exporters have simply moved further north as southern ports have 'cleaned up their act' around methyl bromide.

He says the EPA has now agreed with the industry group, STMBR (Stakeholders in Methyl Bromide Reduction) that there are grounds for use of the gas to be reassessed - a move he claims is designed to extend the 2020 deadline for recapture.

But Dr Fiona Thomson-Carter, the EPA's general manager of hazardous substances, says while anyone can apply for the fumigant to be reassessed, the 2020 target is a 'hard deadline'.

If the industry can't show by then that it's using recapture technology for all fumigations, she says, 'you're not going to be able to use [methyl bromide] in New Zealand'.

Thomson-Carter says it's not a simple case of banning the fumigant now.

'The role of the EPA is to try to balance the requirements of human health and environmental health while also protecting and enhancing the economy.

'We've got a major wood timber export business - our trading partners, particularly India and China, insist on the wood being fumigated and at the moment they want it fumigated by methyl bromide and we don't have a viable alternative.'

Alternative chemicals are being developed for quarantine purposes, she says. The EPA is currently considering an application by STMBR to use ethanedinitrile​, or EDN, which it believes could be a drop-in substitute for methyl bromide.

'We've got the science to show [EDN] works,' says Don Hammond, chair of STMBR. 'The biggest hurdle will be getting our trading partners to accept it.'

Hammond says STMBR has spent around $22m, mostly raised by a voluntary levy on exporters, to find a system that can capture and destroy methyl bromide at the scale needed for log stacks.

'We're not wedded to methyl bromide,' he says. 'Don't think this is an economically driven argument. The real issue is that we actually don't have technology to recapture it and nobody in the world does.'

Stuff asked the Greens where they stood on the methyl bromide issue, given their strong opposition to its use in the past.

Associate Minister for the Environment Eugenie Sage said in a statement it would not be appropriate for her to be involved or comment on the EPA's decision-making process.

Browning and Lindsay say there are solutions - the industry just doesn't want to implement them because it would drive down profits.

Browning wants to see a purpose-built facility at one port, probably Northport because it is away from built-up areas, for all log fumigations.

Others, such as Glen Crowther of the Sustainable Business Network, think other markets should be explored and countries that insist on methyl bromide shut off.

'If I was the forestry industry I would be asking 'do we really want to be putting people's health at risk by exporting to India when we could potentially build up some other export markets and more importantly use that timber in New Zealand?''

Lindsay agrees.

'We are being held to ransom by two countries really,' she says.

'I think it's ludicrous that with something so toxic, we have to fight to have it banned from being used in our communities.'