JAKARTA, Indonesia — The Indonesian government, stung by a
report that found burning plastic for fuel is poisoning residents in an East
Java village, is allowing the illegal burning to continue while it challenges
the environmental study.
Tofu makers in the village, Tropodo, who have long burned
waste plastic to fuel their kitchen boilers, have seen sales plummet in recent
weeks over fears that dioxin, a toxic chemical, produced from the fires is
contaminating their tofu.
Rather than enforce a ban on the burning of waste plastic,
much of which came until recently from the United States, the Ministry of
Environment and Forestry appointed a panel of Indonesian experts to counter the
report released last month by Indonesian and international environmental
groups.
At a news conference, officials said the Tropodo test was
flawed because it relied on testing dioxin levels in chicken eggs. Eggs are
commonly used for testing contamination because chickens effectively sample the
soil as they forage and toxins accumulate in their eggs.
“Chickens are smart,”
said one government expert, Mochamad Lazuardi, a professor of veterinary
medicine at Airlangga University in the city of Surabaya. “They will not eat
something hazardous.”
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