Risking all for scrap - all in a day’s work in Mayapuri junkyard

NEW DELHI - Seven colleagues lie in hospital battling the severe after effects of exposure to radioactive Cobalt 60 found in medical waste, but scrap dealers in west Delhi’s Mayapuri junk market have no option but to be stoic - they know such accidents are unavoidable in their line of work.

Shyam Das, 30, a migrant labourer from Jharkhand who has worked in the sprawling junk market for 12 years shows no sign of fear as he cuts through metal scrap with a blow torch. He wears no protective clothing, gloves or even helmet while performing this hazardous task.

I feel very sad for the injured, I guess they did not know what they were opening. Sometimes I also cut through a machine but I don’t know which metal it is made of, Das told IANS.

Das was just a couple of meters away from the scrap shop where the first radioactive leakage was detected on April 8. Six people were exposed to radiation, including Deepak Jain, owner of the shop. Jain turned black when he touched a piece of scrap with a rubber cover — and all five present at the shop suffered burn injuries and fell unconscious.

On Tuesday another person suspected to be exposed to radioactive material was hospitalised. Police and expert teams scanned the area again and discovered a second “smaller” source. Two of the seven victims, some of them with severe burn injuries and low blood counts, are in critical condition.

It has been a week since the first incident. The consternation continues but so does the work. Dealers say they are alarmed but have no choice but to go on with their daily work.

This was the first time something of this magnitude has happened here. Unfortunately, accidents like this cannot be stopped because we have no technical knowledge of how to distinguish between scrap and bio-hazard wastes, a scrap dealer said.

Teams from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and a squad from the National Management Authority (NDMA) as well as radiation experts from the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) have been working in the area to isolate the radioactive sources. And the buzz is what the government will do to ensure safety in the bustling market.

Only after the teams came did people start talking about safety. But, as you can see, this is the normal condition of work here; accidents are a part of life, nothing will change.

Other shop owners claim that they take adequate precautionary measures and that it is the new scrap material coming from abroad that is unpredictable.

We take our own precautionary measures, it is the government’s responsibility not to allow hazardous waste from coming into India, said Raju.

The scrap market in Mayapuri is considered the largest in Asia, when has the government come in to provide anything for us? lamented another dealer.

No one department is willing to shoulder the blame, they say.

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh put the onus of the accident on the Department of Atomic Energy under the science and technology ministry.

“The matter comes under Department of Atomic Energy and not MoEF (ministry of environment and forests) as it is not hazardous waste but biomedical waste,” he told reporters earlier this week.

The Central Pollution Control Body, under the MoEF, in its recent report on waste disposal pointed out that only 50 to 55 percent bio-medical wastes gets collected, segregated and treated as per the Bio-medical Waste Management Rules (2003). The rest are dumped along with with municipal solid waste.

In what appears to be a knee-jerk reaction, the Delhi government is also mulling a new plan to revamp recycling of waste, including hazardous and medical waste.

“After the Mayapuri incident, waste disposal has become a concern. We are going to hold a meeting with various agencies in this regard, there is a need to have a mechanism to deal with such wastes,” Delhi’s Chief Secretary Rakesh Mehta told IANS.

Too little too late?