Some people say the amount of money people make on the sale of these products do not justify the hard work involved in the harvesting and processing of these products for sale in the markets. Many others maintain that the reasons for the decline in the harvesting and marketing of edible shellfishes are: (1) they have been harvested to the verge of extinction and (2) the few that are still out there may be contaminated by the large amounts of polluted waters and solid waste materials that we dump into the salt waters in our lagoons every day.
We would like to have these products in our market places and in our stores as frequently as possible, and we hope the reasons for their stoppage could be found and resolved so that we would resume buying as much “Ngimes and Eremrum” as we want and could afford.
Do we have concrete asbestos pipes in our water system?
Three years ago, we wrote in this column about a report on the use of asbestos pipes (dangerous materials) during the construction of the water system for Koror. Since then we have not seen our water officials doing something about the situation to prevent people from being infected with toxic materials in the asbestos pipes. For the safety of our people, we would like to reprint below some parts of the earlier column to remind public officials to check if there are “Asbestos pipes” in our water system.
“I heard a very disturbing observation by an engineer, who had talked with people who were involved in the construction of water systems in Micronesia during the early Trust Territory period. The man said old-style water pipes made from “concrete asbestos” were most likely used to build Koror’s main water lines, and they may now pose serious health problems to the people of Palau. It was the standard practice,” he said.
“Studies made by the US Environmental Protection Agency have linked concrete asbestos pipes to cancer illnesses in communities that obtain their water through these types of pipes. The EPA at Region 1X in San Francisco has been providing assistances to communities that began replacing their concrete asbestos pipes with safer pipes. Since Koror’s water system was built by the US during the TT period, Palau might be eligible for funding assistances from the EPA at Region 1X,” my friend said.
“If what my friend said was correct, we may be facing a big health problem that must be addressed immediately. Is it true that the main water pipes carrying water to our homes and places of businesses were made of “concrete asbestos”? Do these pipes carry cancer-causing agents? Is there a connection between these “concrete asbestos pipes” and the large number of cancer related illnesses that have been reported by our Ministry of Health? The Government should, without delay, establish a task force to study this matter thoroughly. Our lives may depend on it”.
