11/12/2006
The FGTB trade union is concerned at the rising cancer death toll among former workers at two production plants owned by Belgium’s Solvay chemical group at the small town of Jemeppe-sur-Sambre between Namur and Charleroi in the southern half of the country.

21 of the 70 workers in two units producing chlorine and caustic soda by mercury electrolysis have died from cancer, while others are suffering acute kidney failure and loosening teeth.

Tests on three workers claiming recognition for an occupational disease have shown up urine mercury levels two to four times higher than the norm in Belgian industry.

Mercury is highly toxic to the kidneys and brain. In Belgium, mercury poisoning has been a scheduled occupational disease since 1927.

The lack of a large-scale epidemiological study means that no link has yet been able to be made between cancer and exposure to mercury vapour. The FGTB believes that making all the urine screening of workers employed in both mercury electrolysis shops available would help move the investigations forward. The files are kept by Solvay and cannot be opened-up to others for reasons of doctor-patient confidentiality.

Solvay has gradually moved away from the mercury-based production process. The first unit was shut down in 1992, followed by the second nine years later. Workers report that little servicing was done on the equipment destined for the scrap-heap in the years leading up to closure, and that mercury leakages from worn barrier seals and tanks were increasingly frequent.

“There was mercury all over the shop. It wasn’t just vapour in the air, it was on the floor, too; you walked through it and trailed it everywhere. Even in the canteen next door where we ate”, a former worker told the local press.

The whistleblowing workers, whose names have been withheld, say that Solvay failed to take the problem seriously enough. Workers whose urine tests showed up excessively high mercury levels were moved to other jobs until their levels came down. This was a case-specific response that ignored the longer-term health impacts of repeated mercury exposure. And even this meagre preventive measure was taken only for workers with exceptionally high levels, if the workers reports are anything to go by.

“You could still easily be kept there with a level of 200, because swapping an experienced man for another would affect production”, testifies one ex-worker.