Anthony Busuttil, Tarxien
That black dust again
About 15 years ago, when I was mayor of Tarxien, a young lady from the university laboratory app-roached the local council with a request to analyse the black dust afflicting Tarxien and surrounding localities.
She asked to place containers in different locations in Tarxien to obtain samples of this black dust and to discover its source.
On various occasions other local councils complained about this inconvenience and expressed their concern about the effects of this dust. We are still suffering from it especially in the past month, when the quantity of black dust has increased. One wonders how much of it we are inhaling. So much for the campaign for a clean and healthy environment.
Indeed one has the right to ask whether this black dust is affecting our health and our environment?
I hope that this time I will have answers and concrete action is taken to eliminate this black dust for good.
Popular Stories
In Discussion
5 Comments
Post comment
Please sign in or create your Account to post comments.
Joseph Ellul- Sydney
Aug 10th 2009, 01:38
@ Galea . L. I see no reason for the councils to bear the cost. This is a national disgrace and the government must act to ensure the health and safety of all. This black dust is commulative from different activities, some of them unlawful and the rest just carelessness.
A good way of identifying the offenders is by using night surveillance with infrared detectors.
Ray Buhagiar
Aug 9th 2009, 14:46
Dust, Noise, Sewage, Litter,Traffic. Who wants to invest or visit this Island of ours.
Galea. L
Aug 9th 2009, 14:38
If I remember correctly the conclusion was that it was soot from the power station, but stand to be corrected. They used to say that it was from the Shipyards, but the shipyards have long been using hi-power water jets instead of grit blasting and the black dust is still being deposited all over the southern part of Malta. The only sources are the power stations and the incinerators and perhaps to some extent some factories who use boilers as sometimes can be evidenced by clouds of black smoke from their chimneys. However, the factories cannot account for all this black dust and something must be done to identify the source and those responsible held personally accountable. How about all the local councils getting together to share the expenses, taking samples and having different foreign laboratories analyze them and comparing the results? At least they will be doing something useful not simply engaging in creating traffic, parking and other problems for Maltese citizens.
Joseph Camilleri
Aug 9th 2009, 13:22
It would be interesting to learn the conclusions of this young lady's research. What was the composition of the black dust? What was its source? Perhaps if she read this letter, she might think of giving a resume of her findings in next Sunday's ToM.
A.Sciberras
Aug 9th 2009, 11:19
Just for the record, Msida is also being affected with black dust, specially with southern winds