When 105 nations gather in Geneva next month to discuss how to destroy dioxin waste, they can look to the Sydney Olympic site for an answer. POPs such as dioxins are causing widening concern. Their ability to transfer through the atmosphere means that local pollution has global consequences. For example, Dr. Luscombe said among people most highly exposed to PCBs were the Inuits of the Arctic, who have little to do with such chemicals in their ordinary lives. In Australia a new method of dealing with some POPs was developed as a consequence of the refusal of state and federal environment ministers to approve a central national high temperature incinerator in 1992.
Incineration can lead to the production and release of more toxic compounds.
2000 Olympics Superdome at Homebush Bay as of October 1998. Construction expected to be complete at the end of this month. It's exactly the same sort of technology that will be committed to the clean-up of the floor of Homebush Bay itself. There's an estimated half a million tonnes to be decontaminated there. Under the three step process, the waste is first broken up to a uniform size, and the organochlorines then evaporated.