CANBERRA - Australian farmers spread toxic waste from China instead of fertiliser over vegetable fields before the government realised the imports were hazardous, an Australian fertiliser company said yesterday.
The government said yesterday it had intercepted two shipments of toxic waste being exported from China for fertiliser after a Sydney company, Hardman Australia, found lethal levels of cadmium and other metals in the waste. "(We) impounded two containers of fertiliser and because excess cadmium was discovered in that, it really meant it wasn't fertiliser at all, it was hazardous waste," Environment Minister David Kemp said.
But Hardman Managing Director John Bradley said Australian fertiliser manufacturers and wholesalers have been importing the waste from China for months because it was a cheap source of zinc sulphate heptahydrate, a key nutrient for vegetables.
"The documents on all this stuff from China, they gave their own test certificates, was just rubbish. They were just lies, lies on papers," Bradley told Reuters.
Hardman was forced out of the business of making zinc fertiliser after competitors began using the cheaper Chinese waste - from zinc smelters and steelworks - to make fertiliser, he said.
When Hardman tested the Chinese waste it found cadmium levels reached 11,000 parts per million - more than 366,000 times the legal limit of 0.03 parts per million.
"The highest levels we recorded of cadmium, and this is the worst of the lot, was up to 11 percent. Eleven percent cadmium is a highly toxic, extremely poisonous material. And that was being used as a fertiliser, being tilled into the soil to raise the zinc content," Bradley said.
Bradley said he did not use the fertiliser from China.
The Environment Department said 340 shipments of zinc sulphate were imported from China last year. The biggest markets for the fertiliser are the states of Western Australia and Queensland, where soils are low in zinc.
CAUGHT TOO LATE?
The government said it would send the intercepted waste back to China and begin an investigation.
"What's clearly been detected here is that there are illegal documents," Kemp said. "This source is,obviously now going to be subjected to great scrutiny and as I say, as soon as it is detected it's going to be sent back," Kemp said.
The department was tipped off to the problem after Hardman ran newspaper advertisements last year to warn farmers of the practice.
Bradley said the Chinese imports were flown into Australia for more than a year before the government took action, allowing the toxic waste to enter Australia's food chain.
"I know that over three times the maximum accepted level of cadmium has been found in potatoes, a lot of potatoes...that's a pretty horrible thing," Bradley said.
But the environment minister dismissed suggestions that the government had acted too late.
"(This) is a very small industry, so people can be quite confident that they food they're getting is clean food," he said.:
