Battling to breathe, Durban teenager Alex Muthusamy and his five-year-old brother Jordan spent five days in hospital in 2019 after another toxic gas leak in the city’s heavily polluted southern industrial basin.
The two boys from Merebank are among hundreds of residents who suffer from asthma and other respiratory diseases that have been linked scientifically to the high level of airborne pollution in densely populated South Durban neighbourhoods that are sandwiched between two of SA’s biggest fuel refineries, a paper mill, sewage works, heavy truck traffic, and about 600 other industrial operations.
Their mum, Katelynn, is thankful that the family has medical aid to cover most of her sons’ recent R32,000 hospital bills, but she remains deeply concerned about pollution in the area.
Her concerns were amplified by alarming air pollution monitoring results in Durban released in parliament recently by environment minister Barbara Creecy last month.
It showed that the Ganges Secondary School monitoring station suggested that there were almost 250 exceedances of the national air quality standards for PM10 particulate pollution for the first nine months of 2020.
Particulate pollution is made up of tiny particles of metal, chemicals and dust which can penetrate the lungs and cause respiratory and coronary heart disease from prolonged exposure.
Compared with results from the other eight provinces, the results reported from the Ganges monitoring station were the worst nationwide for this form of pollution — a test station just a few hundred metres from the Muthusamy home.
“The boys were born in Merebank and have always had respiratory problems, but I have no doubt that the gas leak triggered more serious problems,” she said, noting the family had now invested in a nebuliser machine and asthma pumps.
But when asked about the results, the eThekwini municipality, which generated the data from its monitoring stations in Durban, contested the accuracy of the figures published in the National Assembly.
They say the monitoring equipment had not been working for several months and that the actual number of exceedances was closer to 30 rather than 250.
In response to the discrepancy, Creecy’s office said the results were submitted to the South African Air Quality Information System (SAAQIS) by the municipality, but “contrary to agreed standard practice, the municipality overlooked to inform the administrators of SAAQIS that the data submitted was not validated data”.
Why is ‘unreliable’ data being provided to national government by eThekwini? ... What is the point of providing data if people cannot trust it?
— Prof Rajen Naidoo, University of KwaZulu-Natal
Her office said that to rectify similar problems, the municipality was now working with the national government to ensure that “complete and accurate information is made available to the public at all times”.
But local community watchdog groups and a senior health researcher have expressed scepticism over eThekwini’s belated explanation about measuring “errors” — which only emerged after Sunday Times Daily asked the municipality for comment and an explanation for the high readings.
Desmond D’sa, head of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, said he was astonished to hear eThekwini recanting on the high Ganges station readings.
He suggested they may be related to a recent increase in the number of heavy trucks and liquid tankers visiting local fuel refineries, a new logistics centre at Clairwood, and harbour-related congestion during lockdown.
Rico Euripidou, an environmental epidemiologist and health campaigner for the groundWork watchdog group, was also surprised by the latest developments, noting that it had taken nearly six months for the city to pick up apparent discrepancies.
“Why didn’t the alarm bells ring much earlier if they were actively monitoring their own stations to safeguard public health?” he asked.
Normally, if the monitoring equipment detected an unusual spike in pollution levels, the technicians should be alerted to the possibility of malfunction, or that the readings were correct, and city health authorities should have considered taking immediate steps to protect public health.
In this case neither of these actions were triggered, he said, suggesting a “systemic failure” by eThekwini to maintain what was once considered to be one of the best systems in the country.
Prof Rajen Naidoo, head of occupational and environmental health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, asked: “What is going on at Ganges? Why is ‘unreliable’ data being provided to the national government by eThekwini? What is the point of providing data if people cannot trust it?”
