Co-incineration plant: There was “social construction” of risk, process can be safe – researcher of Coimbra

Posted on June 19th, 2009 in Uncategorized

A professor of law Alexandra Aragon held today in Coimbra, which was a “social construction” around the risks of co-incineration, but the process, “if properly done, can be safe” .
“There was a social construction of risk. The co-incineration in itself, if done correctly, can be safe,” he said.
Professor of Law University of Coimbra (FDUC) spoke to the agency Lusa on the sidelines of the international symposium “Risk and state in a globalizing world”, which began today and runs until Friday.
“Much as the co-incineration of waste can include indiscriminate danger to public health, the process itself to co-incineration is not any reason to be afraid, but it is the precise knowledge and awareness of what the waste going be incinerated. not incinerate the waste such that walk around the abandonment, the composition does not know is incinerated waste whose physico-chemical composition we know exactly, “he said.
In view of the researcher of the Center for the Study of Law of the Town of Urbanism and Environment (CEDOUA), “so if there is no reason to be afraid of co-incineration”, “a fairly widespread, used throughout Europe “.
“I can not say that, in general, is a safe or unsafe, there is reason for alarm. I can only say that there was a social construction around the process of co-incineration, which leads to fear of the word itself, when incinerating waste an industrial process, particularly in the manufacture of cement, is something trivial, which is already done long ago in Portugal, with other types of waste, “said.
Initiated in the nineties, the co-incineration of hazardous industrial waste in cement Souselas of Coimbra has been challenged in a movement of citizens and by local authorities, which has led to its postponement.
Alexandra Aragon, along with Marcio Nobre, presented Friday in a communication seminar on “Risk in the Prevention of Environmental Law.”
“In terms of risk prevention legislation is evolving very rapidly,” she found the FDUC.
In their view, “the legislature has followed the social aspirations, but there are risks that have no social visibility and, maybe, a very demanding more.”
“In Portugal, the heat wave [issue discussed at the event by sociologist José Manuel Mendes] is not perceived as a social risk, and yet there were thousands of dead. And there are ways to prevent,” warned.
For the teacher, “if there is risk of global or national, with the alarm that generate social, such as floods or fires, for example, there must be an active intervention of the state of a socially just.”
“There is a strange symbiosis, a strange closeness between the risks, are natural or technological, and poverty,” he said, showing the areas of flooding, usually inhabited by vulnerable populations.
Work in the morning speakers were Frank Furedi, University of Kent, and Gabrielle Hecht, University of Michigan.
The symposium is organized by the Center of Risk (OSIRIS) of the Center for Social Studies, University of Coimbra.
In the opening session of the event involved the coordinator of OSIRIS, José Manuel Mendes, the vice dean of the UC Gomes Martins, the mayor of Coimbra, Carlos Encarnação, and the civil governor, Henrique Fernandes.

Published by