“At night, I wake up with an acrid taste in my mouth,” testifies Anne Connan, secretary of the 3R association, which commissioned the study from the leading Dutch NGO concerning the toxicological analysis of pollutants emitted by incinerators.
“I am afraid for the families who settle with young children in Ivry.
If I was their age, I wouldn't come,” whispers this septuagenarian.
A few hundred meters from his house stands the largest incinerator in Europe, built in 1969. Equipped with two huge chimneys, this installation will be gradually replaced by a new waste treatment unit, currently under construction and which will be commissioning in 2024.
It is around this incinerator that ToxicoWatch analyzes have shown dioxin levels 14 times higher than normal.
“Local eggs are completely unfit for consumption.
Similarly, samples taken from mosses less than 1 km from the plant also show very high levels of dioxins.
We have never seen that!
sums up the director of ToxicoWatch.
The 3R association is asking for additional analyzes to “know whether or not the incinerator has harmful and lasting effects on the health of local residents”.
"The neighborhood is becoming denser and a 180 m high tower is being installed with thousands of employees a few strides from the incinerator, the coliving offices of Station F, the HLMs and the schools... In defiance of the health of the citizens , which undergo a veritable chemical soup surrounding them,” explains Kris, a local resident who is not losing her temper.
“How can we explain that in 2022, we are rebuilding a new incinerator when we are supposed to reduce our waste by 55%?
You don't see the story in motion,” she says.
For its part, Syctom, the organization that manages the incinerator, reacted, stating that "the level of correlation between the plant and the presence of these dioxins remains to be established" (...) "The study produced by Airparif in 2018 also showed that the impact of uncontrolled diffuse sources, such as fires or burns, had a much higher impact on dioxin levels than household waste incineration centers.
It should also be noted that the sponsor of this study is the 3R collective, which has been opposed for many years to the reconstruction of the energy recovery unit in Ivry / Paris XIII.
Finally, for your information, the President of Syctom convened an exceptional strategic committee on Friday morning, to which are invited, in addition to the usual participants, the DRIEAT,
The mayor (PCF) of Ivry, Philippe Bouyssou, requests the holding of an extraordinary trade union council at Syctom.
And the environmental group from Ivry-sur-Seine affirms that it "will get in touch with the 3R collective very quickly to determine a common action plan, for a better quality of life for all", calling to "pursue these measures on the new incinerator which is under construction".