Brown Olympics
a huge stockpile of lethal waste has been discovered next to the 2000 Olympics site in Sydney which is contaminated with poisonous dioxins. Greepeace, the international green group, has found shocking levels of dioxins, almost 60 times higher than the levels produced by the world's first major dioxin accident in Seveso, Italy in 1976. Some of the dioxins contained tcdd, the most toxic form of dioxin that has been classified as carcinogenic to humans. The 2000 Olympics is being tou-ted as the first green Olympics.
The contaminated site was earlier occupied by a Union Carbide factory which produced the chlorinated herbicide 2,4,5-t- a constituent of a chemical weapon used in the Vietnam war. "The Green Olympics is beginning to look a distinctly muddy shade of brown," said Matt Ruchel, a Greenpeace spokesperson in Sydney. Just two kilometres away from the main Olympic stadium, rusting barrels of dioxin-contaminated waste are lying on the shores of Homebush Bay, which was originally planned as the gateway to the Olympic site.