The plant in Paritūtū, New Plymouth. Photo: CC / Phillip Capper
A former employee at a controversial chemical plant in New Plymouth has described working inside a reactor wearing little more than overalls and rubber gloves for protection.
US-based multinational company Dow was asking former staff and contractors to take part in a survey to gather information about how chemicals were handled at its Paritūtū site.
From the 1960s through to 1987, Ivon Watkins (later Ivon Watkins-Dow) made the herbicide 2,4,5-T which contained the toxic dioxin TCDD, at Paritūtū.
The herbicide was a key component of Agent Orange - the defoliant used by the US military in the Vietnam War - and has been linked to cancers and birth defects.
Dow is now cleaning up the site and has reached out to people who worked there.
Jimmy Stoppard was a fitter welder at IWD in the mid-1970s. He said chemicals ate their way through the glass-lined reactor vessels where 2,4,5-T was made. It was his job to get inside and put in place teflon patches.
"They gave us rubber gloves to wear and overalls. Even when we were in the vessels they didn't give us face masks to wear.
"When we were clearing out the dioxin building... wet weather raincoats, leggings, gumboots and a face shield and rubber gloves - that was the extent of the safety equipment."
Stoppard, who also saw chemical residue being washed into the stormwater drains, said he could not remember ever being briefed about the chemicals' potential dangers. But a recent cancer scare had given him pause for thought.
"When they did the pathology I didn't have bowel cancer, but I had lymphoma in my bowel and it was in my neck, in my lymph nodes, one of my lungs, my groin, my spleen. They did a bone marrow biopsy and it was in my bone marrow too, so they classified me as stage 4 mantel cell lymphoma."
After surgery, extensive chemo and stem-cell treatment, he went into remission.
Jimmy Stoppard when he was working at the plant, left, and during a period when he was undergoing chemotherapy. Photo: Supplied / Jimmy Stoppard
Nearby workers also affected by dioxin - former manager
Gary Green used to manage New Zealand Steel and Tube about 300 metres from IWD. He was angry the survey did not attempt to capture the effects of the plant beyond its boundaries.
"I thought, what a load of crock this is. First of all, most of those guys will be dead, to be honest. And I thought the fact is that the people who lived near that place might as well have been going there to work each day because that product's waste was coming to them anyway."
Green, who now lived in Australia, vividly remembered an explosion at the plant in 1985.
"It spewed out of a high-pressure vessel raw dioxin. They spewed out a mega-load of dioxin, raw dioxin into the atmosphere."
He said after years of ill health he eventually took a blood serum test.
"Because here in Australia they were trying to figure out what was wrong with my health. So, in the end they did the blood serum test and the results at the time of my test, which was in 2005 I think it was taken, I still had an elevated level of dioxin seven times above that of all of life world health standards."
Green said it was interesting that only now Dow was developing a conscience over what happened in Paritūtū.
Dioxin researcher Andrew Gibbs cautiously welcomed the survey.
"I think it is great but it's interesting that they are leaving off everything outside the boundary fence, for example, the metre-wide river of waste that ran out of the plant in the mid-'60s, and the contamination off the site of council tips and possible marine contamination."
Gibbs feared a lot of the information Dow said it was looking for was already available in company records.
"There's extensive photographic evidence of what was going on at the site in the early days and there are people still alive who worked through that period, and so I wonder what the purpose of this survey really is - if it's simply green-washing."
Company inviting wider response
In a statement, Dow said it had received a positive response to the online survey from the community and former employees.
"In addition to the survey, newspaper advertising and a residential letterbox drop in the Paritūtū area is planned. This is in line with industry best practice to make sure that everyone who has relevant information has the opportunity to contribute."
Dow said since it took ownership of the site back in February, its focus was on its remediation according to the roadmap shared with the Taranaki Regional Council and community stakeholders in November last year. Its focus was on areas on the site where there may be soil and groundwater issues.
"Questions about issues beyond the site itself should be addressed to the Taranaki Regional Council as the environmental regulator."
People wanting to follow the remediation project's progress were invited visit a webpage set up by its contractor Tonkin & Taylor.
Members of the public wanting to complete the survey, which closes on 7 July, can find a link on the same webpage.