Rice straw burning more lethal than car fumes

It’s April and farmers have started harvesting palay. At least the issue of rice shortage, if any, will eventually simmer down. However, both the government and the non-governmental sectors need to be on the watch on another farmers’ issue.

This time, the focus of the government and the environmental and health advocates will shift to concerns on the disposal of rice straws or dayami that would be discarded from the over seven million metric tons of palay nationwide.

The customary way by which rural farmers nationwide discard the basural dayami stacks is to pile these discards into a heap right at the center of the harvested rice field and burn them. The term basural is defined by the Encyclopaedia Britanicca dictionary as rubbish heap.

According to the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), the common practice of burning rice straws and other agricultural wastes produces pollution that could be more hazardous than the gases emitted by vehicles if taken collectively.

The Eco-Waste Coalition, a broad coalition of waste and pollution organizations, has offered a sound ecological management solution by composting rice straws to produce organic fertilizer for the farms.

A recent DOST study has revealed that uncontrolled open burning of rice straws and other agricultural residues could release the number one source of carcinogenic or cancer-causing substances known as dioxins and furans, which are byproducts of the combustion process.

According to a Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) fact sheet, dioxins and furans are considered persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that are produced unintentionally by combustion, which resist degradation and stay in the environment for a long period of time. These poisonous substances can also be produced through industrial sources such as in the manufacture of plastics, metals smelting and refining, pulp and paper bleaching, textile and leather dyeing and finishing, and waste oil refineries, among others.

The recent DOST study on the “First National Inventory of Dioxins and Furans” noted that the highest source of dioxins and furans could be open field burning, forest fires, backyard trash burning, kaingin farming and even through the emission of gas fumes in trucks and automobiles, among others.

According to the DENR, these hazardous substances can enter the environment as vapors or solid particles in the air, which can attach to soil and sediment in lakes and rivers and build up in animals, birds and people that are contaminated to dioxins and furans in their food.

Frequent exposure to these substances can cause skin and eye irritations including swollen eyelids with watery discharge, acne, darkened skin color, vomiting and diarrhea, anemia, lung infections, numbness, nervous system disorder, liver damage and cancer. The probable routes of exposure can be through direct breathing of the polluted air, drinking contaminated water or eating meat, fish or milk that have been earlier exposed to the said substances.

Bernie Aragoza, a member of the Eco-Waste Coalition task force on natural farming and an organic farmer himself, has stressed that the ecological alternative of turning rice straws into organic compost fertilizer can dramatically reduce farmers’ dependence on expensive chemical fertilizers costing from P800 to P1,000 per bag.

These dayamis, he said, can also be used as fodder for livestock or as substrates for cultivating mushrooms or even as raw materials for special papers.

The Department of Agriculture (DA) launched in 2006 the ”Unified Campaign on Composting and Prevention of Rice Straw Burning” as part of its Agri-Kalikasan program.

However, the outmoded practice of burning rice straws reportedly persists to this day. Roy Alvarez, film actor and Eco-Waste Coalition vice president, said that instead of creating pollution hotspots, the country’s farmers might as well embrace organic farming, while making the planet a cool place to live in.