EDITOR, The Tribune

I write with reference to an article in The Eleutheran on March 10 entitled ‘Eleuthera Residents Appeal To Gov’t To Rejuvaseal Roads’ that could lead to disastrous consequences for the Caribbean islands.

Whilst I would applaud the Bahamas Striping Company’s initiative for proactively looking to preserve the deteriorating asphalt and macadam infrastructure on your beautiful islands, I am at a loss to understand why this company would look to utilise a type of material that has been proven to cause cancer in humans, especially children, that has caused devastating environmental damage to marine life and which is currently costing the USA billions of dollars in clean-up costs due to run-off into water courses.

This dilemma deepens given the fact that there are any number of asphalt-based preservation products that will do exactly the same job as Rejuvaseal but which are environmentally safe to use.

Perhaps the Bahamian people are blinded by the assumption that for the Rejuvaseal product to reach the shores of The Bahamas it must be really successful in its originating state of Texas. Alas no, and the fact is that coal tar products like Rejuvaseal are largely banned in Texas along with a growing number of other states and agencies who have now realised and accepted the toxic nature of the coal tar material.

There is a mass of information regarding the devastating health, financial and environmental damages caused by coal tar products and I would respectfully invite your readers to obtain a better understanding of coal tar and what they can expect from the Bahamas Striping Company’s chosen preservation material should the matter remain unchallenged.

In fairness, there are arguments from some interested parties in the United States who claim that coal tar products are not dangerous. However, there were also strong lobbying bodies historically stating that smoking cigarettes did not adversely affect your health.

As a European tourist and big fan of the Caribbean islands, I have no direct interest in this matter other than my dread of seeing your islands and people damaged unnecessarily. In Europe, we banned coal tar material decades ago and this decision had no standing as to what was going on in The Bahamas or the United States.

Europe banned coal tar because we categorically proved that it killed people, animals, marine life and emitted high levels of toxic contamination into our environment. As I am sure you will appreciate, this was not a difficult decision to make and we simply introduced safe asphalt-based products in place of the historic and toxic cold tar materials.

Notwithstanding the above, and accepting that the general world consensus is that coal tar products have devastating toxic effects, some US entities will still argue that coal tar is not as bad as people claim.

Why would the Bahamian people take this risk for no reason?

For your own sakes – and that of the global tourists that treasure your islands – I would ask your readers to congratulate the Bahamas Striping Company on its progressive initiative in preserving the Caribbean bituminous infrastructure but suggest to the company that this would be better done using one of the proven and safe asphalt-based preservatives as opposed to the generally world-condemned coal tar material like the Rejuvaseal product they are proposing.

Yes, asphalt-based preservatives may be 20 per cent more expensive than the toxic coal tar alternatives but this number is insignificant when you consider health and environmental factors together with the fact that one US state currently has a $2 billion clean-up bill removing road and car park applied coal tar material from its lakes and water courses.

Let me leave you with some simple figures that may be informative.

Number of the 50 European countries that have banned coal tar products – 50.

Number of the 50 European countries that have banned asphalt alternatives – 0.

Number of coal tar material bans issued in the USA to date – 16,500,000 +

Number of asphalt-based material bans issued in the USA to date – 0

Number of safe and proven asphalt products available to Bahamas Striping Company – 125 +

What value do the Bahamian people place on its health, environment and well-being?

NEIL (an ever supportive tourist)

England, UK,

March 13, 2015.