The United States and Japan are PCBs producing countries which then experienced a PCBs pollution disaster due to improper use and waste management. However, this does not mean that PCBs environmental pollution only occurs in PCBs producing countries. In various cases, non-producing countries also experience problems with PBCs sourced from various electrical equipment used by industry. As a country with a very large industrial population, do PCBs exist and have polluted the environment in Indonesia?
SOURCES AND POLLUTION OF PCBs IN INDONESIA
In its time, transformers and capacitors produced using PCBs have been exported to various non-producing countries to support industrial activities in various countries. One of these countries is Indonesia. This is evidenced by the data and information summarized from PCBs inventory activities carried out by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK) of the Republic of Indonesia.
In the PCBs inventory activity conducted by UNIDO and KLHK on the islands of Sumatra and Java from 2015 to 2020, it was found that almost 3% of the total transformer population contaminated with PCBs were genuine PCBs transformers. This can be known based on the information obtained from the equipment plate, namely dielectric oil using several types of PCBs brands listed in Table 2 as well as the year of production and country of origin according to the PCB transformer profile, which was produced before 1979 by a PCBs transformer manufacturer (Deswandi, 2007). 2021). The distribution of PCBs contaminated transformers on the islands of Sumatra and Java can be seen in Figure 3 below.
As much as 33% of the total population of transformers contaminated with PCBs are transformers with a production year below 1983 (Deswandi, 2021) aka transformers that are old. When compared with the period of PCBs production from 1930 to 1993 (PEN, 2016) and the industrialization and utilization of power plants in Indonesia during that period, it is suspect that there are many transformer PCBs imported from PCBs producing countries. Since the KLHK and UNIDO PCBs inventory only takes a small part of the total transformers in Indonesia, it is very possible that there are still original transformer PCBs that are still in use or have become waste. Because PCBs are not possible to form naturally, it is reasonable to suspect that some of them have been managed in an inappropriate way, causing environmental pollution, as found and summarized from several studies in Indonesia from 2006 to 2019.
Analysis of 29 types of consumption fish in the Ciliwung River, Jakarta Bay, Lada Bay (Banten), Cirebon, and Lampung Bay has found PCBs content ranging from 9 to 2,700 ng/g (Sudaryanto et al., 2007). Although relatively small, the PCBs content in fish will accumulate and continue to increase if the community continues to consume PCBs contaminated fish. This is inseparable from the nature of PCBs that dissolve and settle in fat tissue. The accumulation of PCBs in the human body, especially in Indonesian society, has been proven by the finding of PCBs in the breast milk of nursing mothers who live in Jakarta, Purwakarta, Bogor and Lampung (Sudaryanto et al., 2006).
At a certain amount, PCBs that remain in the human body will trigger chromosomal damage and abnormalities which in turn trigger the growth of cancer cells (Gadalla & Andreotti, 2015; Joyce & Hou, 2015). Damage and chromosomal abnormalities due to pollution are not only harmful to humans, but also harmful to organisms exposed to PCBs. Research conducted by researchers from Brawijaya University in Malang and Le Havre University in France found abnormalities in sex cells (gonads) in male Tawes fish (Puntius javanicus) in Kali Mas, Surabaya. This study revealed that 20% of male fish caught had abnormalities in the formation of egg cells (ova) in the male genital organs (J. J. Shobikhulatul et al., 2013). This sex abnormality is strongly suspected to be triggered by hormone-destroying compounds found in the waters of Kali Mas, including PCBs (Ilyas et al., 2011). Experiments conducted on mice proved that PCBs found in the body are recognized as exo-estrogens that trigger estrogen activity (Fielden et al., 1997). Estrogen itself is a hormone that plays a role in the development of female sex cells, for example regulating the menstrual cycle and egg development.
(To be continue to Part 2)
