PANCEVO, Yugoslavia -- On the edge of town, in a sprawling industrial park that held an oil refinery, a petrochemical plant and a fertilizer factory, lie the twisted pipes, scorched storage tanks, crumbled roofs and jagged detritus left by NATO bombs.
Yet it is not these ruined factories that are the worst scourges of war in this river town, many people here believe, but the tons of toxic material that poured out of them.Farm workers, plunging their fingers into the earth, say they come away with rashes that burn and blister. Those who eat the river fish and vegetables or drink the tap water, which trickles out of faucets because of the damage to the purification plant, come down with diarrhea, vomiting and stomach cramps.
Children, many of whom were sent away to Slovakia by local Red Cross officials for several weeks to escape the clouds of noxious gasses that hovered for days over Pancevo, still suffer headaches and dizziness. The war's lingering, ghoulish touch could be affecting even the unborn. There are twice as many miscarriages as during this period last year, doctors here said.
There is no independent assessment of the medical effects of the exposure to chemicals the bombing caused. The scientific studies conducted by the Yugoslavs in Pancevo, by their own admission, have been carried out with outdated methods and inferior, antiquated equipment. The results of such testing, said Dr. Predrag Polic, the chemist who conducted many of the tests, are three or four weeks away.
The U.N. Environment Program has formed a Balkans Task Force, headed by Pakka Haavisto, who was environment minister in Finland. It will send a team of international experts to Pancevo, and about half a dozen other damaged industrial sites, next Tuesday to take air, water and soil samples for three or four weeks. It expects to publish its findings and make recommendations in September.
"The most dangerous moment probably occurred during the fires when the smoke was in the air," said Haavisto, who briefly visited Pancevo two weeks ago and was reached by phone in Geneva.
"A large amount of chemicals burned during this time. It remains unclear how much is in the soil, but when you walk in Pancevo you can smell chemical substances. The biggest danger now is that the groundwater and the Danube have been directly polluted, something that will affect the drinking water.
"There are towns in Romania and Bulgaria that use the Danube for drinking water. In my estimation the most damaged sites will need a cleaning process, as in places where the soil and water have been contaminated with toxic materials, before we can talk about rebuilding."
Government officials, doctors and residents in the town report a surge of unexplained symptoms.
"The effects of the bombing on these industrial sites have been enormous," said Simon Bancov, the government health inspector for the region. "More than 100,000 tons of carcinogens were unleashed into the air, the water and the soil. The produce is not safe to eat. The long-term damage to the water table and riverbeds is severe. People complain constantly of stomach pain but have no viral or bacterial symptoms. We have all been poisoned."
The repeated airstrikes on the industrial complex, which covers several acres, culminated in three huge hits at 1 a.m. on April 18. The bombs sent fireballs into the air and enveloped Pancevo in clouds of black smoke and milky white gasses. Flames leapt from the facilities for 10 days.
The airstrikes, part of the 78-day effort to destroy Serbia's infrastructure in the war over Kosovo, unleashed tons of chemicals into the air and water. An estimated 1,500 tons of vinyl chloride, the building block of a type of plastic, 3,000 times higher than permitted levels, burned into the air or poured into the soil and river, according to municipal officials in Pancevo, which is controlled by opposition parties hostile to President Slobodan Milosevic.
The chemical substance, which has left the banks of the river edged with white foam, still clogs the canals around the town. Huge quantities of other noxious chemicals burned or gushed out of storage facilities, according to town officials and Yugoslav scientists.
By dawn of the night of the attack, dozens of people were hospitalized gasping for air, struggling to see and unable to digest food, witnesses said.