Judging from presentations made at a forum on sustainable development last week, it appears paradise is a veil thinly laid.

Bermuda?s environment is suffering a variety of pollution-related ailments which are chipping away at the quality of both the air and the sea.

Scientists participating in the forum said many of the Island?s environmental problems are tied directly to our disposal of waste (including sewage) but air quality is also suffering from the high number of vehicles on the roads.

Dr. Andrew Peters, a scientist from the Bermuda Biological Station for Research (BBSR), told the roughly 90 people gathered last Wednesday at Bermuda College that the Island?s air quality, while still generally good, is starting to suffer.

East Broadway is the most polluted spot in Bermuda, he said, and much of the pollution is coming from Bermuda?s high numbers of scooters and auxiliary cycles.

?Two-wheel vehicles tend to be a lot dirtier,? he said, since they have higher emissions. Bermuda has the second highest proportion of motorcycles in the world, he added, exceeded only by India.

Since 2000 the amount of airborne particles around East Broadway has crept up to and exceeded the safe limit, he said, even surpassing the annual readings of air pollution in some European cities.

Particularly dangerous to the public are those particles small enough to be inhaled deeply into the lungs, ?which can physically block the lungs, forcing the heart to work harder in pumping blood?, he said.

?The UK Department of Health estimates that up to 24,000 people die prematurely per year in the UK because of the effects of air pollution, with many thousands more requiring hospital treatment.?

While the air is becoming more polluted, Dr. Peters said studies have shown that pollution does not seem to be coming from the Tynes Bay incinerator, as many incinerator opponents feared when it was constructed back in 1992.

The incinerator?s location leaves the Prospect Fort area the most vulnerable to pollution from it, but this area is not as polluted as East Broadway, Dr. Peters said.

Measurements taken in Prospect show it to have very clean air, with BELCO falling only slightly short of the same diagnosis.

?Tynes Bay Incinerator has had no measurable impact on air quality in terms of NOx/SO2 (nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide, caused in part by fossil fuel burning), acid rain, and airborne particulate matter (breathable particles in the air),? he said.

Among those in attendance was conservationist Stuart Hayward, who fought hard against the construction of the $64-million incinerator back in 1992, calling it ?madness? and saying that method of waste management was already antiquated and had even been banned in some countries.

Mr. Hayward wanted to know why mercury levels were not tested in order to determine the true impact of the incinerator.

Dr. Peters said there was no facility in Bermuda for mercury analysis, but that before the incinerator was built a study of water tanks across the Island was done, and again five years later, and most recently this year.

That study revealed there was as much mercury in the water before the incinerator?s construction as there was after, proving that it was not a major source.

The Bermuda Mercury Programme has since been launched to find out where the mercury in our air and water is coming from.

Dr. Peter?s fellow BBSR scientist Dr. Joanna Pitt had some chilling news about the state of the Island?s mangrove swamps.

After a century of world-wide decline, mangroves have seen a global loss of over 35 percent, and Bermuda is no exception, she said.

Castle Harbour has suffered the Island?s most significant loss of mangroves.

When the US Naval Base was built in the 1940s ? ?hectares and hectares of mangroves were filled in? and the area was dredged heavily. ?Sixty years on, (there are only) some signs of recovery,? she said.

Bermuda?s coral is also suffering as a result of contaminants making their way into the seabed.

Coral cover is now less dense and the communities less diverse, Dr. Pitt said, and Bermuda?s simplistic sewage disposal is also causing less coral to grow.

Bermuda has only one method of dealing with human waste, Dr. Pitt said, called primary treatment, which is the least effective method of dealing with sewage.

It dissolves any solids still left in the raw sewage so that it simply changes into sludge, and is then ready to be sent out to sea.

Ocean-bound sewage, which is pumped three miles out from Seabright Avenue, acts as a fertiliser to fast growing weeds, which compromises the slow growing coral, Dr. Pitt said.

She called for the use of advanced, or tertiary waste treatment, which would render the Island?s sewage harmless to both land and marine life.

Dr. Pitt also called for more rigorous enforcement of laws currently in place to protect the environment. Legislation against littering in the sea does exist, she said, but there has not yet been one prosecution and other regulations and guidelines are largely left down to individual discretion.

The marine environment provides Bermudians with food, employment and perhaps most important to locals, recreation. ?The ocean is our wilderness,? said Dr. Pitt. She also highlighted the potential medical breakthroughs that might be found ?out there somewhere, possibly lurking in a sponge?.