Dear Environmentality
Listeners,
Jaime, Smokey and Sarah are
exploring the top ten environmental disasters based from Time Magazine’s Time
Lists.
Lets start from number ten…
10. Three Mile Island
On March 28th
1979 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor partly melted down. This disaster ignited fears surrounding the
nuclear power industry. Time magazine
highlights that although this was known as one of America’s worst nuclear
disasters, nothing really happened. There
were no fatalities and the operation is still producing nuclear power
today. Funnily enough, this disaster
coincided with the release of the Jane Fonda movie “The China Syndrome”, which
is a film that explores the nuclear power industry and the cover-ups of a
nuclear power plant.
9. Minamata Disease
Minimata is a town located
on an island named Kyushu in Japan. Over
several years locals had witnessed unusual behaviour amongst animals,
predominantly domestic cats. Time
magazine describes the felines would unexpectedly convulse and at times leap to
their deaths into the ocean. The
residents referred to this phenomenon as “cat dancing disease”. The first human who contracted Minamata
disease was in 1956. The symptoms of the
disease encompassed convulsions, slurred
speech, loss of motor functions and uncontrollable limb movements. Upon exploration into the disease it was
identified that it was a result of industrial poisoning of Minamata Bay by the
plastic manufacturer Chisso Corperation, which in turn was one of the town’s
largest employers. In the wastewater
pollution it was found to have large amounts of mercury and additional heavy
metals, which found its way into fish and shellfish and in turn was a large
component of the local diet. As a result
thousands of residents have experienced symptoms of the disease with some
people dying as a consequence of the pollution.
There has been slow progress in receiving compensation for the local
town people.
8. Seveso
Dioxin Cloud
In the Italian town of Seveso on the 10th
July 1976 an explosion of a chemical plant discharged a thick white cloud of
dioxin. Dioxins are highly toxic by
products of industrial activities, and are known to be environmental
contaminants and can penetrate organinc matter such as humans, animals, soils
and flora. About a month after the
dioxin cloud settled on Seveso Time Magazine had reported that a farmer had
witnessed his cat die before his eyes, upon picking up his deceased cat its
tail fell off. When the cat was exhumed
for investigation the only remains of the cat was its skull. Approximately four days after the disaster
humans began to feel symptoms from the poisoning as a result of the dioxin
being released. People started
exhibiting nausea, blurred vision and, especially among children, the
disfiguring sores of a skin disease known as chloracne.
7. The
Aral Sea
The Aral Sea is located between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and is known for its “graveyard of ships”. The once thriving Aral Sea was decimated
after the 1960’s Soviet irrigation project resulting in the diversion of
numerous source watercourses causing the formerly fourth largest lake on earth
decreasing the Aral Sea to 90% of its earlier glory. The area is now a desert that creates salt
and sand storms that kill plant life and has damaging effects on Humans and animals
alike. The United Nations Secretary
General Ban Ki-Moon toured the area in April 2010 and witnessed the rusting
former fishing trawlers and other vessels are now slowly rusting away in a new
dessert that stretches for miles. Ban
Ki-Moon commented; "It is clearly one of the
worst disasters, environmental disasters of the world. I was so shocked."
6.
Tokaimura Nuclear Plant
At the time, this was Japan’s worst nuclear
disaster. On the 30th
September 1999 at the town of Tokaimura, three workers had incorrectly mixed a
uranium solution resulting in a “blue flash”, one worker was knocked
unconscious and the others were nauseated and their hands and faces were bright
crimson. While killing two of the
workers hundreds of other people were exposed to several levels of radiation.
5. The Exxon Valdez
The evening of the
24th March 1989 saw the oil tanker Exxon Valdez run aground on the
Bligh Reef located in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. 10.8 million gallons of oil started spilling
out into the unspoiled waters, ultimately distributing the oil across 500 miles
across the coastline. This oil slick
killed and injured thousands of sea and land wildlife such as birds, otters,
seals and fish. At the time the Exxon
Valdez incident was named the worst man made environmental disaster in U.S
history. Thousands of people organised to
clean up the huge disaster.
4. Love Canal
The love Canal is
located near America’s Niagara Falls in the state of New York. Hundreds of residential dwellings and a
school are located in the area and were built upon 21 000 tons of toxic waste. In the 1940’s and 1950’s the industrial waste
was buried by a local company and over several years the waste started
“bubbling” up into backyards and basements.
By 1978 the issue was inescapable and the local residents sold off their
properties to the federal government and left the area. This disaster initiated the foundation of the
Super Fund Program that assists the clean up of toxic waste locations.
3. Kuwaiti Oil Fires
At the end of the
1991 Persian Gulf War Saddam Hussein sent in his troops to blow up the Kuwaiti
oil wells. His theory was if he couldn’t
benefit from the profits from the oil no one else can. Roughly 600 wells were set alight and were
burning for seven months, throughout this time black rain fell and lakes of oil
were formed. With the mix of oil, soot,
sand and gravel this resulted in a layer of “tarcrete” hardening the surface of
5% of the country. Thousand of wildlife
and livestock perished as a result of the oil fires.
2. Bhopal
The region of
Bhopal, India was the recipient of an accident from the Union Carbide Pesticide
Plant on the end of December 1984. The
accident released 45 tons of poisonous methyl isocyanate across the region
resulting in thousands of deaths within hours, and around 15 000 over the next
few months. Over 500 000 people being
affected by this disaster resulting in blindness,
organ failure, awful bodily malfunctions and birth defects. The corporation paid out half a billion
dollars to the “victims” of the accident, with some people saying that this amount
of money is not large enough to cover the cost of the decades long magnitude of
the issue.
And now for number one...
1. Chernobyl
In the town of Chernobyl
in the Ukraine on the 26th April 1986 a reactor of the Chernobyl
nuclear power plant had exploded. The
explosion caused a nuclear meltdown and propelled enormous amounts of radiation
into the atmosphere, to put this into perspective, it was said that the fallout
was larger than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki incidents combined. The radiation drifted across what was then Soviet Russia and toward Europe resulting in
thousand of children becoming ill particularly with thyroid cancer. Still to this day there is an off limits zone
of a 20 mile radius from the plant.
