Ecological Disasters

1
Ecological Disasters

• Ehringer

2
Love Canal

• Love Canal is a neighborhood in Niagara Falls,
  New York, United States of America (USA), which
  became the subject of national attention and
  controversy following the discovery of toxic
  waste buried beneath the neighborhood. It
  officially covers 36 square blocks in the far
  southeastern corner of the city, along 99th
  Street and Read Avenue. In 1942, Hooker Chemical
  and Plastics Corporation (which became a
  subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum in 1968)
  expanded use of the site, and, by 1947, acquired
  the land for private use. In the subsequent five
  year period, the company buried about 22,000 tons
  of toxic waste in the area. Once the site had
  been filled to capacity in 1952, Hooker closed
  the site, back-filled the canal, and covered it
  with five feet of clay.

3
Times Beach, Missouri

• Times Beach, Missouri was a small town of 2,240
  residents in St. Louis County, Missouri, 17 miles
  (27 km) southwest of St. Louis and 2 mi (3 km)
  east of Eureka, Missouri. The town was completely
  evacuated in the mid-1980s due to a dioxin scare
  that made national headlines. It was the largest
  civilian exposure to dioxin in the United States.
• Dioxin - In 1994, EPA reported that dioxin is a
  probable carcinogen, but notes that non-cancer
  effects (reproduction and sexual development,
  immune system) may pose an even greater threat to
  human health

4
Kesterson Wildlife Refuge

• The Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge is an
  artificial wetlands environment, created using
  agricultural runoff from farmland in California's
  Central Valley.
• The irrigation water is transported to the valley
  from sources in the Sierra Nevada mountains via
  the California Aqueduct. Minerals from these
  sources are carried in the water and concentrated
  by evaporation from aqueducts, canals, and
  fields, which has resulted in an accumulation of
  selenium and other minerals in the wetlands.
  Wildlife in this region suffered deformities due
  to selenium poisoning, drawing the attention of
  news media and leading to the closure of the
  refuge

5
Three Mile Island

• The Three Mile Island accident was the most
  significant accident in the history of the
  American commercial nuclear power generating
  industry.
• The accident began on Wednesday, March 28, 1979,
  and ultimately resulted in a partial core
  meltdown in Unit 2 of the nuclear power plant (a
  pressurized water reactor manufactured by Babcock
  Wilcox) of the Three Mile Island Nuclear
  Generating Station in Dauphin County,
  Pennsylvania near Harrisburg.

6
Chernobyl

• The "Chernobyl disaster", reactor accident at the
  Chernobyl nuclear power plant, or simply
  "Chernobyl", was the worst nuclear power plant
  accident in history and the only instance so far
  of level 7 on the International Nuclear Event
  Scale, resulting in a severe nuclear meltdown. On
  26 April 1986 at 012340 a.m. reactor number
  four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant located
  in the Soviet Union near Pripyat in Ukraine
  exploded. Further explosions and the resulting
  fire sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout
  into the atmosphere and over an extensive
  geographical area.
• The plume drifted over parts of the western
  Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Western Europe,
  Northern Europe, and eastern North America. Large
  areas in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly
  contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and
  resettlement of over 336,000 people. According to
  official post-Soviet data, about 60 of the
  radioactive fallout landed in Belarus.

7
Chernobyl

• 57 direct deaths in the accident itself.
• predicted up to 4,000 additional cancer cases due
  to the accident
• about 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer reported in
  children and adolescents

8
Chernobyl
9
Union Carbide

• The Bhopal disaster was an industrial disaster
  that occurred in Bhopal, India, resulting in the
  death of about 3,000 people according to the
  Indian Supreme Court. However, testimonies from
  doctors who provided medical assistance during
  the tragedy claim over 15,000 were dead in the
  first month alone.
• The incident took place in the early hours of the
  morning of December 3, 1984, in the heart of the
  city of Bhopal in the Indian state of Madhya
  Pradesh. A Union Carbide subsidiary pesticide
  plant released 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate
  (MIC) gas, killing between 2500 and 5000
  people.citation needed Bhopal is frequently
  cited as one of the world's worst industrial
  disasters