The Worst Man Made Disasters
Posted on 11 May 2010 by Stenberg-Tendys W.L. in Uncategorized
The Environmental Protection Agency in the United States has added a further 10 toxic waste sites to the 527 contaminated properties which endanger life. There are also 1,060 hazardous waste sites on their list.
However, toxic contamination is a world-wide problem and not limited to any one nation. Here are just a few of the worst man-made disasters.
Pcher Lead & Zinc Mine
Picher, Oklahoma, which EPA calls the most toxic place in the U.S.A. was once the world’s richest lead and zinc mining field, housing 20,000 people. Less than 25 people remain. Acidic water from the underground mining tunnels turned the creek that runs through the area red and poisonous. The deteriorating underground mines threaten to swallow the streets whole. Mountains of mining, lead contaminated waste, loom over the empty town.
Aral Sea Wasteland
Soviet irrigation projects from the Aral Sea, slowly drained the water out of this once great sea. Today, the sea is nearly dry and has separated into two much smaller seas. Fishing boats sit aground, rusting in a vast, contaminated desert wasteland.
China's e-waste
China’s biggest e-waste village, where electronic trash is dissembled by hand to extract wires and valuable parts. Circuit boards are burned, cooked and soaked in acid to extract scraps of precious metals. These methods, along with pollution from the e-waste itself, have made Guiyu the world’s second-most polluted place on the planet.
The Pacific Trash Vortex, consists of 3.5 million tons of trash — 90% of which is plastic debris — that is swirling between Hawaii and California. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is twice the size of Texas.
In May 2006, gas drilling on the Indonesian island of Java triggered a “mud volcano” killing 13 people. Ever since, hot sulfuric mud has continually gushed from the ground in Sidoarjo. The steaming pool of mud covers more than 25sq k and is growing at an estimated 50,000 cubic meters–the equivalent of a dozen Olympic swimming pools–every day. Scientists expect the mud volcano to continue erupting for another 30 years.
In November 1995, a flock of migrating snow geese landed on the Berkeley Pit Lake, a copper mine filled with more than 40 billion gallons of acidic water and heavy metals . After several days of stormy weather and fog that prevented the birds from leaving, 342 were found dead. The State of Montana determined that excessive exposure to Pit water had corroded the birds’ esophagi.
Mud Volcano Sidoarjo, Java; Plastic Rubbish Vortex In Pacific; Berkeley Pit Lake, Montana
On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Station exploded, releasing radioactive material into the air and contaminating millions of square miles. The 49,000-person town closest to the reactor, Pripyat, was forced to evacuate entirely. Two decades later, this ghost town is a radioactive freeze frame of the Soviet Union in 1986.
Bhopal, India, suffered one of the most tragic environmental disasters the world has ever seen. During the middle of the night in 1984, the Union Carbide plant which manufactured pesticides, leaked 32 tons of deadly methyl isocyanate. Thousands died and thousands more were deformed, blinded, and disabled. More than 2,000 bodies were cremated in one day. The soil and water near the factory are toxic from the still leaking plant. There has been no clean-up.
In the late 1970s, in an effort to clean up the radioactive debris left by the nuclear test explosions in the Marshall Islands, the U.S. government dug up 111,000 cubic yards of radioactive soil and deposited it on Runit Island into a 350-foot wide crater left by the nuclear tests. An enormous, foot-and-a-half-thick, 100,000-square-foot dome consisting of 358 gigantic concrete panels was built over the site. It cost the government nearly a quarter of a billion dollars and took three years to complete. The area is still radioactive.
Chernobyl Nuclea Station Marshall Islands Nuclear Waste Dump Union Carbide Plant, Bhopal, India
In the desert in Turkmenistan is a hole 328 ft. wide that has been on fire, continuously, for 38 years. In 1971, a Soviet drilling rig accidentally punched into a massive underground natural gas cavern, causing the ground to collapse and the entire drilling rig to fall in. Poisonous fumes began leaking from the hole. To head off a potential deadly catastrophe, the Soviets set the hole aflame.
Wittenoom, Pilbara in Australia, once the area’s biggest town in the asbestos mining area is now a toxic ghost town. In 1966 it was officially closed down due to health concerns from the effects of the asbestos mining at the nearby Wittenoom Gorge.
The massive coal fire underneath Centralia, Pennsylvania ignited sometime in 1962 and has been burning ever since. National awareness of Centralia’s unending environmental catastrophe came in 1981 when a 12-year-old boy fell into a 150-foot hole that suddenly appeared in his back yard. Most residents were relocated in 1984, and in 1992 the entire town was condemned.
Decades of strip mining for phosphorus have devastated over 80 % of Nauru’s land, leaving it a barren wasteland of jagged limestone pinnacles up to 49 ft. high. With its reserves depleted, the country’s economy collapsed and the devastation left by strip mining mostly eliminated the chance of establishing a tourist industry. Today Nauru has just a 150-meter-wide strip of fertile land left along one of its shores.
Poisonous Gase Fire In Turkmenistan; Wittennoom, Asbestos Mining Town Australia; Coal Fire under Dentralia, Pens; Barren land Naru Island
Finally we have the Mexico Gulf oil spill, that is as yet unmeasurable.
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11 May 2010
[...] From poisonous gas burning for 38 years, to air fill of asbestos particles, to a Union Carbide plant of pesticides exploding, the man made disasters are horrendous. Take a look at these photos… [...]
Asbestos is one hell of a health hazard that is why we have removed all asbestos based insulation in our homes.:.*
Asbestos would really crap your lungs if you inhale bits of it.*~:
asbestos is a lung killer but some countries are still using asbestos as a heat insulator “;:
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