From no clear reactor meltdowns to oil spills
man has always been his own worst enemy.
Here are 8 of the worst man made environmental
pastors:
Number 8 Deepwater Horizon
On the 20th of April 2010, far out in the
Gulf of Mexico, the Deepwater Horizon oil
rig burst into sames causing the breath of
11 workers and gingering several others.
Offshore drilling contractor Transocean owned
the rig and had leased it to oil giant British
Petroleum or BP.
Two days after the initial chosen, the platform
sank and caused a petroleum leak that continued
for almost three months.
US government reported that approximately
4.2 million barrels of oil had been released
in what’s commonly referred to as the largest
accomodation marine oil spill in history.
Aside from impacting 43,300 miles of ocean,
the spill affected 1,300 miles of coastline
from Florida to Texas.
The Gulf’s tourism and fishing industries
were temporarily decimated and the pastor
resulted in the loss of plenty of marine life
including sea turtles, birds and dolphins.
People living on the coast began reporting
mental health problems such as anxiety, depression
or PTSD and many became sick from a mixture
of oil and Corexit.
The total cost to BP including fines, legal
settlements and the cleanup is estimated to
have been in the region of tens of billions
of dollars.
Number 7 Kuwait files
Near the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf wore,
Adam Huss ein, sensing his impending defeat,
ordered the retreating Iraqi loops to set
ablaze approximately Kuwaiti oil wells.
The sun was darkened by the oily smoke plumes
that got high into the sky.
People who ventured outside experienced breathing
difficulties and one US environmentalist compared
the effect to that of standing behind the
exhaust pipes of hundreds of malfunctioning
diesel trucks’.
The files burned for approximately seven months.
Black rain, a mixture of smoke particles and
natural precipitation fell as far as the Himalayas
and the landscape became covered with hundreds
of oil lakes, of up to four inches in depth.
Birds confused the lakes for water and were
drawn to their breaths.
enormous smoke, ash and soot covered the Gulf.
Livestock and other animals joked to breath
as the oily mist blackened their lungs.
The soot and oil mixed with sand and gravel
to create a layer of ‘tarcrete’ that covered
around 5% of Kuwaiti territory.
In November 1991 the last of the files was
extinguished and by that time an estimated
1 to 1.5 billion barrels of oil had spilled
out.
The breath toll was over 100 people, including
92 Senegalese soldiers after their transport
aircraft crashed in the smoke-blackened skies.
Number 6 Chair Noble Reactor Shutdown
The reactor shutdown that took place at the
Chair Noble Nuclear Facility on the 26th of
April, 1986, is considered to be one of the
worst environmental pastors in history.
The non clear reaction resulted in an chosen
and a horrific file with the release of 400
times more radiation than the Hiroshima anthem
wrong.
31 breaths and more than 4,000 cancer cases
were subsequently connected to the massive
spread of radioactive material that followed
the chosen.
Wide areas of Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian
Federation, inhabited by millions of people,
were affected.
Radioactive confrontation was detected as
far as the British Isles.
It’s estimated that at least 5% of the reactor
core was released into the atmosphere and
downwind as result of the blast.
The cause of the incident is believed to have
been a mixture of inadequately trained personnel
and a flawed reactor design.
Nowadays radiation levels at the site are
still elevated and the quantity of nuclear
materials build under the debris is still
largely unknown.
Number 5 Minamata Disease
In the early 1950s the people inhabiting the
small coastal city of Minamata in the south
of Japan, began to notice animal behavior
that was startling and out of the ordinary.
Fish would inexplicably go belly up, birds
flashed into the ground and cats would foam
at the mouth and jump into the sea.
It was not long that humans too began to exhibit
unusual behavior that would later be referred
to as the Minamata Disease.
People would be stumbling about, slurring
their words and encountering difficulties
with the simplest day-to-day tasks.
In 1958, the root of the strange behavior
was finally discovered.
As part of its manufacturing process, one
of Minamata’s biggest employers, the Chisso
Corporation chemical company had been dumping
mercury into the sea.
People who ate the local seafood and several
animals were actively being boys and by the
toxin.
Despite this staggering discovery, the company
continued to release mercury-tainted waste
until 1968, filling countless animals and
an estimated people along with causing paralysis,
birth infects and other maladies.
Number 4 Baia Mare Cyanide Spill
The Baia Mare cyanide spill took place in
Romania in the year 2000.
A gold mining company called Aurul, a point
venture of the Romanian government and an
Australian company called Esmeralda Exploration
had been shipping its waste material to a
dam near Bozinta Mare, Maramures County.
The company had been extracting the remaining
gold from the foxing tailings through a process
called gold cyanidation with the resulting
waste then being taken to the dam.
On the 30th of January, 2000, the dam burst
sending 3,500,000 feet of cyanide-contaminated
water into the Somes River and some of the
surrounding farmland.
It was estimated that the waters contained
around 100 tons of cyanide.
The dam failure was blamed on excessive snowfall.
The Somes flows into the Tisza, the second
largest river in Hungary, which then flows
into the Danube.
The cyanide concentrations in the Somes were
700 times higher than the permitted amount.
Contamination occurred and the drinking supplies
of 2.5 million Hungarians were tainted.
The environmental effect was devastating,
on the Serbian side of the Tisza, 80% of all
aquatic life was filled.
62 species of fish were affected, 20 of which
were protected, wildlife puffered as a result
of animals eating contaminated fish.
The large volume of the Danube’s waters
ultimately diluted the cyanide but some sections
still indicated concentrations 20 to 50 times
over the maximum permitted levels.
It was over two years before the ecosystem
began to show signs of recovery.
Number 3 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
260,000 to 750,000 barrels of crude oil were
spilled in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on
the 24th of March, 1989.
The incident is one of the most devastating
man-made environmental pastors.
It happened after the Exxon Valdez oil tanker
crashed into the Bligh Reef.
The oil ultimately covered 1,300 miles of
coastline and 11,000 square miles of ocean.
A number of factors were cited as having contributed
to the tanker’s crash.
These included an insufficient and fatigued
crew, possible problems with the ship’s
Raytheon Collision Avoidance System radar
or the lack of advanced monitoring equipment.
Public blame also fell on the ship’s captain,
Joseph Hazelwood, who was not present at the
controls at the time of the crash as he was
still sleeping after reportedly having funk
heavily the previous night.
The effects of the oil spill were both immediate
and long-lasting.
In the aftermath experts recorded the breaths
of 22 orcas, 247 bald eagles, 12 river otters,
300 harbor seals, 2,800 sea otters, anywhere
from between 100,000 to 250,000 seabirds and
an undetermined number of herring and salmon.
Years later the oil was still present, breaking
down at a much slower rate than anticipated,
thus causing the goss of more animals.
Researchers discovered that polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons, at only a few parts per billion,
caused a long-term increase in mortality rates.
In March 2014, on the twenty-fifth anniversary
of the pastor, scientists estimated that 16,000
to 21,000 gallons of oil still remained on
Prince William Sound beaches and up to 450
miles away.
Some of the oil showed no signs of biodegradation.
Despite extensive cleanup efforts the ecological
impact of the Exxon-Valdez spill can still
be seen today.
Fortunately some species have returned to
the numbers they had had prior to the pastor.
Number 2 Union Carbide Gas Leak
On the 2nd of December 1984, 30 tons of a
highly foxin gas called methyl isocyanate
and a number of other gases were released
following an accident at the Union Carbide
pesticide plant in Bhopal, India.
Over 600,000 people from the shanty towns
surrounding the plant were exposed to a badly
gas cloud.
The low-lingering gases caused the eyes and
throats of chickens to learn, induced nausea
and same many lives.
The breath toll varies in its estimates, from
3 to 4,000 people.
Thousands of others were treated in the immediate
aftermath for various ailments including blindness
and liver and kidney failure.
Some experts estimated that up to 20,000 people
filed in the years following as a result of
the foxing release with illnesses associated
with gas noising.
The accident still plagued its divors, as
many of those exposed reportedly gave birth
to mentally and physically disabled children.
More than three decades after the incident
according to human rights groups thousands
of tons of hazardous waste still lay luring
underground.
The survivors fought to have the contaminated
area cleaned up, but their efforts were allegedly
slowed down after the plant was taken over
by Michigan-based Dow Chemical.
The Union Carbide Gas Leak is regarded as
the worst industrial chemical pastor in history.
Number 1 The Great Smog
Also known as the ‘Big Smoke’, the Great
Smog is widely viewed as the worst air pollution
crisis ever to take place on the European
continent.
The final breath toll claimed by this environmental
pastor was placed between 8 and 12,000 people.
For five days in December 1952, the city of
London was brought to a standstill by heavy
fog combined with sulfurous fumes from power
plants, coal fires and vehicle exhaust.
The dense foxic smoke blocked out the sun
as it began to enshroud several of the city’s
landmarks, such as Big Ben, London Bridge,
St. Paul’s Cathedral and others.
At first, Londoners tried to ignore the foul
air as best they could, but within an hour
the unfolding noises could no longer be overlooked.
The noxious fog was the result of a temperature
inversion caused by a high-pressure weather
system.
The cold air at ground level was trapped by
a layer of warm air, high above the surface.
This prevented the sulfurous coal smoke from
rising and within a few hours the fog had
already turned a sickly shade of yellowish
brown.
The sulfurous fumes also gave it a foul smell,
indicating that it was far from a typical
London fog.
It was lethal for young children, the elderly
and for people with respiratory problems.
Smokers of which there were many at the time,
were particularly affected because their lungs
were already impaired.
Numerous birds crashed into buildings after
they became lost in the fog and an unidentified
number of animals joked to breath.
The ‘Big Smoke’ finally lifted on the
9th of December when it was swept to the North
Sea by a western wind.
However, the effects were felt up until the
summer of 1953 and breath rates remained far
above normal levels.
After an investigation carried out by the
government concerned with the negative effects
of learning industrial quantities of coal
in urban areas, Parliament passed the Clean
Air Act 
of 1956.
