ECOLOGICAL DISASTERS

Ehringer

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.

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

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

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.

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 01:23:40 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.

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

Chernobyl

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