10 Environmental Disasters Worse Than BP Oil Spill

[FBaggins]

Fingers crossed. BP's oil leak has apparently stopped shy of 200 million gallons spewed into the Gulf of Mexico and a few million more burned off into plumes of toxic smoke. Many have dubbed it the worst environmental disaster in American history. In my view, it's not even close, but shares a great deal in common with those that are on the "top ten worst" list-and offers lessons we can profit from.



10. Chevron Oil Refinery, El Segundo, Calif.

Decades of leaking pipes and tanks dumped some 252 million gallons of oil and chemicals into aquifers beneath the refinery. To supply Los Angeles with clean water, fossil fuels were burned to generate vast amounts of electricity to pump water hundreds of miles across the state, adding to air pollution, asthma, global warming and the state debt.

9. Pacific Salmon
8. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
7. The Oil Pipes of Esmeraldas, Ecuador
6. The Destruction of the Mississippi and Colorado Rivers
5. Decimation of the American Bison
4. The Great Dustbowl
3. Ocean Acidification
2. Emptying the Groundwater
1. Air Pollution



http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Tamminen-10-Environmental-cnbc-219415894.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=1&asset=&ccode=

[whosinpower]

1. Hmmm - what about...

Chernobyl?

Seems to me that the Chernobyl reactor meltdown and the surrounding radioactive area that will be unlivable for thousands of years.....well one has to wonder why that did not make the list?

[FBaggins]

3. I think that the author is thinking of US impact on the environment.

#7 being the biggest stretch.

Chernobyl really can't be seen as an american environmental disaster.

[whosinpower]

5. #7 made me think it was global....

Certainly, with the exception of #7, american environmental disasters - ok.

But, if we were to include the entire planet.....that does change the list - yes?

[whosinpower]

4. I can't help but think of Bhopal as well.....

Not downplaying the environmental disaster that is the gulf oil spill.....

The Bhopal disaster should be on this list too.

[Dogmudgeon]

9. Chernobyl was bad, but it won't be "unlivable for thousands of years"

Some of the former residents have even moved back. It's not legal, but the authorities are not cracking down. Physicians and scientists are keeping a close watch on them. There does not seem to be a tremendous impact on their health, but I imagine they'll have cancer rates that are in the heavy-smoker range within 10-20 years; probably not as much lung cancer as bone cancer, leukemia, and thyroid cancers. Many will be benign; there will of course be plenty of malignant cancers.

Radiation is certainly hazardous, and the Chernobyl fallout was quite serious, but I think there has been a lot of exaggeration, too. A number of well-regarded studies have been done about the disaster. Although some are "wowser" reports written for fear mongering, and a few that under-play the damage, there have been studies from reputable institutions that are considered definitive. They make enlightening, if dull, reading.

Incidentally, Chernobyl was mainly an explosion and fire, with a secondary meltdown; it was worse than a simple melt would have been. It's as close to a worst-case scenario as physicists can think of.

--d!

[whosinpower]

10. I stand corrected

I recalled listening to a program that explored Chernobyl and something about the half life of some of the radioactive isotopes that were cast over the region after the explosion.

The half life does not take into account - mother natures ability to disperse the radioactive particles.

I still believe it should be on the list if one is thinking in terms of global environmental disasters. The accident happened in 1986....twenty five years later there is still elevated risk involved in living in the area......

[Dogmudgeon]

11. Yes, it was a major disaster, all right

I don't minimize it at all. Sometimes when I make the point, people think I'm trying to dismiss it, but it was the third-largest environmental nuclear disaster in history.

The largest environmental nuclear disaster, in my opinion, was the open-air bomb testing from 1942 to 1961. There were some tests after 1961, but they were few and usually used small amounts of nuclear material. Those tests, as a single series, absolutely dwarfed Chernobyl. Ironically, it is seldom mentioned these days. The main concern was strontium-90, because it mimics calcium in the body.

The Chernobyl explosion released strontium-90, too, but the big concern was, and still is, cesium-137. If you watch Rachel Maddow, it was in the news tonight, and she did a report on some knuckleheads trying to sell Cs-137. It has a half-life of about 19 years, if I'm not mistaken. Since scientists use ten half-lives (1/1000th the original dose) as a rule of thumb for complete decay, Chernobyl should may be "cleared" by 2175 or so. Nearly all the other radioactive contaminants had very short half-lives, some measured in hours, so we lucked out there.

Number two on the nuclear disaster list is the use of coal for energy. There is a significant amount of uranium and thorium in coal ash; there is more latent nuclear energy in coal than latent heat energy. Uranium also has metal toxicity. And coal has more than just uranium and thorium in it. The mercury, arsenic, and cadmium are major concerns as well.

I would actually make the bomb test era the #2 disaster (on the big list, not the nuclear-only list) of all time -- right after CO2-forced Global Warming, which is clearly #1.

I think the reason why there is so much misunderstanding about nuclear physics is because it is new in human experience, people don't understand it well, and the era began with an atrocious abuse of its power -- Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is a great deal of scientific information available, but it's not easily accessible to most people. On the other hand, if you can dig through it, as I had to do when I was training in neurophysiology technology in the 1980s, it's an amazing learning experience.

(And thanks for giving me an excuse to write about all this! :) )

--d!

[leveymg]

2. Too early to say what the environmental impact will be. Probably less than the comet 65 million yrs

ago that wiped out 70% of the the species then in existence.

[guruoo]

6. You beat me to it. nt

[ZombieEater]

7. Sources?

Where can I find some more information about the Esmeraldas incident? Google digs up a lot sites about tourism and some oil-aganda. Nothing in Wikipedia either, which really surprised me.

BTW, mountain-top removal mining is also a high impact mess.

[jimlup]

8. They forgot Chernoble...

And I actually believe that is probably the biggest environmental catastrophe of all time.

[Nihil]

12. Ah ... if only you'd read the posts upthread rather than just writing ...

:P