The Worst Man Made Disasters
There are 1,060 hazardous waste sites on the list of the environmental Protection Agency, U.S.A. They have recently added a further 10 toxic waste sites to the 527 contaminated properties which endanger life.
Here are just a few of the worst man-made disasters, as toxic contamination is a world-wide problem and not limited to any one nation.
The most toxic place in the United States, Picher, Oklahoma, was once the world's richest zinc and lead mining field, housing 20,000 people. Less than 25 people remain. Mountains of mining, lead contaminated waste, loom over the empty town, which has a toxic water supply.
Fishing boats rust in a vast, contaminated desert wasteland, the Aral Sea, which was drained empty by Soviet irrigation. Guiyu is the world's second-most polluted place on the planet.
China's biggest e-waste village, where electronic trash is dismantled by hand to extract wires and valuable parts. Circuit boards are burned, cooked and soaked in acid to extract scraps of precious metals.
Twice the size of Texas, the Pacific Rubbish Vortex consists of 3.5 million tons of rubbish, 90% of which is plastic debris, swirls between California and Hawaii.
Following gas drilling in Java, Indonesia, that created a 'mud volcano', which killed 13 people, hot sulfuric mud gushes continually from the ground. The steaming mud pool covers over 25sq k and is growing at an estimated 50,000 cubic meters per day. Scientists say the mud will continue erupting for another 30 years.
Once a copper mine, the Berkeley Pit Lake contains over 40 billion gallons of acidic water and heavy metals. It is a serious hazard to migrating birds.
The Chernobyl Nuclear Station contaminated millions of square miles and released radioactive material into the air, when it exploded in 1986. The entire area is a radioactive freeze frame of the old USSR.
In 1984, the Union Carbide pesticide manufacturing plant leaked 32 tons of deadly methyl isocyanate, in Bhopal, India. 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 attempt to clean-up.
Following nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, in the late 1970s, the U.S. government dug up 111,000 cubic yards of radioactive soil and dumped it on Runit Island in a 350-foot wide crater created by the nuclear explosions. A huge, foot-and-a-half-thick, 100,000-square-foot dome made up of 358 massive concrete panels, was built over the site. The area is still radioactive.
A hole, 328 ft. wide, in the Turkmenistan desert, has been continuously on fire, for 38 years. A Soviet drilling rig accidentally punched into a massive underground natural gas cavern, in 1971, 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.
Due to health concerns Australia