Environmental disasters occur almost every year around the world. A disaster can be the result of an accident caused by human activity. For example, an oil spill or nuclear explosion, smog, or fire at a hazardous plant. An environmental disaster is a natural or man-made incident that results in a negative or “catastrophic” impact on the environment.
Often, the term “environmental disaster” is used to describe incidents that result from anthropogenic actions. However, it is important to note that this is only one category of environmental disaster. The types of such disasters can vary, namely: agricultural disasters result from impacts on the agricultural industry; biodiversity disasters result from new species moving into an area and damaging existing species or the environment; industrial disasters result from small or global impacts of large industrial plants on the environment; human health disasters result from the spread of disease or other These can include earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, wildfires, landslides, sinkholes, and droughts; nuclear disasters are the result of a spill or damage to a power plant that causes radiation to leak.
That is, natural is only one of the five types of environmental disasters.
In this article, we will give examples of global environmental disasters of the twentieth century that caused damage to the environment:
1. The Great Smog of December 5, 1952. One of the first ecological disasters caused by human industrial activity was precisely the smog that engulfed London in the winter of 1952. In the first eight days the poisonous fog killed four thousand people, and in the following weeks eight thousand more.
2. The death of the Aral Sea in 1960-2007. Lake Aral, called the Aral Sea because of its enormous surface of 68,500 km2, is a drainage salt lake in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which disappeared as a result of human activities, leading to one of the largest ecological disasters in human history. The surface of the lake began to decline systematically. Since the 1960s, the water level decreased by about 20 cm per year, in the 1970s by about 60 cm, and a decade later by 90 cm. While the lake was 68,500 km² in 1960, by 2009 it had shrunk to 13,500 km².
3. The Canadian environmental disaster of 1962-1970. The history of mercury poisoning among indigenous people in Canada is related to an industrial incident in the mid-20th century. The culprit of the environmental disaster was a pulp and paper mill of a chemical company located in Dryden, Ontario. The company’s operations caused mercury waste, which was generated during the bleaching of the paper, to enter the environment.
4. Bhopal Disaster December 3, 1984. a pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, accidentally released a deadly chemical fog that killed more than 5,000 people. They were victims of deadly isocyanate (pesticide) gas poisoning. More than 50,000 people have been treated because of exposure to the gas, and more than half a million people have been exposed to the gas. Experts and activists claim that the gas leak has since claimed an additional 20,000 lives. This is considered the worst industrial chemical disaster ever.
5. The Chernobyl disaster on April 26, 1986. The largest environmental disaster associated with the use of the peaceful atom. On April 26, 1986, the reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was shut down. The nuclear reaction caused a massive fire and explosion, instantly killing 50 people and releasing radiation 400 times higher than the atomic bombing in Hiroshima.
Fire on the Piper Alpha oil platform on July 6, 1988. The Piper Alpha disaster occurred on July 6, 1988 off the coast of Aberdeen. It killed 167 workers and is the world’s worst oil platform accident.
The environmental crises and disasters discussed above, unfortunately, are not the last. And the list above is far from exhaustive. It could go on for a long time. And the representatives of various international organizations dedicated to protecting the environment draw attention to this.
But often the methods and ways out of the situation are proposed, which can only harm the mankind, put it on the brink of extinction. For example, a ban on the extraction of minerals, or reducing its use for the production of electricity. In addition, such measures can trigger other man-made ecological disasters.
The way out is to improve technology and increase the safety of industrial production. Only in this case can mankind effectively solve the problems it faces in the foreseeable and distant future.
