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The Baia Mare Cyanide Spill
Author : jakieche Summit
Submitted : 2011-10-16 Word Count : 870 Popularity: Not Rated
Tags: The Baia Mare cyanide spill
In 1920 Hooker Chemical had turned an area in Niagara Falls into a municipal and chemical disposal site. In 1953 the site was filled and relatively modern methods were applied to cover it. A thick layer of impermeable red clay sealed the dump, preventing chemicals from leaking out of the landfill.
A city near the dumpsite wanted to buy it for urban expansion. Despite the warnings of Hooker the city eventually bought the site for the meagre amount of 1 dollar. Hooker could not sell for more, because they did not want to earn money off a project so clearly unwise. The city began to dig to develop a sewer, damaging the red clay cap that covered the dumpsite below. Blocks of homes and a school were built and the neighbourhood was named Love Canal.
Love Canal seemed like a regular neighbourhood. The only thing that distinguished this neighbourhood from other was the strange odours that often hung in the air and an unusual seepage noticed by inhabitants in their basements and yards. Children in the neighbourhood often fell ill. Love Canal families regularly experienced miscarriages and birth defects.
Lois Gibbs, an activist, noticed the high occurrence of illness and birth defects in the area and started documenting it. In 1978 newspapers revealed the existence of the chemical waste dump in the Love Canal area and Lois Gibbs started petitioning for closing the school. In August 1978, the claim succeeded and the NYS Health Department ordered closing of the school when a child suffered from chemical poisoning.
When Love Canal was researched over 130 pounds of the highly toxic carcinogenic TCDD, a form of dioxin, was discovered. The total of 20.000 tons of waste present in the landfill appeared to contain more than 248 different species of chemicals. The waste mainly consisted of pesticide residues and chemical weapons research refuse.
The chemicals had entered homes, sewers, yards and creeks and Gibbs decided it was time for the more than 900 families to be moved away from the location. Eventually President Carter provided funds to move all the families to a safer area. Hooker's parent company was sued and settled for 20 million dollars.
Despite protests by Gibbs's organization some of the houses in Love Canal went up for sale some 20 years later. The majority of the houses are on the market now and the neighbourhood may become inhabited again after 20 years of abandonment. The houses in Love Canal are hard to sell, despite a renaming of the neighbourhood. It suffered such a bad reputation after the incident that banks refused mortgages on the houses.
None of the chemicals have been removed from the dumpsite. It has been resealed and the surrounding area was cleaned and declared safe. Hooker's mother company paid an additional 230 million dollars to finance this cleanup. They are now responsible for the management of the dumpsite. Today, the Love Canal dumpsite is known as one of the major environmental disasters of the century.
Workers in gold mines use cyanide (CN) to purify gold from rocks. This is applied for example in Rumania. At 22:00 hours on January 30, 2000 cyanide (fig. 2) used in a gold mine in Baia Mare overflowed into the major river the Somes and subsequently into the river Tisza. The cause of the spill was a break in the dam that surrounded a settling basin. This resulted in the release of at least 100.000 cubic meters of water with very high cyanide concentrations. The waste water did not only contain cyanide, but also heavy metals such as copper, zinc and lead. Copper concentrations exceeded the heavily polluted threshold 40-160 times, the zinc concentration was twice above this standard and the lead concentration 5-9 times greater.
Cyanide is a very aggressive toxin that can kill people. Consequently, when Rumanian authorities were notified of the spill they immediately raised the alarm. This rapid response prevented any human victims. However, the spill did kill all aquatic plant and animal life for dozens of miles downstream. On February 12 it even impacted the major European river Danube, which receives water from the Tisza. This caused the impact to be noticeable in Hungary and Serbia, as well. Inhabitants of Belgrado witnessed Danube water full of dead fish flowing by. Up to 100 people, most of them children, have been treated in hospital after eating contaminated fish. The Rumanian media entitled this environmental disaster 'the largest since Chernobyl'.
Environmental organizations claim that large companies take advantage of the flexible environmental regulation in poorer countries such as Rumania. It is stated this results in the occurrence of environmental disasters such as that in Baia Mare. The major owner of the Baia Mare gold mine is an Australian called Brett. He commented the media coverage of the Baia Mare disaster, saying reports were utterly exaggerated. He denies the high rate of fish mortality in the area had anything to do with the gold mine.
In Serbia the minister of environment has announced he will sue the ones responsible for the spill. He demands an international trial. Fishery has been banned from the Tisza and the population was recommended not to use the water. This has caused many local residents to suffer from drinking water shortages and has caused some losses in the fishing industry.
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