31 January 2024
Environmental Disaster after lorry accident: River in Brazil contaminated by toxic barrels
Highly toxic foam has triggered a state of emergency in southern Brazil. The Rio Seco in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina is polluted. A lorry carrying barrels of sulphonic acid crashed, spilling the highly toxic liquid into the river.
A thick, white foam formed on the river. According to the AFP news agency, the river is the main drinking water supply for the city of Joinville. The city's residents have been asked to temporarily stop using the water.
The Brazilian environmental authorities have since recovered the remaining barrels.
Sulfonic acid is dangerous to humans and is used in the production of detergents and household cleaners. A large part of the city was without water for an extended period of time as the water treatment plant had to be temporarily shut down.
According to the mayor of Joinville, the acid concentration in the river was checked every 30 minutes and has allegedly improved.
Unfortunately, it is not entirely clear when exactly this catastrophe occurred. We have not found a corresponding article in the English-language media. We are thankful for our readers' input and updates.
Learn more (Articles in German Language)
16 November 2022
“BP’s latest dirty secret? Oil terminal has been polluting Red Sea and coral reef for decades“
While world leaders are currently arguing about climate damage or global warming from CO2 emissions at COP27 in Egypt, a real climate disaster is taking place not far from the event:
An investigation, the results of which are available to The Telegraph, has revealed that just 65 miles west of the COP27 summit, an oil terminal is illegally dumping large quantities of contaminated water into the Red Sea - and is believed to have been doing so for decades under the joint management of British energy giant BP and its partner, the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC).
Learn more:
The BBC and The Guardian reports:
“Cornwall: ‘Unbearable’ stench of sewage on beauty spot beach”
At the end of October, a video was shot in Trevaunance Bay near St Agnes showing a slurry of polluted water. A local lifeguard said: “The water was grey and foamy and smelled like sewage”. South West Water (SWW) said that a storm overflow was ‘momentarily’ triggered and that other factors were also responsible.
As ‘The Guardian’ reported in early November 2022, ministers admitted that the government does not know how many beaches in England have been closed this year due to sewage pollution.
Learn more:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-63456417
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/06/ministers-have-no-idea-how-many-beaches-in-england-shut-due-to-sewage
20 August 2022
“Fire brigade retrieves almost 160 tonnes of dead fish from Oder and Ner”.
According to an article in the Tagesspiegel of 20 August 2022, the Polish fire brigade says it has so far recovered almost 160 tonnes of dead fish from the Oder and a smaller river. The mass fish kill in the Oder has deeply shaken Germany. Countless fish, mussels, snails and other aquatic organisms died as a result of the environmental disaster. According to a report by the WWF, it is now known that toxins led to the disaster.
Learn more (Article in German Language):
Status: 14.08.2023, 11:38 am
Fish deaths in the Oder: Are further environmental disasters looming?
Countless fish died in the Oder in the summer of 2022 - bream, roach, carp and zander. The entire ecosystem suffers as a result and the causes are far from being eliminated. Are further environmental disasters imminent?
Germany's only wetland national park is also in danger. Experts believe that high salinity, low water levels, high temperatures and the toxin Prymnesium parvum, a type of algae, were the cause of the fish mortality.
Is another mass die-off possible at any time?
A year later, the river is still characterised by excessive salt levels. So far there have been no new mass die-offs, but whether this will continue is questionable.
Lots of rain, which swells the rivers, and lower temperatures could mean that there is a lower likelihood of a severe algal bloom.
However, experts still see risks for the coming years if heat and low water levels provide good conditions for mass proliferation of the toxic chrysophyta (golden algae).
Golden algae mystery
The salinity values in the Oder continue to reach dangerous levels: on 4 August 2023, for example, an electrical conductivity of 2340 microsiemens per centimetre was measured at the measuring point in Frankfurt (Oder). In 2022, the value had also risen to over 2000. According to a spokesman for the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), this should actually be around 600 to 700.
„Symptoms are being combated, but nothing is being done about the causes,“ continued the institute's spokesperson, even a year after the environmental disaster. Environmental organisations believe that the high salt content is probably due to wastewater from the Polish mining industry.
In the summer of 2022, the Oder became a deadly cocktail for many fish because a still rather mysterious type of algae multiplied and produced more poison. Researchers want to find out at what salt content and under what conditions this algae begins to multiply en masse.
The Lower Oder Valley National Park regularly monitors the development of golden algae in the polder waters. So far, only very low concentrations have been detected. However, the river has been missing an important pillar since the disaster: around 65 per cent of the large mussels died in the summer of 2022. These are responsible for filtering the water and thus for light transmission. The river now appears noticeably cloudy due to suspended matter and algae. A 20-centimetre-thick layer of mussel remains covers the bottom in places.
How are the fish in the river?
After the Oder disaster, it is estimated that more than half of the fish that used to live in the river have disappeared. According to IGB estimates, the weight of the fish that died last summer is up to 1,000 tonnes. The ray of hope: the populations can recover and the reproduction conditions are good, according to the experts.
What is being done to protect the Oder?
Poland and Germany have differing opinions on how to deal with the polluted river. The Federal Environment Ministry has been in contact with the neighbouring country since last year, but relations remain tense. There have been workshops, conferences and demands from the German Environment Ministry to its Polish counterparts to significantly reduce salt discharges. The German warning and alarm plan for the Oder has been revised and monitoring of the river improved. According to its own information, Poland is also monitoring the water values more intensively.
The expansion of the Oder remains controversial. On the Polish side, the state water management company is pressing ahead with the expansion and has not been stopped by several court judgements. On 21 July, a district court ordered the public prosecutor's office to investigate the Lubuskie Voivodeship's building inspectorate. The reason for this is that it does not want to enforce a court-ordered construction freeze.
"This is a kind of victory for the NGOs and lawyers against the government's policy," said environmentalist Radoslaw Gawlik from the organisation EKO-Unia in Wrocław. Nevertheless, he has little hope that the work will be stopped.
The commitment of the environmentalists on the Oder and the reporting on it are a thorn in the side of the government in Warsaw. Stanislaw Zaryn, the government plenipotentiary for information security, sees German-led campaigns at work. They serve to "exert pressure that runs counter to the interests of the Republic of Poland", he said in Warsaw. dpa
Learn more (Article in German language)
https://www.fr.de/wissen/oder-fischsterben-drohen-weitere-umweltkatastrophen-zr-92448051.html
Scientists presume that the patch extends over a very wide area, with estimates ranging from an area the size of the state of Texas to one larger than the continental United States, the exact size is unknown.
Different temperature gradients are another driving force for the global current system. From the equator, warm surface water flows northwards. This causes the water to cool down and increases thereby its density. In the higher latitudes, this causes the cold water to sink. Thereby, water masses of 17 million m³ per second are moving. It then flows under the Gulf Stream back into the Indian and Pacific Oceans, where it returns to the surface, is heated and transported westwards. The complete cycle takes about 1,000 years.
The figures vary, but it is currently estimated that between 6338 and 8569 potentially polluting wrecks rust and leak in our oceans, contaminating the seabed with heavy oil.
Worldwide 6 - 20 Million Tons of Oil on our Seabed
In the event of an oil spill, oil forms a film on the water surface which spreads. In extreme cases, one litre of seeping oil can contaminate 1,000,000 litres of groundwater. Light volatile components of the floating oil film evaporate within a few days, while heavy volatile hydrocarbons remain in the water for months, sink and are only slowly breaking down.
Oil spills, to name only a few:
- In 1978, the supertanker Amoco Cadiz caused major damage to the coast of Brittany following a shipwreck involving 213,000 tons of leaking oil; after a well explosion in 1979, thousands of tons of crude oil spilled into the Bay of Campeche over a period of several months;
- In 1989, 42,000 tons of crude oil leaked from the tanker Exxon Valdez into Prince William Sound;
- In 1990, around 43,000 tons of crude oil from the supertanker Mega Borg contaminated the Texas coast.
- In 1991, devastating oil damage was caused in the Persian Gulf as a result of the Gulf War.
- One of the most serious oil disasters occurred in 1994 in the northern Russian republic of Komi, when around 80,000 tons of crude oil leaked from a burst pipeline.
- In 1999, 25,000 tons of heavy fuel oil leaked from the Maltese oil tanker "Erika", which burst in a storm, polluting 450 km of the coast of Brittany.
- In 2002, the Bahamas-registered tanker "Prestige" crashed off northwest Spain, contaminating the beaches of Galicia with 40,000 tons of heavy oil.
- In 2006, Israeli air strikes destroyed a power plant near the coast of Lebanon; over 15,000 tons of oil leaked into the sea.
- During the accident in a power plant owned by the company NTEK in Norilsk, Russia, at the end of May 2020, 21,000 tons of diesel had flowed into the Ambarnaja river from a defective tank of a power plant.
Costs for purifying contaminated soil by common cleaning procedures, compared with the Ecorefine:
Procedure, costs €/ t
Thermal Treatment 200 – 1,500
Soil Washing 135 – 350
Biological Treatment 117 – 270
ECOREFINE 32.50 – 87.50