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Love Canal
The Love Canal is in Niagra Falls and between 1942 and 1953, the Hooker Electrochemical Company used the abandoned Love Canal to dispose over 21,000 tons of hazardous chemicals. There were drums that leaked and contaminated the soil and groundwater. -
Minamata Disaster
Minamata disease is a methylmercury poisoning with neurological symptoms and is caused by the daily consumption of substantial amounts of fish and shellfish. Minamata lasted from the 1950s to the 1960s. It is one of the most significant negative consequences associated with environmental pollution. -
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
The book is about how DDT entered the food chain. It appeared in the fatty tissues of all animals, which includes humans, and it causes cancer and genetic damage. -
Stockholm Conference
It was a declaration that contained 26 principles to help environmental issues like pollution of the air, water, and oceans. These showed international concerns and introduced the beginning of a conversation between industrialized and developing countries. -
Endangered Species Act
The Endangered Species Act establishes protections for fish, wildlife, and plants listed as threatened or endangered. This law also provides for adding species and removing them from the list of threatened and endangered species. -
Hole in the Ozone Layer
The Ozone hole is not technically a “hole,” but it is a region of exceptionally depleted ozone in the stratosphere over the Antarctic that happens at the beginning of southern hemisphere spring. -
Bhopal Disaster
The Bhopal disaster was a pesticide plant leak of more than 40 tons of methyl isocyanate in Bhopal, India. This killed at least 3,800 people and thousands more had a premature death and significant morbidity. Because of this, international standards for environmental safety were enforced. -
Chernobyl meltdown
There was a poorly designed experiment where the nuclear power plant had to go into an emergency shutdown. The core had a chain reaction that spiraled into the large fireball that caused the explosion. The atmosphere had enormous amounts of radioactive material because of this. -
Montreal Protocol
This is a global agreement to protect the ozone layer by banning the use of chemicals that harmed it. Some things that are used every day that harm the ozone layer are refrigerators, air conditioners, fire extinguishers, and aerosols. This protocol is still successful and is the first universal agreement by all countries in the world. -
Papua New Guinea’s Panguna Mine War
Mining waste like sulfur, arsenic, copper, zinc, cadmium, and mercury spilled out after the mine opening in 1972. These elements were dumped into a local river that showed a 40-mile portion of the system “biologically dead.” -
Kyoto protocol
The Kyoto Protocol is the first international treaty to set legally binding targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions in Kyoto, Japan. This protocol committed industrialized countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with agreed individual targets. -
The documentary film An Inconvenient Truth
The documentary An Inconvenient Truth is a film about climate change, and it is by ex-vice president Al Gore and directed by Davis Guggenheim. Al Gore explains throughout the film that he had given at least 1,000 times to awaken people to the truth about global warming. -
Ivory Coast Toxic Waste Dumping
500 tons of toxic waste was dumped by a cargo ship names Probo Koala in Abidjan. More hazardous waste was dumped that belonged to Trafigura at 18 cites around the city and possibly others. -
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
There was an explosion that occurred on the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion killed 11 men, which caused the rig to sink and start a catastrophic oil leak from the well. There was 134 million gallons of oil that spilled into the gulf, making it the largest offshore oil spill in the U.S. history. -
Canadian Wildfires
The Canadian wildfires are wildfires that have burned all across Canada this year, making nearly 1 out of every 200 Canadians to evacuate their homes and smothering vast parts of North America in choking smoke. There is new research that shows some of these fires were made worse by climate change.