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The Panama Canal
Built in 1914, The 48 mile-long (77 km) international waterway known as the Panama Canal allows ships to pass between the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean, saving about 8000 miles (12,875 km) from a journey around the southern tip of South America, Cape Horn. -
Libby, Montana Asbestos Contaminated
Vermiculite mining in Libby began more than 80 years ago when E.N. Alley bought the Rainy Creek claims and launched Zonolite.The story can be traced back to 1919 when companies first started pulling vermiculite out of mines in Libby. Known commercially as Zonolite, vermiculite was used in a variety of construction materials including insulation for homes and buildings. Decades of mining the vermiculite exposed workers and residents to toxic asbestos dust. -
Minamata disease
is a neurological syndrome caused by severe mercury poisoning. Symptoms include ataxia, numbness in the hands and feet, general muscle weakness, loss of peripheral vision, and damage to hearing and speech. In extreme cases, insanity, paralysis, coma, and death follow within weeks of the onset of symptoms. A congenital form of the disease can also affect fetuses in the womb. -
The Great Smog of 52
Smog had become a frequent part of London life, but nothing quite compared to the smoke-laden fog that shrouded the capital from Friday 5 December to Tuesday 9 December 1952. While it heavily affected the population of London, causing a huge death toll and inconveniencing millions of people, the people it affected were also partly to blame for the smog.
During the day on 5 December, the fog was not especially dense and generally possessed a dry, smoky character. When nightfall came, however, the -
Castle Bravo
was the codename given to the first United States test of a dry fuel hydrogen bomb, detonated on March 1, 1954, at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as the first test of Operation Castle.
-The device was a very large cylinder weighing 23,500 pounds
-The device detonated for the test was named "Shrimp" -
Silent Spring
is an environmental science book written by Rachel Carson and published in 1967 wrote about the environment and birds.
- inspired an environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
- Carson's main argument in the book is that pesticides have detrimental effects on the environment -
Ecocide in Vietnam
In 1965 US planes for the first time sprayed the defoliant Agent Orange to deforest the jungle but also causing major havoc on the civilians living in this area.The contaminated soil and sediment continue to affect the citizens of Vietnam, poisoning their food chain and causing illnesses, serious skin diseases and a variety of cancers in the lungs, larynx, and prostate. -
The Palomares Incident
occurred on 17 January 1966, when a B-52G bomber of the United States Air Force's Strategic Air Command collided with a KC-135 tanker during mid-air refuelling at 31,000 feet (9,450 m) over the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Spain.
-The KC-135 was completely destroyed when its fuel load ignited, killing all four crew members. The B-52G broke apart, killing three of the seven crew members aboard.
-Of the four Mk28-type hydrogen bombs the B-52G carried,[2] three were found on land near the s -
Fukushima Daiichi
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was an energy accident at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant
-Following a major earthquake, a 15-metre tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima Daiichi reactors, causing a nuclear accident on 11 March 2011. All three cores largely melted in the first three days.
- killed more than 20,000 men, women and children -
Tragedy of the Commons
originally by William Forster Lloyd and later used by Garrett Hardin, to denote a situation where individuals acting independently and rationally according to each's self-interest behave contrary to the best interests of the whole group by depleting some common resource. The concept was based upon an essay written in 1833 by Lloyd, the Victorian economist, on the effects of unregulated grazing on common land and made widely-known by an article written by Hardin in 1968. -
Earth Day
In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be celebrated on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a Proclamation written by McConnell and signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations. A month later a separate Earth Day was founded by United States Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach- -
Environmental Protection Agency
EPA was established on December 2, 1970 to consolidate in one agency a variety of federal research, monitoring, standard-setting and enforcement activities to ensure environmental protection. Since its inception, EPA has been working for a cleaner, healthier environment for the American people. -
Door to Hell
Door to Hell: is a natural gas field in Derweze, Turkmenistan that has been burning continuously since it was discovered in 1971.
-The field is situated near the Derweze village. It is in the middle of the Karakum Desert, about 260 kilometres (160 mi) north of Ashgabat.
-The gas reserve found here is one of the largest in the world. -
The Shrinking of the Aral Sea
By 2000, the lake had separated into the North (Small) Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and the South (Large) Aral Sea in Uzbekistan. The South Aral had further split into western and eastern lobes. The eastern lobe of the South Aral nearly dried up in 2009 but rebounded in 2010 after more rain.In 2005, a World Bank‒funded dam and restoration project began in Kazakhstan with the goal of improving the health of the Syr Darya and increasing the flow into the North Aral Sea. Since then the water level has ri -
The Seveso Disaster
an industrial accident that occurred around 12:37 pm on July 10, 1976, in a small chemical manufacturing plant approximately 15 kilometres (9 mi) north of Milan in the Lombardy region of Italy -
Amoco Cadiz
a very large crude carrier under the Liberian flag of covenience owned by Amoco. On 16 March 1978,it ran aground on Portsall rocks and ultimately split in three and sank, resulting in the largest oil spill of its kind in history to that date. -
The Three Mile Island Nuclear Explosion
The Three Mile Island accident was a partial nuclear meltdown that occurred on March 28, 1979, in one of the two Three Mile Island nuclear reactors in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, United States.
-The accident crystallized anti-nuclear safety concerns among activists and the general public, resulted in new regulations for the nuclear industry, and has been cited as a contributor to the decline of a new reactor construction program that was already underway in the 1970s.
-The accident began with -
The Love Canal
Love Canal is a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, located in the LaSalle section of the city. It officially covers 36 square blocks in the far southeastern corner of the city, along 99th Street and Read Avenue -
The Bhopal Disaster
Thirty years ago, on the night of December 2, 1984, an accident at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, released at least 30 tons of a highly toxic gas called methyl isocyanate, as well as a number of other poisonous gases. The pesticide plant was surrounded by shanty towns, leading to more than 600,000 people being exposed to the deadly gas cloud that night. The gases stayed low to the ground, causing victims throats and eyes to burn, inducing nausea, and many deaths. Estimates o -
The Chernobyl Nuclear Explosion
The April 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine was the product of a flawed Soviet reactor design coupled with serious mistakes made by the plant operators. It was a direct consequence of Cold War isolation and the resulting lack of any safety culture. -
The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989, when Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef at 12:04 a.m.
spilled 11 to 38 million US gallons (260,000 to 900,000 bbl; 42,000 to 144,000 m3) of crude oil
It is considered to be one of the most devastating human-caused environmental disasters. -
The Kuwait Oil Fires
The Kuwaiti oil fires were caused by Iraqi military forces setting fire to a reported 605 to 732 oil wells along with an unspecified number[quantify] of oil filled low-lying areas, such as oil lakes and fire trenches, as part of a scorched earth policy while retreating from Kuwait in 1991 due to the advances of Coalition military forces in the Persian Gulf War.
-The dispute between Iraq and Kuwait over alleged slant-drilling in the Rumaila oil field was one of the reasons for Iraq's invasion of -
The Three Gorges Dam
Built in 2003, The Three Gorges Dam is the world’s largest hydropower project and most notorious dam. The massive project sets records for number of people displaced (more than 1.2 million), number of cities and towns flooded (13 cities, 140 towns, 1,350 villages), and length of reservoir (more than 600 kilometers). The project has been plagued by corruption, spiraling costs, environmental impacts, human rights violations and resettlement difficulties. -
Pacific Gyre Garbage Patch
The name "Pacific Garbage Patch" has led many to believe that this area is a large and continuous patch of easily visible marine debris items such as bottles and other litter—akin to a literal island of trash that should be visible with satellite or aerial photographs. The Great Pacific garbage patch was predicted in a 1988 paper published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States.
- It is possible to sail through "garbage patch" areas in the Pacific and -
Baia Mare Cyanide Spill
The 2000 Baia Mare cyanide spill was a leak of cyanide near Baia Mare, Romania, into the Someş River by the gold mining company Aurul, a joint-venture of the Australian company Esmeralda Exploration and the Romanian government. The polluted waters eventually reached the Tisza and then the Danube, killing large numbers of fish in Hungary and Yugoslavia. The spill has been called the worst environmental disaster in Europe since the Chernobyl disaster. -
The Al-mishraq Fire
it was the site of the largest human-made release of sulfur dioxide ever recorded when a fire gained control and burned for about three weeks. is a state run sulfur plant near Mosul, Iraq. In June 2003, it was the site of the largest human-made release of sulfur dioxide ever recorded when a fire (thought to have been deliberately started) gained control and burned for about three weeks. At its height, the fire was putting 21,000 tonnes of sulfur dioxide a day into the atmosphere. The polluti -
An Inconvenient Truth
is a 2006 documentary film directed by Davis Guggenheim about former United States Vice President Al Gore's campaign to educate citizens about global warming via a comprehensive slide show that, by his own estimate made in the film, he has given more than a thousand times. Premiering at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and opening in New York City and Los Angeles on May 24, 2006, the documentary was a critical and box-office success, winning two Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature and B -
Sidoarjo Mud Flow
Sidoarjo Mud Flow: The ones responsible for creating this eruption was credited to the blowout of a natural gas well drilled by PT Lapindo Brantas. Biggest mud volcano. It has been erupting since May 2006. -
TVA Kingston Fossil Plant Coal Fly Ash Slurry Spill
occurred just before 1 a.m. on Monday December 22, 2008, when an ash dike ruptured at an 84-acre (0.34 km2) solid waste containment area at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, USA.
-The TVA spill was 100 times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, which released 10.9 million gallons of crude oil.
-combination of water and fly ash that flooded 12 homes, spilled into nearby Watts Bar Lake, contaminated the Emory River, and caused a train wreck -
Deep water horizon BP oil spill
began on 20 April 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-owned Transocean-operated Macondo Prospect. Following the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig a sea-floor oil gusher flowed for 87 days, until it was capped on 15 July -
Jilin Chemical Plant Explosions
The Jilin chemical plant explosions were a series of explosions which occurred on November 13, 2005, in the No.101 Petrochemical Plant in Jilin City, Jilin Province, China, over the period of an hour.
-The blasts created an 80 km long toxic slick in the Songhua River, a tributary of the Amur.
-at least 70 people were injured and six were killed. -
Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone
are hypoxic (low-oxygen) areas in the world's oceans and large lakes, caused by "excessive nutrient pollution from human activities coupled with other factors that deplete the oxygen required to support most marine life in bottom and near-bottom water. (NOAA)."[2] In the 1970s oceanographers began noting increased instances of dead zones. These occur near inhabited coastlines, where aquatic life is most concentrated. (The vast middle portions of the oceans, which naturally have little life, are -
E-waste in Guiyu, China
is an agglomerate of four adjoined villages widely perceived as the largest electronic waste (e-waste) site in the world.[1] In 2005 there were 60,000 e-waste workers in Guiyu who processed the more than 100 truckloads that were transported to the 52 square kilometre area every day.[2] The constant movement into and processing of e-wastes in the area leading to the harmful and toxic environment and living conditions, coupled with inadequate facilities, have led to the Guiyu town being nicknamed
