es pollution case studies & natural disasters

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This is the presentation prepared to teach Environmental Studies to UnderGraduate students.

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ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION CASE STUDIES

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POLLUTION CASE STUDIES AIR POLLUTION EPISODES A series of air pollution disasters have occurred in the past 75 from Meuse valley, Belgium(1930) to chernobyl nuclear disaster in the erstwhile USSR(1986). Some of the important ones are given below: DONORA AIR POLLUTION DISASTER: Donora of Pennsylvania (in USA) is a small mill town dominated by a steel mill, a zinc smelter and a sulphuric acid plant. A four day fog occurred from October 25-31, 1948.

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Due to anti-cyclonic weather conditions there was no air movement and temperature inversion had set in due to sea breeze conditions. Donora lies in a horse shoe shaped valley on the Monongahela river, south of Pittsburg with steep rising hills on each side of the river. Fog which formed due to accumulation of cold air at the bottom of the river valley persisted for 4 consecutive days. This condition, when the cold air is trapped below the warm layer, is called inversion.

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The top fog layer reflected the solar radiation during the day time. So the heat received by it was not sufficient to break the inversion. During the night time the top layer had been losing heat which further cooled the layer to stabilize. Wind speed in the inversion layer was also slow. The deadly pollutants emitted by the steel mill, zinc smelter and sulphuric acid plant got trapped and concentrated in the stable weather conditions of the valley and remained there for four days. About 6000 of the town’s 14000 inhabitants fell ill and 20 of them died.

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THE BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY The world’s worst industrial accident occurred in Bhopal, M.P., India on the night of 2nd and morning of 3rd December, 1984. It happened at Union Carbide company which used to manufacture Carbaryl (carbamate) pesticide using Methyl Isocyanate (MIC). Due to accidental entry of water into the tank, the reaction mixture got overheated and exploded because its cooling system had failed.

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Other safety devices also did not work or were not in the working condition. Forty tons of MIC leaked into atmosphere which might have contained 40 kg of phosgene as an impurity. MIC at lower concentration affects lungs and eyes and causes irritation in the skin. Higher amounts remove oxygen from lungs and cause death. In the winter night of December there were fog like clouds over south and east of the plant. The gas spread over 40km area. About 5100 persons were killed according to Indian officials. About 2,50,000 persons got exposed to MIC.

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An estimated 65,000 people suffered from severe eye, respiratory, neuromuscular, gastrointestinal and gynecological disorders. About 1000 persons became blind. Without counting the damage of human lives, it cost about $570 million in clean up and damage settlement. This tragedy could have been averted had the company spend about $1 million on safety improvement.

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The Love Canal Tragedy The Love Canal tragedy occurred in a suburb of Niagara Falls, New York. The Love canal was built by William Love which was later dug up and was used to dump sealed steel drums of chemical wastes by Hooker Chemicals and Plastics Corporation between 1942-1953. In 1953, the dump site was covered with clay and top-soil by the company and was sold to the city Board of Education which built an elementary school on that site. Houses were also built near the school.

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In 1976, the residents started complaining of foul smell. Children playing in the canal area received chemical burns. In 1977, the corroded steel containers started leaking the chemicals into storm sewers, basement of homes and the school playground. About 26 toxic organic compounds were identified. The dump site was covered with clay and the leaking wastes were pumped to new treatment plant.

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The affected families were relocated. There could be many more dump sites similar to Love canal especially in the third world countries. Who knows what amount of harm such dump sites are causing to the underground aquifers ?

Arsenic Pollution in Groundwater : 

Arsenic Pollution in Groundwater West Bengal and Bangladesh are severely contaminated by the toxic heavy metal arsenic. The first report of arsenic pollution in the West Bengal came in 1978 and that of Bangladesh in 1993, where it was found to be even more widespread. Arsenic poisoning has far reaching consequences. The local people were found to be ingesting low doses of arsenic for 10-14 years after which suddenly white or black spots called melanosis started mottling the skin.

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The spots were later found to get converted into leprosy like skin lesions encrusting the palms and soles, eventually rotting into gangrenous ulcers. Long exposures often led to bladder and lung cancer. Children are more badly affected by arsenicosis, the affected people are socially isolated, children barred from attending schools and young women remain single or have broken marriage. The WHO has prescribed the maximum permissible limits of arsenic as 10 mg/L. In West Bengal 40 million out of 90 million people are feared to have likely exposure to arsenic threat due to contaminated water.

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The 24 paranganas, Hooghly and Murshidabad districts as also Behala and South Eastern fringes of Kolkata lie in Arsenic Risk Zone. Earlier it was postulated that the arsenic has entered into groundwater due to geological reasons in the Ganga Delta. Recently, however, it is being linked with anthropogenic causes. Excessive use of lead arsenate and copper arsenite as pesticides in high yielding varieties of summer paddy and jute crop seems to be the major cause of arsenic pollution. Now the arsenic contaminated tubewells in the state are being painted red while safe water tubewells are painted green for use by people.

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CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR DISASTER Chernobyl nuclear accident is the worst nuclear disaster in the history of human civilization which occurred at Chernobyl, Ukraine in the erstwhile USSR(now CIS). On 26 April , 1986 the accident occurred at the reactor of the Chernobyl power plant designed to produce 1000 MW electrical energy. The reactor had been working continuously for 2 years. It was shut down on April 25, 1986 for the intermediate repairs.

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This period coincided with the period when the people including the top executives were busy in the preparations for national holiday, the May Day. Due to faulty operations of shutting down the plant, an explosion occurred in the reactor at 01.23 hrs on the April 26, 1986. Three seconds later another explosion occurred. The explosion was so severe that 1000 tonne steel concrete lid of the reactor 4 blew off. Fire started at the reactor due to combustion of graphite rods.

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The reactor temperature soared to more than 2000 degree Celsius. Fuel and radioactive debris spewed out in a volcanic cloud of the molten mass of the core and gases. The debris and the gases drifted over most of the northern hemisphere. Poland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway were affected. On the first day of the accident 31 persons died and 239 people were hospitalized. Since the plume was rich in Iodine-131, Cesium-134 and Cesium-137, it was feared that some of the 5,76,000 people exposed to the radiations would suffer from cancer specially thyroid cancer and leukemia .

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Children were more susceptible as Iodine-131 is ingested mainly through milk and milk products. Since children consume more milk and their thyroid glands are in the growing stage, an increase in the thyroid cancer in the children from areas near Chernobyl was registered. More than 2000 people died. People suffered from ulcerating skin, loss of hair, nausea and anemia. Agricultural produce was damaged for years. Intense radiations destroyed several fields, trees, shrubs, plants etc.

Slide 18: 

Flora and fauna were destroyed. Blood abnormalities, hemorrhagic disease, changes in lungs, eye disease, cataract, reproductive failure and cancer cases increased. Sweden and Denmark banned the import of contaminated Russian products. Nuclear energy is a cheap, inexhaustible and non-polluting source of energy. However, in the absence of proper care and caution, disaster like Chernobyl can rock the society.

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Pollution problem areas of India as identified by CPCB

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Source: Annual Report CPCB, 2002-2003

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Severity of Earthquakes is measured using the Richter Scale Earthquakes

THE 2004 ASIAN TSUNAMI : 

THE 2004 ASIAN TSUNAMI The Indian Ocean earthquake, which occurred on December 26, 2004, is one of the deadliest disasters in modern history known as the Asian Tsunami, and also the Boxing Day Tsunami as it took place on Boxing Day. It was a devastating undersea earthquake measuring between 9.1 and 9.3 on the Ritcher scale with an epicenter off the west coast of Sumatra , Indonesia.

Slide 24: 

It triggered a series of tsunamis with waves up to 30m, spreading through out the Indian ocean, killing more than 1.86 lakh people and inundating coastal communities across south and south-east Asia including parts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand, extending over an estimated area of 1,200 km. It was the second largest earthquake with the longest duration of faulting , lasting between 500 and 600 seconds, that caused the entire planet to vibrate about a centimeter.

Slide 25: 

The faultline slipped about 15m, where the India plate drives under the Burma plate involving the formation of a rupture about 400 km long and 100 km wide. The total energy released by the earthquake has been estimated at 3.35x10^8 joules equivalent to 0.8 gigatons of trinitrotoluene, an explosive. There was sudden vertical rise of the seabed by several meters, which displayed massive volumes of water, resulting in the tsunami. A tsunami which causes damage far away from its source is known as “teletsunami”, produced by vertical motion of the seabed rather than by the horizontal motion.

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In deep ocean water, tsunami waves form only harmless humps, which generally travel at a very high speed of 500 to 1000 km/hr. In shallow water near coastlines, the speed falls to just tens of kilometers per hour, but the waves become largely destructive. Generally, coasts with a landmass between these and the tsunami’s location of origin are safe; however, tsunami waves can sometimes diffract around such landmasses. Thus, Kerala was hit by the tsunami despite being on the western coast of India and also western coast of Sri Lanka suffered badly.

Slide 27: 

Although Somalia was at a much greater distance, it was hit harder than Bangladesh. No tsunami warning system exist in the Indian ocean to warn the public living around the ocean. Tsunami detection is very difficult because tsunami originates in deep water and has a little height. Costly network of sensors is needed to detect tsunami. Pacific ocean experiences more frequent tsunamis in the ‘ring of fire’, and has a tsunami warning system there. The united nations has now started working on an Indian ocean tsunami warning system.

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Environmental aspects The human destruction of coral reefs is supposed to have played a significant role in the destruction caused by tsunami. Many countries across Asia, including Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Bangladesh have destroyed the corals surrounding their beaches, and instead made a way to shrimp farms and other activities that give quick economic returns. Many reef areas around the Indian ocean have been exploded with dynamite because they hindered shipping.

Slide 29: 

On the other hand, in Surin Island chain of Thailand’s coast, a large number of people were saved as the tsunami waves struck against the coral reefs and the islands remained unaffected. Removal of the coastal mangrove trees and the coastal dunes is further believed to have intensified the affect of the tsunami in some locations . Besides the heavy toll on human lives, the Indian ocean tsunami has caused an enormous environmental impact that will continue to affect the region for many years to come.

Slide 30: 

Severe damage to ecosystem like mangroves, corals reefs, forests, coastal wetlands and the sand dunes has been noticed. Animal and plant biodiversity has suffered huge loss. Other adverse affects caused by tsunami include mixing of salt and sewage water with fresh water, invasion of aquifers through porous rock, infiltration of saltwater in the soil making it sterile and deposit of a salt layer over agricultural land damaging plants and soil microorganisms. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is helping the local governments to restore the ecology of the region.

Slide 31: 

Frequently occuring Natural disasters in India

Major disaster events in last decade : 

Major disaster events in last decade 1991, Bangladesh cyclone, causualities 1,40,000 people died. 1993, Latur Earthquake in Maharashtra: 10,000 people died. 1999 Worst cyclone in 100 years in orissa, destroyed 18000 villages in one night, 9885 people died, Rs.1733 cr. Loss of property, 15 million people effected. 26th January 2001, The Gujarath earthquake(Bhuj) 6.3 on richter scale, 20000-30000 people died and millions got affected. 26th December 2004, Psunami killed 1,86,000 people caused by under sea earthquake measuring 9.1-9.3 on richter scale, severly affected countries: Sumatra islands, Indonesia, Srilanka & India. 2nd October 2009, Floods in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, more than 200 people died and Rs. 12500 cr. Loss of property.

Disaster Mitigation Management : 

Disaster Mitigation Management Forecasting, Warning, Evacuation, Search and Resque, Relief, Rehabilitation & Reconstruction. Pre-disaster, During disaster and post-disaster plans Risk assessment and vulnerability analysis. Applied research and technology transfer. Developing communication infrastructure. Public awareness and traning. Institutional mechanisms Incentives and resources for mitigation. Land use planning and regulations Hazard resistant design and construction Structural and constructional reinforcement of existing buildings

DISASTER RISK MANAGEMENT : 

DISASTER RISK MANAGEMENT Disaster risk management includes administrative decisions and operational activities that involve Prevention Mitigation Preparedness Response Recovery Rehabilitation Disaster risk management involves all levels of government. Nongovernmental and community-based organizations play a vital role in the process.

Distribution of epicenters in world : 

Distribution of epicenters in world

Earthquake zones in India : 

Earthquake zones in India

Floods hazardous zones in India : 

Floods hazardous zones in India

Cyclone hazard MAP : 

Cyclone hazard MAP

Areas of Concern : 

Areas of Concern Activating an Early Warning System network and its close monitoring Mechanisms for integrating the scientific, technological and administrative agencies for effective disaster management Terrestrial communication links which collapse in the event of a rapid onset disaster Vulnerability of critical infrastructures (power supply, communication, water supply, transport, etc.) to disaster events Funding : Primacy of relief as disaster response. Preparedness and Mitigation very often ignored. Lack of integrated efforts to collect and compile data, information and local knowledge on disaster history and traditional response patterns. Need for standardised efforts in compiling and interpreting geo-spatial data, satellite imagery and early warning signals.

Areas of Concern : 

Areas of Concern Weak areas continue to be forecasting, modelling, risk prediction, simulation and scenario analysis, etc. Absence of a national level, state level, and district level directory of experts and inventory of resources. Absence of a National Disaster Management Plan, and State level and district level disaster management plans. Sustainability of efforts Effective Inter Agency Co-ordination and Standard Operating Procedures for stakeholder groups, especially critical first responder agencies. Emergency medicine, critical care medicine, triage, first aid

Nodal Agencies for Disaster Management : 

Nodal Agencies for Disaster Management Floods : Ministry of Water Resources, CWC Cyclones : Indian Meteorological Department Earthquakes : Indian Meteorological Department Epidemics : Ministry of Health and Family Welfare Avian Flu: Ministry of Health, Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Chemical Disasters : Ministry of Environment and Forests Industrial Disasters : Ministry of Labour Rail Accidents : Ministry of Railways Air Accidents : Ministry of Civil Aviation Fire : Ministry of Home Affairs Nuclear Incidents : Department of Atomic Energy Mine Disasters : Department of Mining

New Directions for Disaster Management in India : 

New Directions for Disaster Management in India A National Disaster Mitigation Fund will be administerd by NDMA. States and districts will administer mitigation funds. A National Disaster Response Fund will be administerd by NDMA through the National Executive Committee. States and Districts will administer state Disaster Response Fund and Disaster Response Fund respectively. 8 Battalions of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) are being trained and deployed with CSSR and MFR equipments and tools in eight strategic locations. A National Disaster Management Policy and National Disaster Response Plan will also be drawn up. (NPDM)

Invest in Preparedness : 

Invest in Preparedness Investments in Preparedness and Prevention (Mitigation) will yield sustainable results, rather than spending money on relief after a disaster. Most disasters are predictable, especially in their seasonality and the disaster-prone areas which are vulnerable. Communities must be involved in disaster preparedness.

Best Practices : 

Best Practices On 12 November, 1970 a major cyclone hit the coastal belt of Bangladesh at 223 km/hr. with a storm surge of six to nine meters height, killing an estimated 500,000 people. Due to the Cyclone Preparedness Program, the April 1991 cyclone with wind speed of 225 km/hr. killed only 138,000 people even though the coastal population had doubled by that time. In May 1994, in a similar cyclone with a wind speed of 250 km/hr. only 127 people lost their lives. In May 1997, in a cyclone with wind speed of 200 km/hr. only 111 people lost their lives.

HURRICANE KATRINA : 

HURRICANE KATRINA It was formed on august 23, 2005 in the Atlantic ocean. It was a category V hurricane with extremely high wind speed of 280 km\h. It was one of the most damaging hurricanes that caused more than 1800 deaths and resulted in the economic loss of 75 billion US dollars. Serious damage to the economy was caused by the interruption of the oil supply and exports of the commodities such as grain.

Slide 47: 

The forestry industry in Mississippi was also badly affected. The Katrina affected Bahamas, South Florida, Cuba, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida Panhandle and most of Eastern north America. The Katrina also had profound environmental impacts. Erosion of beach was caused due to the storm, which, in some areas, completely devastated the coastal parts. In dauphin islands, where the hurricane occurred, the sand was forcibly transported across the Island, pushing the island towards land. The storm and waves completely obliterated the Chandeleur Islands.

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Several marine mammals, turtles and fish, as migratory species of redhead ducks, sand hill cranes, red cockaded woodpeckers and Alabama mice lost their breeding grounds due to destruction of the coastal lands. About 20% of the local marshes were permanently destroyed by the storm water. Sixteen national wildlife reserves were forced to be closed due to the Katrina, amongst which Breton national wildlife refuge suffered maximum damage. During the cleanup effort, the flood waters from New Orleans were pumped into the Lake Pontchantrain, which were contaminated with raw sewage, pathogenic bacteria, heavy metals, pesticides, toxic chemicals, and gallons of oil, posing serious threat to aquatic life.

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THE END