Technological Hazards

Technological Hazards

• Smith Ch 13

Technological Hazards

• Artificial hazards due to a technological failure– slow-acting– fast-acting

Slow-Acting

• soil and water contamination

• air pollution

• occupational disease

• life-style disease

"Smoking is one of the leading causes of all statistics."

-- Liza Minnelli

“Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life.”

— Brooke Shields

Byssinosis victim, Greenville SC

Arsenic poisoning

Arsenic

London Smog Nov 1952

“It isn’t the pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in the air and water that are doing it.”

-- Dan Quayle

Aral Sea

Bangkok

• Sudbury 1979

"Hollywood is the only place where you can wake up in the morning and hear the birds coughing in the trees."

-- Joe Frisco

Leaking USTs

• British sewage sludge dumped at sea 1980s

Fast-Acting

• major fires

• structural failures

• transportation accidents

• industrial accident

Major conflagrations

• 1666 Great Fire of London: 13,200 houses destroyed

• 1871 Great Fire of Chicago: 18,000 homes destroyed

Dutch firework disaster

Hagersville ON 1990

London May 10-11 1941

• Heaviest air raid on London in WW2

• 35 Weeks into the London “Blitz”

• 541 German aircraft involved– 700 tons of high explosive– 86 tons of incendiaries

London May 10-11 1941

• 1436 Civilians killed

• 1800 serious injuries

• 2200 fires started, 700 acres burned (bigger than 1666)

• 11000 homes destroyed

Major transport accidents

• 1912 Titanic: 1,500 dead

• 1914 Empress of Ireland

• Empire State crash 1940s

Mississauga Train Derailment

• November 1979 train carrying propane & chlorine derails

• 250,000 evacuated

• Amoco Cadiz 1978

Exxon Valdez

• Exxon pays $35 Billion US in compensation for major oil spill in Alaskan waters

• Tanker runs aground while captain drunk

Major industrial accidents

• 1769 San Nazzaro gunpowder explosion: 3,000 dead

• 1858 Boiler explosion, London docks: 2,000 dead

• 1906 Courrieres coal mine explosion: 1,099 dead

• 1917 Halifax Explosion: 1,200+ dead

• Toronto Oil Tank Fire 1911

Cubatao, Brazil 25 Feb 1984

• 500 squatters die when petroleum spills from industrial plant and ignites shanty community

Mexico City, 19 Nov 1984

• Liquified Petroleum Gas explosions at plant adjoining poor neighbourhood

• 452 dead, 31,000 homeless, 300,000 evacuated

Bhopal, India 2-3 Dec 1984

• India applying modern technology to farming

• Leak of toxic Methyl Isocyanate gas from Union Carbide agrochemicals plant

• Killed 2000 immediately, 6,400 total

• 34,000 blinded, 200,000 injured

• 200,000 refugees

Bhopal

• Factory without US-standard safety measures

• Large numbers of vulnerable people living close to the plant

• No preparation to evacuate or protect population

• Company able to offload much of the responsibility onto India

Bhopal

• Union Carbide eventually pays $470 million US in compensation (1989)

• Around $500 per injured person, $2000 per death

• Victims face corruption in Indian legal and medical systems

Bhopal

• Brought tighter controls in USA on chemical companies– US chemical companies shift production to

LDCs

Exposure increases

• More people living in dense urban areas and exposed to risk

• More powerful technologies

• Rapid pace of technological change: – new hazards in places unfamiliar with them

Road Deaths

• 70% of all road deaths now in LDCs

Dubai

Globalization of industrial technology

• Global spread of industrialization

• Globalization of commercial farming– chemicals

• From mid 1980s LDCs enter the big league for industrial accidents

Pesticides in Singapore

Spreading DDT on a Toronto Dump, Spring 1948

Protection increases

• Engineering improves

• Safety features improved

• Improved safety regulation– Less in LDCs– Eroding in MDCs with

reductions in public spending

Chernobyl 25-26 April 1986

• Nuclear reactor accident in Belarus

• Flawed plant design plus human incompetence– water-cooled graphite-modified

• Radioactive steam blows the 1000 tonne cover off the reactor– fragments flung for 1 km– plume of radioactive gas enters upper atmosphere

Chernobyl 25-26 April 1986

• US satellite surveillance incomplete– crucial hardware lost on the Space Shuttle

Challenger

• World has to observe the unfolding disaster on an old LANDSAT satellite– not designed to see things this small– sees two reactors

• First western alarm: at a nuke plant in Sweden

Chernobyl 25-26 April 1986

• 31+ die from radiation burns– Kamikaze firefighting to bury the reactor

• 200+ seriously injured

• 135,000 permanently evacuated within 35 km radius

• Abandonment of Pripyat

Chernobyl 25-26 April 1986

• Radioactive plume circles the globe within 2 weeks

• Heaviest fallout in high-rainfall northern hemisphere– contamination of the arctic and subarctic food

chains

Scrapbook of Technological Hazards

Historic Waste Disposal

Weston Rd & Black Creek

• Early C20th: flood-liable creek and quarries

• Some waste disposal, landfilling, cheap housing

• Hurricane Hazel 1954: extensive flooding

• Black Creek placed in concrete channel

• Metro and York Township landfill the quarries

Weston Rd & Black Creek

• Expropriation of Porter Ave homes 1965– Michael Vukovitz

Weston Rd & Black Creek

• Feb 1965: Landfill-methane explosion on Avon Ave– garage explodes, man becomes human torch

• 1969: same garage explodes again– different man becomes human torch

• Litigation: Gertson vs Borough of York 1973– Gertson won

Hamilton Waterfront 1970s

• Laidlaw’s Interflow subsidiary treating hazardous liquids on Hamilton waterfront in 1970s– Thermal treatment– Transfer station– Licensed to send region’s wastes to dump

Upper Ottawa St Dump

• Wastes hauled to Upper Ottawa St Landfill– operated by another Laidlaw company: KD

Disposals

• Upper Ottawa St Landfill leaks– Red Hill Creek contaminated– Region recently fined $500,000 for this

Philip Services

• 1990s secured contract to operate Hamilton’s water supply, sewage disposal

• 1990s secured approval for Taro landfill, Stoney Creek

Philip Services

• Taro Landfill accepts illegal plating wastes from US– Philip forcing city to allow Taro leachate in city

sewers

• Philip’s spills sewage into Harbour

• Philip abandons Hamilton’s blue-box collection programme May 2001– Leaves City to pick up the pieces

• Wonderful corporate behaviour

Global Acid Rain

Technological Hazards

• Complex hazard spectrum

• Significant role of human factors

• Signs that the vulnerability and hazard exposure reflect broad societal changes:– urbanization– global industrialization