While we have no control over natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanoes, humans have been able to match – and sometimes far surpass – the damage caused by anything nature has thrown our way. Over time, ecological accidents caused by corporate greed, poor national policies, deregulation, and a bunch of other factors have caused considerable damage to already-sensitive ecosystems around the world. The worst part is that unlike natural calamities, all of these man-made environmental disasters in history were entirely avoidable.
10. Minamata Disease
Minamata disease is named after the Japanese city of the same name, where in 1956, a mysterious sickness appeared overnight and started to affect the residents. It was a neurological disease, causing symptoms like slurred speech, muscle weakness, and tremors. It could even cause death in worst case scenarios, though back then, no one knew exactly what was causing it.
Now, we know those symptoms to be telltale signs of mercury poisoning. In Minamata, the culprit turned out to be a chemical manufacturer known as the Chisso Corporation. They had been dumping massive amounts of mercury – or more precisely methylmercury – into the freshwater supply of the city, which eventually made its way to the fish and other marine creatures living in Minamata Bay.
In a 2004 ruling, the Japanese Supreme Court officially recognized the role of the state in the disaster. It resulted in about 3,500 citizens filing damages against the government, though some activists claimed that the real number could be as high as 30,000.
9. Love Canal Chemical Spill
The neighborhood of Love Canal in Niagara County, New York was named after a nearby landfill dating back to the 1890s. While originally imagined as a model neighborhood, it would soon turn into one of the worst cases of groundwater poisoning in US history. Beginning some time in the 1920s, the canal was used as a dumping ground for a variety of chemicals and other industrial waste, including nuclear waste from early attempts to build the bomb during WW2.
Love Canal was eventually covered and sealed by the owners of the land – the Hooker Chemical Company – and replaced by a residential neighborhood in the 1950s. As you’d expect, all that chemical waste soon started showing up across town, mostly in the form of puddles filled with noxious substances that suddenly appeared in yards and basements.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, residents of Love Canal experienced high rates of medical complications like miscarriages, birth defects, and chromosome damage. The case resulted in the formation of Superfund – a 1980 federal program aimed at dealing with chemical waste sites across the country.
8. Four Pests Campaign
In 1958, Mao Zedong kicked off the Four Pests Campaign across China. It was a part of the larger Great Leap Forward, aimed to reduce the number of the four most problematic pests in the country – rats, mosquitoes, flies, and sparrows – in order to increase crop yields and eradicate diseases. The Chinese were especially mad at the sparrow, particularly the Eurasian Tree Sparrow, as it consumed a large amount of grain at a time people were starving.
Many innovative methods were tried, including making loud noises with household utensils like pots and pans to disturb their feeding patterns. The government even rewarded the agencies and groups that killed the highest number of any of these pests, which ultimately proved successful. By one estimate, the campaign resulted in the deaths of over 1 billion sparrows, along with 1.5 billion rats, 220 million pounds of flies, and over 24 million pounds of mosquitoes.
While it was great for the crops, the whole thing had an unintended consequence, as the sparrows were also crucial to keep crop-destroying insects in check. Without them, the insects multiplied, leading to massive crop losses and a famine that might have killed anywhere between 15 and 36 million people across China.
7. Cantara Loop Chemical Spill
On July 14, 1991, a Southern Pacific train derailed near Mt. Shasta in California, dumping about 19,000 gallons of a chemical known as metam sodium into the Sacramento River. It’s a soil fumigant and herbicide, which would have a devastating effect on the ecology of the entire region. According to reports, the spill and resulting chemical plume could be seen across a 41-mile radius, with the chemicals eventually spreading up to Shasta Lake.
The accident would result in the death of all forms of life in the river over a 45-mile stretch, which included more than a million fish and tens of thousands of other creatures like crayfish, mollusks, and insects. Additionally, hundreds of people living in the area reported symptoms like burning eyes, headaches, and nausea.
While a $38 million settlement was reached with all the affected parties after the damage was properly assessed by agencies like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the effects of the spill have still not been fully reversed.
6. Kyshtym Nuclear Disaster
The Kyshtym Nuclear Disaster happened on September 29, 1957 in the city of Ozyorsk, Russia, caused by an explosion in one of the concrete nuclear waste storage tanks at the facility. It was estimated that the explosion released around 20MCi of radioactive material into the environment, making it the third most catastrophic nuclear accident in history.
The disaster would have a lasting impact on the locals, as it resulted in the contamination of about 9,000 miles of land in and around the site, with over 10,000 people evacuated from the region because of it. Additionally, due to the secrecy surrounding the incident, it would take many more years before the true extent of the damage was fully revealed to the Soviet public.
5. Kuwaiti Oil Fires
Kuwait was occupied by Iraqi forces in August 1990, triggering a military response from a coalition of 39 countries that we now know as the Gulf War. While that ensured a prompt Iraqi retreat, they resorted to scorched-Earth tactics by setting more than 650 Kuwaiti oil fields on fire, resulting in one of the largest environmental disasters in recent history.
Due to the smoke, the entire area was covered with a thick sheet of harmful smog for over ten months, made up of harmful pollutants like carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. The amount of leaked oil was so large that it created about 300 lakes of oil in the Kuwaiti desert, while the rest of it flowed into the Persian Gulf. On top of all that, acid rain caused by the burning oil was responsible for killing large numbers of plants and animals across the region.
While the fires aren’t burning anymore, the damage to the Kuwaiti ecosystem and environment lingers on. The contaminated regions are out-of-reach for the public or even authorities, as they’re also littered with unexploded ordnance from the war.
4. Disappearance Of Aral Sea
The Aral Sea in central Asia, located between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, was once the fourth-largest lake in the world. It all changed during the Soviet era, however, when exhaustive agricultural projects, climate change, and a few other factors resulted in the near disappearance of the water body. By one estimate, the Aral Sea has lost over 90% of its size compared to about fifty years ago, making it one of the largest environmental disasters of our time.
One major factor was the rerouting of major tributaries that drained into the lake, which was also a major source of fish and other marine wildlife for the local population. With its near-disappearance, the local fisheries have been almost wiped out. On top of all that, the rapid drop in water levels led to the exposure of the lakebed, which is full of harmful material like salts, pesticides, and other pollutants. As a result, the air and water in the regions is now severely contaminated, leading to a wide range of health problems for people living in the region.
3. Bhopal Gas Tragedy
In December 1984, the city of Bhopal in India went through what many have since called the ‘worst industrial accident in history’. It began in an insecticide plant owned by the Indian subsidiary of the American chemical giant, Union Carbide Corporation, when about 45 tons of a dangerous gas – methyl isocyanate – escaped in the densely-populated environment. Due to lack of regulation and proper government rules, the plant was built right in the middle of the city, further exacerbating the overall impact of the disaster
The toxic cloud spread rapidly, killing over 3,000 people within the first 24 hours. While estimates vary, the total death toll from the tragedy may have been as high as 20,000, with many more suffering from chronic diseases like cancer, respiratory illnesses, and reproductive disorders directly because of the exposure.
2. Niger Delta Oil Spills
The Niger Delta in southern Nigeria is easily one of the most polluted places on Earth, and many factors are responsible. It’s a resource-rich region, despite the poor quality of its soil and inaccessible terrain, as it’s home to vast reserves of various kinds of hydrocarbons. That turned it into a hub for oil and gas extraction some time in the 1950s, immediately triggering a violent native insurgency that continues to this day.
Over the decades, there have been multiple oil spills in and around the delta region, thanks to lax regulation laws and corruption among local authorities. A total of 822 spills were recorded just within the years 2020 and 2021, spilling about 28,00 barrels in the local environment. As one would expect, it had a devastating impact on local wildlife and food yields, further worsening the conflict situation in the region. Despite all that, the Niger Delta remains a top driver of Nigeria’s economy, as it’s responsible for over 90% of the country’s GDP.
1. Amazon Forest Fires
The huge fires in the Amazon rainforest made global news back in 2019, as the world watched the largest forest cover burn up due to reasons that weren’t immediately clear. Were they natural forest fires, like the ones observed in many other parts of the world every year, an accident that blew out of proportion, or something else entirely?
As a 2020 study would go on to establish, the primary culprit was, again, corporate greed and government deregulation. We now know that fires are widely used by the cattle, logging, and farming industries in the Amazon, as they provide a quick, low-cost way of clearing out the land for agriculture and ranching. As the study found, most of the fires were associated with industrial operations, many of which continue to operate without state oversight even today. An earlier study had found that the beef-producing regions in the Amazon are three times more likely to experience forest fires during dry seasons.