The shock of a chemical disaster

Incidents and accidents with Chemicals can produce some of the worst possible outcomes for the environment and the humans that live in it. Not following safety storage procedures can lead to civil and criminal action against a company and it is a requirement of many to have some Spill Kits on hand for staff to deal with any emergency. In most cases the swift use of Spill Kits from Hyde Park Environmental, for example, can avert a real problem developing.

Here are some examples where this did not happen.

  • Bhopal. Not a liquid chemical leak but a gas, this still represents a serious accident that is only now seeing the victims of Union Carbide’s mistake being compensated. There have been many requests for the heads of the company to stand trial for negligence in India where this occurred. In 1984 tuns of deadly methyl isocyanate escaped from the plant where the wind took it over heavily populated areas.

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  • Windscale. Soon renamed to Sellafield to try and deflect away from the accident, this was one of the world’s first serious nuclear accidents well before Chernobyl. Occurring in the UK in 1957 it was the main reason the UK stopped using RBK graphic block reactors, but the Russians continued with their cost. An uncontrollable fire resulted in an eruption of polonium and radioactive iodine particles.

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  • Exxon Valdez. Easily the worst of the disasters set down here. This is one of the first appearances of spill kits, as used by Exxon/Esso, to try and remediate the oil spill their tanker created. Dumping tonnes of crude oil off the coast of the delicate Alaskan coast the damage to the environment lasted for decades and seriously threatened the wildlife and fauna there.