Toxic Waste for Ivory Coast

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

This kind of ####### makes me sick. And then we're sitting here on fcuking high horses blaming Africa for not getting anywhere. I wish they'd take these criminal executives and lock them with their families into those waste dumps they create until they get so fcuking sick that they can't move anymore. This is absolutely disgusting profiteering on the backs of the poorest people on the planet!

Profits for Europe, Industrial Sludge for Africa

Europe wouldn't take the ship's stinking, poisonous cargo. So it sailed to Africa and dumped the toxic mess into an Ivory Coast lagoon. Just the most recent example of western nations using Africa as a toxic waste dump.

The worst is when it rains. The water flows through the streets of Abidjan, the capital city of Ivory Coast, located next to a series of lagoons. With the water comes a toxic soup of industrial poison -- a dark, glistening mess reeking of sulfur and rotten eggs. The caustic fumes it releases cause vomiting, nosebleeds, headache and rashes.

The hospital in Cocody, a downtown neighborhood in this city of 4 million, is in a state of high alert. Women stand waiting in the hallways, pressing paper masks tightly against their noses and mouths. Masks are currently a hot commodity in the Ivory Coast, where street dealers sell them for 20 West African centimes apiece.

A little over a month ago, a fleet of tanker trucks loaded with a toxic brew of cleaning chemicals and gasoline and crude oil sludge was dispatched into the streets of Abidjan. Under cover of night, the drivers secretly dumped their loads in 14 locations around the city -- near vegetable fields, fisheries and water reservoirs. All told, the cargo amounted to 528 cubic meters (18,857 cubic feet) of toxic waste that had reached the West African coast on board an oil and cargo freighter.

Now many residential neighborhoods adjoining the dumpsites are all but deserted. When news broke of the first casualties, thousands packed their belongings onto donkey carts and buses and moved to the nearby forests -- from which many had only recently fled to escape the violence of the country's civil war. Angry demonstrators poured through Abidjan's streets. The transportation minister, who had resigned over the scandal, was seriously beaten in broad daylight. The toxic sludge has already claimed the lives of seven people, four of them children, and more than 9,000 have fallen ill, according to official figures. And although the vapors are gradually becoming less toxic, this is no reason for optimism. The disaster has crippled the city's garbage collection, prompting fears in the medical community of epidemic disease.

The disaster is instructive: This is what happens when affluent western societies run out of places to dump their waste; when increasingly stringent environmental laws at home mean skyrocketing waste disposal costs; when criminal profiteers seek low-cost solutions.

The dead and sick in Abidjan demonstrate the failures of government agencies, of the unscrupulousness of businessmen and the dubious nature of international agreements like the Basel Convention, which has in fact banned the international transport of toxic waste to developing countries since 1989. For Achim Steiner, director of United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the toxic shipment dumped in the Ivory Coast is "a particularly painful example of how illegal waste disposal causes human suffering."

...

The cost would have been about $250,000, plus another $250,000 in contractual penalties for the ship's likely delayed arrival at its next port of call in Estonia.

For executives at Trafigura, a Dutch oil trading company with annual sales of $28 billion, that cost was too high. Management decided to send the ship on its way.

...

Full Story

Edited September 20, 2006 by ET-US2004

[Mirorgate 0]

Damn. That is all kinds of wrong, I just dont know where to start with exactly what is wrong with it all.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

This kind of ####### makes me sick. And then we're sitting here on fcuking high horses blaming Africa for not getting anywhere. I wish they'd take these criminal executives and lock them with their families into those waste dumps they create until they get so fcuking sick that they can't move anymore. This is absolutely disgusting profiteering on the backs of the poorest people on the planet!

Profits for Europe, Industrial Sludge for Africa

Europe wouldn't take the ship's stinking, poisonous cargo. So it sailed to Africa and dumped the toxic mess into an Ivory Coast lagoon. Just the most recent example of western nations using Africa as a toxic waste dump.

The worst is when it rains. The water flows through the streets of Abidjan, the capital city of Ivory Coast, located next to a series of lagoons. With the water comes a toxic soup of industrial poison -- a dark, glistening mess reeking of sulfur and rotten eggs. The caustic fumes it releases cause vomiting, nosebleeds, headache and rashes.

The hospital in Cocody, a downtown neighborhood in this city of 4 million, is in a state of high alert. Women stand waiting in the hallways, pressing paper masks tightly against their noses and mouths. Masks are currently a hot commodity in the Ivory Coast, where street dealers sell them for 20 West African centimes apiece.

A little over a month ago, a fleet of tanker trucks loaded with a toxic brew of cleaning chemicals and gasoline and crude oil sludge was dispatched into the streets of Abidjan. Under cover of night, the drivers secretly dumped their loads in 14 locations around the city -- near vegetable fields, fisheries and water reservoirs. All told, the cargo amounted to 528 cubic meters (18,857 cubic feet) of toxic waste that had reached the West African coast on board an oil and cargo freighter.

Now many residential neighborhoods adjoining the dumpsites are all but deserted. When news broke of the first casualties, thousands packed their belongings onto donkey carts and buses and moved to the nearby forests -- from which many had only recently fled to escape the violence of the country's civil war. Angry demonstrators poured through Abidjan's streets. The transportation minister, who had resigned over the scandal, was seriously beaten in broad daylight. The toxic sludge has already claimed the lives of seven people, four of them children, and more than 9,000 have fallen ill, according to official figures. And although the vapors are gradually becoming less toxic, this is no reason for optimism. The disaster has crippled the city's garbage collection, prompting fears in the medical community of epidemic disease.

The disaster is instructive: This is what happens when affluent western societies run out of places to dump their waste; when increasingly stringent environmental laws at home mean skyrocketing waste disposal costs; when criminal profiteers seek low-cost solutions.

The dead and sick in Abidjan demonstrate the failures of government agencies, of the unscrupulousness of businessmen and the dubious nature of international agreements like the Basel Convention, which has in fact banned the international transport of toxic waste to developing countries since 1989. For Achim Steiner, director of United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the toxic shipment dumped in the Ivory Coast is "a particularly painful example of how illegal waste disposal causes human suffering."

...

The cost would have been about $250,000, plus another $250,000 in contractual penalties for the ship's likely delayed arrival at its next port of call in Estonia.

For executives at Trafigura, a Dutch oil trading company with annual sales of $28 billion, that cost was too high. Management decided to send the ship on its way.

...

Full Story

Which says to me that part of the reason we have a "terrorist crisis" is because we want to have our cake and eat it while saying nuts to everyone else.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

I was just watching a PBS Globe Trekkers show about the Ivory Caost. It looked like a dump as-is. Toxic waste can only make it worse. Right now I'm cleaning up a radioactive mess on Long Island due to 'legal' dumping in the 1950s and 1960s so I have mixed feelings about toxic waste.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I was just watching a PBS Globe Trekkers show about the Ivory Caost. It looked like a dump as-is. Toxic waste can only make it worse. Right now I'm cleaning up a radioactive mess on Long Island due to 'legal' dumping in the 1950s and 1960s so I have mixed feelings about toxic waste.

Unfortunately the Ivory Coast doesn't have the resources and expertise to deal with a situation like that, so they end up relying on international handouts.

Ever been to Azerbaijan? Much the same - Soviet oil exploration has left a massive toxic mess.

[Mirorgate 0]

I was just watching a PBS Globe Trekkers show about the Ivory Caost. It looked like a dump as-is. Toxic waste can only make it worse. Right now I'm cleaning up a radioactive mess on Long Island due to 'legal' dumping in the 1950s and 1960s so I have mixed feelings about toxic waste.

Unfortunately the Ivory Coast doesn't have the resources and expertise to deal with a situation like that, so they end up relying on international handouts.

Ever been to Azerbaijan? Much the same - Soviet oil exploration has left a massive toxic mess.

Rain Forest area in Ecuador from Texaco goin on right now too. as long as they get the millions in bonus.. screw the other ppl.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

And Google and Microsoft are censoring internet users in China. Seems there's always a buck to be made from someone else's misery.

Meanwhile, the German chemical company that produced Zyklon B for the Nazis is still in business, I believe.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

I was just watching a PBS Globe Trekkers show about the Ivory Caost. It looked like a dump as-is. Toxic waste can only make it worse. Right now I'm cleaning up a radioactive mess on Long Island due to 'legal' dumping in the 1950s and 1960s so I have mixed feelings about toxic waste.

Unfortunately the Ivory Coast doesn't have the resources and expertise to deal with a situation like that, so they end up relying on international handouts.

Ever been to Azerbaijan? Much the same - Soviet oil exploration has left a massive toxic mess.

I have turned down work at Chernobyl. The former Soviet Union is a mess that will be cleaned up at our (international community) expense.

[Mirorgate 0]

And Google and Microsoft are censoring internet users in China. Seems there's always a buck to be made from someone else's misery.

Meanwhile, the German chemical company that produced Zyklon B for the Nazis is still in business, I believe.

Yeah.. heard that too. But then... GE makes most of its money not to "Bring good things to life" but to rather end it rather quickly. Military hardware is big business.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I have turned down work at Chernobyl.

I don't blame you. I read a rather frightening national geographic article about Chernobyl, how people think that the disaster is all contained and under control - apparently ignorant of the fact that the sarcophagus around the power plant is actually decaying, in some places there are cracks right the way through that water seep through.

There's supposedly a new structure being built (like an aircraft hanger on wheels) to replace it. By all accounts if the current sarcophagus collapses, it will cause even worse Fallout than the original disaster.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

I have turned down work at Chernobyl.

I don't blame you. I read a rather frightening national geographic article about Chernobyl, how people think that the disaster is all contained and under control - apparently ignorant of the fact that the sarcophagus around the power plant is actually decaying, in some places there are cracks right the way through that water seep through.

There's supposedly a new structure being built (like an aircraft hanger on wheels) to replace it. By all accounts if the current sarcophagus collapses, it will cause even worse Fallout than the original disaster.

You are correct on all accounts. Scary, even for me.

[William33 110]

Typical activity of irresponsible corporate Pr!cks!!! Simple as that. Get a Rope.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Typical activity of irresponsible corporate Pr!cks!!! Simple as that. Get a Rope.

I'd rather they crack out the checkbook first.