8 Worst Man-Made Environmental Disasters in History

Worst man-made environmental disasters in history. These world tragedies & insane nature disasters caused severe damage!

Subscribe for new videos: http://goo.gl/SaufF4
Follow us on Instagram: @theywillkillyou
Voiceover by Carl Mason: [email protected]

8 Deepwater Horizon
Offshore drilling contractor Transocean owned the rig & had leased it to oil giant British Petroleum or BP. Two days after, the platform sank & caused a petroleum leak that continued for almost three months. US government reported that approximately 4.2 million barrels of oil had been released. Aside from impacting 43,300 miles of ocean, the spill affected 1,300 miles of coastline from Florida to Texas.
7 Kuwait Fires
The sun was darkened by the oily smoke plumes that shot high into the sky. People who ventured outside experienced breathing difficulties & one US environmentalist compared the effect to that of standing behind the exhaust pipes of hundreds of malfunctioning diesel trucks’. The fires burned for approximately seven months. Black rain, a mixture of smoke particles & natural precipitation fell as far as the Himalayas & the landscape became covered with hundreds of oil lakes, of up to four inches in depth. Birds confused the lakes for water. Smoke, ash & soot covered the Gulf. Livestock & the oily mist blackened the lungs of the animals.
6 Reactor Shutdown
The reactor shutdown that took place on the 26th of April, 1986, is considered to be one of the worst in history. Many cases were subsequently connected to the massive spread of radioactive material. Wide areas of Belarus, Ukraine & the Russian Federation, inhabited by millions of people, were affected. It went as far as the British Isles. It’s estimated that at least 5% of the reactor core was released into the atmosphere & downwind as result of the blast.
5 Minamata Disease
In the early 1950s the people inhabiting the small coastal city of Minamata in the south of Japan, began to notice animal behavior that was startling & out of the ordinary. Fish would inexplicably go belly up, birds crashed into the ground & cats would foam at the mouth & jump into the sea. It was not long that humans too began to exhibit unusual behavior that would later be referred to as the Minamata Disease. People would be stumbling about, slurring their words & encountering difficulties with the simplest day-to-day tasks. In 1958, the root of the strange behavior was finally discovered. As part of its manufacturing process, one of Minamata’s biggest employers, the Chisso Corporation chemical company had been dumping mercury into the sea.
4 Baia Mare Cyanide Spill
The Baia Mare cyanide spill took place in Romania in the year 2000. A gold mining company called Aurul, a jointventure of the Romanian government & an Australian company called Esmeralda Exploration had been shipping its waste material to a dam near Bozinta Mare, Maramures County. The company had been extracting the remaining gold from the tailings through a process called gold cyanidation with the resulting waste then being taken to the dam. On the 30th of January, 2000, the dam burst sending 3,500,000 feet of cyanide-contaminated water into the Somes River & some of the surrounding farmland.
3 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
260,000 to 750,000 barrels of crude oil were spilled in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on the 24th of March, 1989. It happened because of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker. The oil ultimately covered 1,300 miles of coastline & 11,000 square miles of ocean. A number of factors were cited as having contributed to the tanker’s crash. These included an insufficient & fatigued crew, possible problems with the ship’s Raytheon Collision Avoidance System radar or the lack of advanced monitoring equipment. Public blame also fell on the ship’s captain, Joseph Hazelwood, who was not present at the controls at the time as he was still sleeping after reportedly having drunk heavily the previous night.
2 Union Carbide Gas Leak
On the 2nd of December 1984, 30 tons of a highly toxic gas called methyl isocyanate & a number of other gases were released following an accident at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. The low-lingering gases caused the eyes & throats to burn & induced nausea. Thousands of people were treated in the immediate aftermath for various ailments including blindness & liver & kidney failure.
The Great Smog
Also known as the ‘Big Smoke’, the Great Smog took place on the European continent. For five days in December 1952, the city of London was brought to a standstill by heavy fog combined with sulfurous fumes from power plants, coal fires & vehicle exhaust. The dense smoke blocked out the sun as it began to enshroud several of the city’s landmarks, such as Big Ben, London Bridge, St. Paul’s Cathedral & others. At first, Londoners tried to ignore the foul air as best they could, but within an hour it could no longer be overlooked.