Although many ecologists feared that the material’s mixing with the waters of the Danube would initiate something of an environmental catastrophe, the impact on the Danube was low.
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At least 10 people were killed, with more than 120 others injured after they made contact with the sludge, which burned their skin and caused eye irritation. Made up of waste products-such as lead-from bauxite refining, the wave of sludge made it into local rivers and streams, killing many plants and animals along the way, before some of it entered the Danube River. Some 38 million cubic feet (1 million cubic meters, or about 6.7 million barrels) of the toxic material was released after part of the wall failed. The sludge moved downhill, covering low-lying villages in Hungary’s Marcal River valley. The retaining wall held back a part of a waste reservoir containing a tremendous volume of red caustic sludge. On October 4, 2010, a retaining wall gave way at the Ajkai Timföldgyar alumina (aluminum oxide) plant in Ajkai, Hungary. In the aftermath of the Donora Death Fog, the state of Pennsylvania created and passed the first of its air pollution laws (in 1959), and the story of this event was recounted as evidence supporting the development and passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act. For the next 10 years the town’s mortality rate surpassed those of its neighbors. Many of the survivors had permanent respiratory damage. Twenty-two people died, and some 50 additional fog-attributed deaths occurred within a few months. Nearly 5,000 people suffered from the effects of this pollution episode, with many people developing fluorine poisoning with concentration levels in the bloodstream rising to 12–25 times the normal amount. In late October 1948 the town of Donora, Pennsylvania, was visited by deadly fog. For four days weather conditions trapped fluoride fumes, particulates (which included lead and cadmium), and other emissions (such as carbon monoxide, hydrofluoric acid, and sulfur dioxide) from the region’s steel smelting plants and zinc works within the Monongahela River Valley, where Donora sits. The air failed to move, and the high concentrations of airborne pollutants built up near the ground. The deadly cloud, which likely formed within a span of just a few minutes, killed people, livestock, and other animals within a 15-mile (24-kilometer) radius. A sudden landslide of rock or an increase in heating from below by volcanic activity appears to have forced bubbles of CO 2 gas to the surface, where the bubbles combined to form a suffocating cloud whose volume could have been as large as 0.3 cubic mile (1.2 cubic kilometers).
Since the surface waters of this tropical lake did not cool enough to descend, concentrations of dissolved CO 2 gas built up in the water, hovering close to the lake’s floor. In the case of Lake Nyos, however, mixing did not occur, because in the tropics temperatures remain relatively warm year-round.
In the predawn hours of August 21, 1986, a volcanic lake in Cameroon belched a cloud of carbon dioxide (CO 2) that asphyxiated more than 1,700 people. The CO 2 was likely generated by volcanic activity. In other volcanic lakes the turn of the seasons alters the density of the water at the surface so that it periodically mixes with the waters below. SpaceNext50 Britannica presents SpaceNext50, From the race to the Moon to space stewardship, we explore a wide range of subjects that feed our curiosity about space!.Learn about the major environmental problems facing our planet and what can be done about them! Saving Earth Britannica Presents Earth’s To-Do List for the 21st Century.Britannica Beyond We’ve created a new place where questions are at the center of learning.100 Women Britannica celebrates the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, highlighting suffragists and history-making politicians.
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