Hungarian toxic sludge reservoir wall fails

mike65

Dreadful stuff the video tells its own story.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/10/06/hungary-sludge-flood.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1G8IHpWm5Q

The Danube under threat.

FTGFOP

It's hitting the Danube now apparently. What are the long term issues from the red mud reaching the river? The pH will go down with dilution but can we expect longer term problems with alumnium and heavy metal contamination?

air

Our heap in Co.Limerick is a bit bigger than theirs & growing at 1 million tons p/a.

Birdnuts

There are numerous such facilities all along the Danube, one more dodgy then the next. You would think the EU by now would have shut down such operations and get them to clean up their act given that the Danube is such a vital resource in terms of its fisheries, tourism and the fact that its one of the premier wildlife habitats in Europe. But as usual lobbying by big business has watered down the directives in this area - I wonder how our MEP's voted on such things, though given FG/FF record on the environment I think we know the answer in that case:rolleyes:


http://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?195776/Hungary-could-take-lead-on-tackling-ticking-toxic-time-bombs-from-mining

SeanW

I have a question about this:

I've seen and read a lot about industrial pollution from time to time, Hungary, what goes on in China, what used to go on in the West when we had industry

And I have to wonder about the pollution that results.

Is it that this kind of environmental destruction is an inevitable consequence of most forms of industry, or is more that these things could be dealt with in a safe way, but it's simply cheaper to build dodgy waste pools and, in other cases, simply dump waste chemicals etc into waterways, etc?

Birdnuts

SeanW wrote: »

.

Is it that this kind of environmental destruction is an inevitable consequence of most forms of industry, or is more that these things could be dealt with in a safe way, but it's simply cheaper to build dodgy waste pools and, in other cases, simply dump waste chemicals etc into waterways, etc?

All the evidence points to the latter, why do you think big business spends so much money lobbying politicians around the world to lower standards when it comes to environmental protection??:(