Environmental events 1951- 2010

1951 200 tones of Uranium dust was discharged to atmosphere in Ohio, USA.

1956 Minamata, Japan. Mercury dumping started, the effects became obvious in 1959.

1957 Windscale (now Sellafield) accident, 35 dead.

1964 First appearance of foam in streams due to increased use of non-degradable detergents.

1966 Tanker 'Anne Mildred Brovig' spills 20,000 tonnes of oil in the North Sea.

1967 Tanker 'Torrey Canyon' broke up and released 118,000 tonnes of crude oil, 14,000 tonnes finding its way on the UK beaches.

1968 Witwater tanker spills 14,000 barrels of oil, just off the coast of Panama.

1968 First discoveries and fears about holes in the ozone layer.

1969 'Cuyahoga River' caught fire in the US, due to heavy oil pollution. Burning water caught popular imagination.

1969 Hamilton Trader spills 4000 barrels of oil off the coast of Liverpool, England

1970 Tanker ‘Arrow’ spills 77000 barrels of oil off the coast of Nova Scotia.

1971 Tanker ‘Wafra’ spills 22,000 barrels of oil off the coast of Africa.

1974 Dutch tanker Metulla spills 52,000 tonnes of crude oil off Chile.

1976 Spanish tanker 'Urquiola' runs aground releasing 95,000 tonnes of oil into the Bay of la Coruna.

1976 Seveso, Italy. Just over 2kg of (TCCD) Dioxine was released into the atmosphere causing long term poisoning.

1977 Tanker Al Rawdatain spills 7300 barrels of oil off the coast of Italy.

1977 Tanker Borug spills 214,000 barrels of oil of the coast of Taiwan.

1978 Tanker 'Amoco Cadiz' loses 230,000 tonnes of oil near Brest in France.

1979 Nuclear reactor at Harrisburg USA, suffers partial meltdown. Radioactive contaminants escape to water.

1979 Gulf of Mexico. 170,000 tonnes of crude oil escape from an oil rig bore hole ‘Ixtoc I’ to the sea. Plugged in March 1980.

1979 Cement factory at Lengerich, Germany contaminates the area with thallium. Trees defoliate and agricultural land becomes unusable.

1979 Stolzenberg chemicals factory in Hamburg releases phosphor compounds resulting in the death of a child.

1980's Conclusive scientific evidence on ozone hole, acid rain, climate change.

1984 Tanker Alvenus grounded off the coast of Louisiana, spilling 65,000 barrels of oil.

1984 Bhopal, India. Release of methyl isocyanate to atmosphere kills many thousands of people.

1986 Chernobyl, Ukraine. Nuclear accident causes massive radiation releases to atmosphere, long term death count unknown.

1988 Rhine polluted near Basel, a Ceiba-Geigy factory releases 400 litres of pesticide called Atrazin into the river.

1988 Chemicals factory Sandoz catches fire. Pesticides released into run-off water contains mercury and contaminates the Rhine near Basel yet again, less than 2 months after the incident above.

1989 Tanker 'Exxon Valdez' runs aground discharging 40,000 tonnes of crude oil in the Prince William Sound of the coast of Alaska.

1989 Tanker 'Khark-5' explodes north of the Canary Islands discharging 70,000 tonnes of light crude oil.

1989 Tanker 'Aragon' loses 25,000 tonnes of crude off Madeira.

1991 Tanker Bahia spills almost 4000 barrels of oil in Antarctica.

1992 Norwegian fishing grounds found to contain trace radioactivity, due to the break-up and sinking of dilapidated Russian nuclear submarines.

1992 Tanker 'Aegean Sea' runs aground of la Coruna, losing 80,000 tonnes of crude.

1993 Tanker 'Braer' runs aground on the Shetlands, losing 85,000 tonnes of crude oil.

1993 Tanker 'Maersk Navigator' is rammed off the coast of Sumatra, unknown quantity of crude oil lost to sea.

1996 Tanker 'Sea Empress' runs aground off the Welsh coast,  discharging 70,000 tonnes of crude oil.

1997 Vast fires caused by land clearing in Kalimantan and Sumatra in Indonesia releases emissions greater than the Gulf War fires in Kuwait during 1991.

1998 Tanker 'Nakhodka' broke up on route from Shanghai to Kamchatka carrying 17,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil.

1998 Wastewater dam in Spain ruptures, contaminating the Guadiamar River with cadmium, lead, zinc and copper.

1999 Maltese tanker Erika broke in two, spilling 19,800 tonnes of fuel oil of the coast of Brittany.

2000 Burst pipeline leaked 340,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil into Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janerio.

2000 A ruptured tailings dam in Rumania sent tonnes of heavy metal into the Somme, Tisza and Danube rivers.

2000 Tanker Winchester runs aground near Port Sulphur and loses 550,000 gallons of crude oil into the Mississippi.

2001 Tanker Jessica spills 900 tonnes of oil near the Galapagos Islands.

2002 Oil tanker ‘Prestige’ was compromised by bad weather. The vessel was not allowed into port and subsequently broke in two spilling 74,000 tonnes of fuel oil along the French and Spanish coastline.

2002 Norwegian car carrier Tricolor collides with Bahama container ship Kariba. Tricolor is abandoned but subsequently struck by cargo vessel Nicola and oil tanker Vicky.

2003 Tanker Tasman Spirit runs aground near Karatchi, leaking 28,000 tonnes of oil into the sea.

2004 MV Selendang Ayu grounded in a storm, shedding 340,000 gallons of oil near the Aleutian Islands, Alaska.

2006 Oil spill discovered at Prudhoe Bay on the trans-Alaska pipeline. An estimated one million litres of crude oil has been discharged.

2006 CITGIO Refinery releases 70,000 barrels of waste oil into the Calcasieu river, Louisiana after a rain storm.

2006 Tanker ‘M/T Solar I’ containing half a million gallons of oil sinks off the coast of the Philippines, into deep water.

2007 Vessel Hebei Spirit collides with another vessel, spilling 2.8 million gallons of crude oil off the coast of South Korea.

2007 Freighter strikes a pier leaving San Francisco leaking 50,000 gallons of oil into the bay.

2008 Retention pond at the Kingston Fossil Plants in Tennessee broke through, releasing up to 1.1 billion gallons of coal ash slurry.

2008 A tanker collides with a barge at New Orleans, during which 400,000 gallons of fuel oil was discharged into the Mississippi River.

2009 West Cork oil slick identified off the coast of Ireland, estimated to be equivalent to 500 tonnes of oil.

2009 MV Pacific Adventurer spills 260 tonnes of fuel and fuel oil off the coast of Queensland, Australia.

2009 Oil discovered to be leaking from oil rig Montara, off the coast of Australia at an estimated rate of 470,000 litres per day.

2010 Oil spill into Po iver, northern Italy estimated at 550,000 gallons had leaked into the Lambro river near Monza.