10 ms·

An environmental disaster was uncovered off California after 70 years

121 points by jdkee 6y ago

throwawaysea 6y ago
Wow that is an incredible story and a great read. I am shocked that dumping millions of barrels of toxic waste into the ocean was potentially legal. And that this was actually alleged in a report in the 1980s and ignored until now. At the same time, it’s great to see this work in surveying the shelf and finding these barrels. I’m a bit surprised Montrose was only fined $140 million, given the scale of the dumping and because they allegedly slashed barrels open to help them sink. And now for decades fish caught in Southern California may be contaminated, and 25% of sea lions have cancer. It’s just sad. Although this story is about toxic waste disposal, another big character here is DDT. It’s crazy to me that a substance invented in 1939 was accepted so immediately for broad use and application only to be later identified as dangerous and then banned. This article notes that beaches were sprayed with it to keep bugs away - and now it’s considered a probable carcinogen. This reminds me of similar findings for other substances like BPA, pthalates, etc. For any artificial substance that we introduce into the environment or food chain or human bodies, how can we know its long term effects? What method is there to know ahead of time that some new material, medicine, or whatever else is a lurking carcinogen or hormone disruptor or whatever? Often times those who hold suspicion about such effects are derided as luddites or conspiracy theorists, but it also seems that societal opinion got it wrong in very bad ways on many instances. And we only come to find out decades later.
- singularity2001 6y ago
  >>> sea lions have cancer. connecting with the recent sea urchin explosion: could it be that this poisoning had long lasting repercussions on the sea lion population and thus for the whole ecosystem off of californias coast?
  - pvaldes 6y ago
    Not probable. El Niño events have a bigger impact in the population trends. In any case, we have much more californian seals now than in 1970.
- timeon 6y ago
  > Often times those who hold suspicion about such effects are derided as luddites or conspiracy theorists, but it also seems that societal opinion got it wrong in very bad ways on many instances. There are now some countries where, in order to use new substance, it first needs to be declared as safe (and approved by agencies like EFSA). While in other countries they use it until it is proven that it is not safe.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    REACH, the EUs chemical registration and certification regulation, maybe a pain in the ass and not as effective as possible. But it definetly is a step in the right direction.
- pvaldes 6y ago
  > and 25% of sea lions have cancer. You got it wrong, they are talking about percentage of sea lions stranded ill, that is a different issue than percentage of the whole population of sea lions. Is like saying that 80% of people that enter in an hospital are ill and concluding that 80% of people in the city is ill. That cancer started at the same time, so is suspicious, for sure.
- einpoklum 6y ago
  > Wow that is an incredible story and a great read. I am shocked that dumping millions of barrels of toxic waste into the ocean was potentially legal This is the USA, my friend! Land of the regulation-free, home of the brazen.
  - pvaldes 6y ago
    That 'Now is your problem, not mine anymore' was a common way to do things in that time. Is not an US-centric problem only. Belgium, France, UK, Germany, Italy, Holland, Switzerland and Sweden dumped their radioactive garbage in barrels in the Atlantic Ocean between 1940's and 1982 at just 200km of the Spanish Coast. Greenpeace saved the day that time but it seems that everybody forgot that and we live in groundhog day again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_waste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_...
- pjc50 6y ago
  There was a huge shift in Western perception of the environment and acceptable risks during the 60s and 70s, the very early era of the "green" movement. The world used to be a lot dirtier and a lot more dangerous. Urban smoke was a huge problem: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16778604/london-great-smog-1952-death-in-the-air-pollution-book-review-john-reginald-christie https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16778604/london-great-sm...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Animats 6y ago
DDT is not that hazardous to mammals.[1] The problem is that it's persistent. It's very stable. That's bad for agricultural use, but it was good for its use in home construction, where spraying it inside walls killed bedbugs for many decades. Nothing we have today is as effective. The sea lion cancer problem seems to be a sexually transmitted disease. [2] Pollution may make this worse, but it's not clear that DDT is the culprit. Some sources say PCBs may be responsible. [1] https://www.acsh.org/news/2016/02/11/how-poisonous-is-ddt https://www.acsh.org/news/2016/02/11/how-poisonous-is-ddt [2] https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2021/03/31/marin-study-reveals-cancer-killing-california-sea-lions-is-caused-by-std/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2021/03/31/marin-study-rev...
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  And because of the environmentalists over-reaction and FUD about DDT, likely millions of children died in the developing world to mosquito born diseases such as malaria. The very persistence of DDT is great in resource constrained countries where the longer an application lasts, the more coverage you can have.
  - kaminar 6y ago
    Correctly. One book caused an uproar, with no proof. The author of that book is responsible for killing 500 million people who otherwise would have lived if DDT was not banned.
    - juskrey 6y ago
      DDT is still used for malaria control where nothing else works. The statement that it's not harmful for humans is blatantly false. It's slow, accumulating and proliferates through generations, and that's not counting natural ecosystems systemic harm. As it usually happens, evidence comes late. For ddt many things became evident only from 2000s, and we're lucky enough the ban was there already for 30 years or so
      - pvaldes 6y ago
swframe2 6y ago
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world [that the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many]"
- iforgotpassword 6y ago
  Humans... Smart enough to conquer the world, stupid enough to destroy it along the way. At least we're learning, slowly, but there might be just as much hazardous stuff going on today that we're not aware of yet. (slightly related: end of history illusion, dunning kruger effect).
- athrowaway3z 6y ago
  "The greatest trick swframe2 ever pulled was convincing a few people [that risks, known or unknown, are optional]"
  - cdblades 6y ago
    What risks are you trying to highlight?
aaron695 6y ago
It's hard to know what to do about people who believe this garbage. They are destroying the planet. > To this day, signs all along the Southern California coast warn fishermen not to eat certain fish. This literally stopped fishing, by far the most destructive force on our oceans, yet it's an "An environmental disaster" I just think let the planet burn, what more can you do. If anything this was a positive thing to have happened for the environment but they twist it into a disaster. Literally make up stuff about cancer to try and convince themselves this is bad. Even if it did give them cancer (which it didn't) cancer is a disease for the ultra rich. Not sea lions, who probably have a life equivalence of someone below $1.90 a day.
killtimeatwork 6y ago
I wonder how many disasters like that are currently taking place in Africa and Asia.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
The feigned surprise in the Feinstein quote is just priceless. Someone her age knows full well this was how things were done back then.
ecf 6y ago
I hope in 50 years the leaders and adults in general of today will be mocked and ridiculed for the rest of humanity for destroying our only inhabitable planet. My generation has been robbed of the ability to look forward due to the necessity of constantly cleaning up the mess of previous generations.

121 points by jdkee 6y ago

Wow that is an incredible story and a great read. I am shocked that dumping millions of barrels of toxic waste into the ocean was potentially legal. And that this was actually alleged in a report in the 1980s and ignored until now. At the same time, it’s great to see this work in surveying the shelf and finding these barrels. I’m a bit surprised Montrose was only fined $140 million, given the scale of the dumping and because they allegedly slashed barrels open to help them sink. And now for decades fish caught in Southern California may be contaminated, and 25% of sea lions have cancer. It’s just sad. Although this story is about toxic waste disposal, another big character here is DDT. It’s crazy to me that a substance invented in 1939 was accepted so immediately for broad use and application only to be later identified as dangerous and then banned. This article notes that beaches were sprayed with it to keep bugs away - and now it’s considered a probable carcinogen. This reminds me of similar findings for other substances like BPA, pthalates, etc. For any artificial substance that we introduce into the environment or food chain or human bodies, how can we know its long term effects? What method is there to know ahead of time that some new material, medicine, or whatever else is a lurking carcinogen or hormone disruptor or whatever? Often times those who hold suspicion about such effects are derided as luddites or conspiracy theorists, but it also seems that societal opinion got it wrong in very bad ways on many instances. And we only come to find out decades later.

singularity2001 6y ago
>>> sea lions have cancer. connecting with the recent sea urchin explosion: could it be that this poisoning had long lasting repercussions on the sea lion population and thus for the whole ecosystem off of californias coast?
- pvaldes 6y ago
  Not probable. El Niño events have a bigger impact in the population trends. In any case, we have much more californian seals now than in 1970.
timeon 6y ago
> Often times those who hold suspicion about such effects are derided as luddites or conspiracy theorists, but it also seems that societal opinion got it wrong in very bad ways on many instances. There are now some countries where, in order to use new substance, it first needs to be declared as safe (and approved by agencies like EFSA). While in other countries they use it until it is proven that it is not safe.
- hef19898 6y ago
  REACH, the EUs chemical registration and certification regulation, maybe a pain in the ass and not as effective as possible. But it definetly is a step in the right direction.
pvaldes 6y ago
> and 25% of sea lions have cancer. You got it wrong, they are talking about percentage of sea lions stranded ill, that is a different issue than percentage of the whole population of sea lions. Is like saying that 80% of people that enter in an hospital are ill and concluding that 80% of people in the city is ill. That cancer started at the same time, so is suspicious, for sure.
einpoklum 6y ago
> Wow that is an incredible story and a great read. I am shocked that dumping millions of barrels of toxic waste into the ocean was potentially legal This is the USA, my friend! Land of the regulation-free, home of the brazen.
- pvaldes 6y ago
  That 'Now is your problem, not mine anymore' was a common way to do things in that time. Is not an US-centric problem only. Belgium, France, UK, Germany, Italy, Holland, Switzerland and Sweden dumped their radioactive garbage in barrels in the Atlantic Ocean between 1940's and 1982 at just 200km of the Spanish Coast. Greenpeace saved the day that time but it seems that everybody forgot that and we live in groundhog day again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_waste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_...
pjc50 6y ago
There was a huge shift in Western perception of the environment and acceptable risks during the 60s and 70s, the very early era of the "green" movement. The world used to be a lot dirtier and a lot more dangerous. Urban smoke was a huge problem: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16778604/london-great-smog-1952-death-in-the-air-pollution-book-review-john-reginald-christie https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16778604/london-great-sm...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Animats 6y ago

DDT is not that hazardous to mammals.[1] The problem is that it's persistent. It's very stable. That's bad for agricultural use, but it was good for its use in home construction, where spraying it inside walls killed bedbugs for many decades. Nothing we have today is as effective. The sea lion cancer problem seems to be a sexually transmitted disease. [2] Pollution may make this worse, but it's not clear that DDT is the culprit. Some sources say PCBs may be responsible. [1] https://www.acsh.org/news/2016/02/11/how-poisonous-is-ddt https://www.acsh.org/news/2016/02/11/how-poisonous-is-ddt [2] https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2021/03/31/marin-study-reveals-cancer-killing-california-sea-lions-is-caused-by-std/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2021/03/31/marin-study-rev...

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
And because of the environmentalists over-reaction and FUD about DDT, likely millions of children died in the developing world to mosquito born diseases such as malaria. The very persistence of DDT is great in resource constrained countries where the longer an application lasts, the more coverage you can have.
- kaminar 6y ago
  Correctly. One book caused an uproar, with no proof. The author of that book is responsible for killing 500 million people who otherwise would have lived if DDT was not banned.
  - juskrey 6y ago
    DDT is still used for malaria control where nothing else works. The statement that it's not harmful for humans is blatantly false. It's slow, accumulating and proliferates through generations, and that's not counting natural ecosystems systemic harm. As it usually happens, evidence comes late. For ddt many things became evident only from 2000s, and we're lucky enough the ban was there already for 30 years or so
    - pvaldes 6y ago

swframe2 6y ago

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world [that the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many]"

iforgotpassword 6y ago
Humans... Smart enough to conquer the world, stupid enough to destroy it along the way. At least we're learning, slowly, but there might be just as much hazardous stuff going on today that we're not aware of yet. (slightly related: end of history illusion, dunning kruger effect).
athrowaway3z 6y ago
"The greatest trick swframe2 ever pulled was convincing a few people [that risks, known or unknown, are optional]"
- cdblades 6y ago
  What risks are you trying to highlight?

aaron695 6y ago

It's hard to know what to do about people who believe this garbage. They are destroying the planet. > To this day, signs all along the Southern California coast warn fishermen not to eat certain fish. This literally stopped fishing, by far the most destructive force on our oceans, yet it's an "An environmental disaster" I just think let the planet burn, what more can you do. If anything this was a positive thing to have happened for the environment but they twist it into a disaster. Literally make up stuff about cancer to try and convince themselves this is bad. Even if it did give them cancer (which it didn't) cancer is a disease for the ultra rich. Not sea lions, who probably have a life equivalence of someone below $1.90 a day.

killtimeatwork 6y ago

I wonder how many disasters like that are currently taking place in Africa and Asia.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

The feigned surprise in the Feinstein quote is just priceless. Someone her age knows full well this was how things were done back then.

ecf 6y ago

I hope in 50 years the leaders and adults in general of today will be mocked and ridiculed for the rest of humanity for destroying our only inhabitable planet. My generation has been robbed of the ability to look forward due to the necessity of constantly cleaning up the mess of previous generations.