3 ms·
Article title implies that the company was somehow doing something shady. This is horrible reporting The key part of the article : "Looters set fire to a UPL
by vmurthy 4y ago
Article title implies that the company was somehow doing something shady. This is horrible reporting
The key part of the article :
"Looters set fire to a UPL warehouse containing the pesticides during a wave of looting and arson in July last year. That caused a chemical spill which shut down beaches, released severe air pollution and killed marine wildlife. Sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, hydrogen chloride and hydrogen cyanide were among the chemicals released into the dam"
tl;dr
1. UPL's warehouse was set on fire which caused a chemical spill.
2. This presumably ended up contained in a dam
3. Company sought disposal by various methods (including) to sewer and or sea outfall via the municipal sewer system
4. Other alternative was to send this to landfill (which both the authorities and the company agreed was nonsensical)
- nojonestownpls 4y agoThe title is highly editorialized (by the news agency/Reuters), and the article reads like something from a content farm - which I suppose is what a lot of smaller newspapers are. There's a vague attribution to "municipal authorities" for the "highly toxic" part of the title, even though "The municipality ... did not immediately respond to a request for comment." Later the article reveals that according to the company's claims "toxicity testing of April 11 showed extremely low levels of marine toxicity, capable of being completely neutralized by dilution." - so it's at the very least a contested claim, and yet used prominently just so that they can sensationalize the title. Also, > The key part of the article : > "Looters set fire to a UPL warehouse containing the pesticides during a wave of looting and arson in July last year. The warehouse (and the looting) was in South Africa, which wasn't clear to me on the first read through.