Category: Pollution

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Nuclear power plant expansion and growth coalition in China

Nam young Kim, Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Seoul National University, South Korea 2016 marks the 5th anniversary of Fukushima nuclear accident, and 30 years since the Chernobyl accident. After these accidents, many countries either cancelled or delayed their nuclear power development due to safety concerns. However, for almost every country in East Asia, instead … Continue reading Nuclear power plant expansion and growth coalition in China

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Mapping the Toxic Remnants of War

Featured Image: A UNEP investigator assesses dozens of storage vessels for the toxic, carcinogenic and explosive missile fuel dimethylhydrazine that were abandoned by Soviet forces at a helicopter and scud missile base near Astana in Afghanistan. Credit: UNEP. Doug Weir, Toxic Remnants of War Project  Armed conflict can generate significant levels of environmental pollution and … Continue reading Mapping the Toxic Remnants of War

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“We want to Know what we’re Breathing”: Cement Factories and Contested Environmental Illness in Minas, Uruguay

Dr Daniel Renfrew, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, West Virginia University, USA. In 2011 residents of the small Uruguayan city of Minas (pop: 40,000) identified a disturbing trend. Loved ones, neighbors, and above all, children, adolescents and young adults, were coming down at seemingly alarming rates with various kinds of cancer- “strange cancers,” … Continue reading “We want to Know what we’re Breathing”: Cement Factories and Contested Environmental Illness in Minas, Uruguay

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The Berdichev Leather Factory in the Wake of the Chernobyl Accident

Professor Kate Brown, Professor of History, Department of History, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), USA This sentence in a document sent to Kiev a few months after the Chernobyl accident could read as criminal: “In the month of May [1986], the meat factories of Zhitomir, Korosten’, and Novograd-Volynsk processed livestock received from the 30-km zone … Continue reading The Berdichev Leather Factory in the Wake of the Chernobyl Accident

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U.S. Oil Refineries Required to Monitor Ambient Air Toxics: A victory, with limits, for neighbouring communities

Dr Gwen Ottinger, Assistant Professor, Department of Politics, Drexel University, USA The EPA refinery rule thus marks a major victory in community groups’ decades-long struggle for ambient air monitoring at refinery fence lines… but without a way to translate new air quality information into action, communities risk being overwhelmed by data. On September 29, 2015, … Continue reading U.S. Oil Refineries Required to Monitor Ambient Air Toxics: A victory, with limits, for neighbouring communities

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A Reflection on the Tianjin Explosions

Dr Cynthia Wang, Research Fellow, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, UK  The issue of realizing the right to information is far greater than one hazardous substance. Baskut Tuncak, UN Special Rapporteur (2015)  The shocking series of explosions at a hazardous goods warehouse occurred at the night of 12 August 2015, but since then Tianjin have … Continue reading A Reflection on the Tianjin Explosions

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Toxic Struggle and Corporate Paradox in a High-Tech Industrial Birthplace

Dr Peter C. Little, Assistant Professor, Anthropology Department, Rhode Island College, USA A three hour drive northwest of New York City, in the Empire State’s Southern Tier region, is the small community of Endicott. Nestled along the Susquehanna River, it is known as the “Birthplace of IBM.” International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)—born of a marriage between the … Continue reading Toxic Struggle and Corporate Paradox in a High-Tech Industrial Birthplace