[HN Gopher] 2022 Oder Environmental Disaster
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2022 Oder Environmental Disaster
Author : Red_Tarsius
Score : 185 points
Date : 2022-08-13 14:08 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| numlock86 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32449865
| lkrubner wrote:
| All of the populist far-right parties seem to lean on
| "whataboutism" as their main explanation for everything. "We did
| something bad? But what about that time the other side also did
| something bad? Surely that means we are innocent?" At no point do
| they simply acknowledge how very sad this is. Poland is one of
| the most beautiful countries in the world, and yet it's being
| sacrificed to satisfy the greed of a few corporations.
|
| From the Wikipedia page:
|
| "The Polish government said that the perpetrators would be
| severely punished, however also blamed uninvolved opposition
| politicians Donald Tusk, Rafal Trzaskowski and compared the
| situation to other previous unrelated events in Warsaw and
| Gdansk, where the opposition Civic Platform hold power. Grzegorz
| Witkowski, a government minister, as well as repeating the
| unfounded government claims, also blamed ecologists and stated
| that the river is safe to enter."
|
| Grzegorz Witkowski is trying to bring back a pre-Gorbachev style
| of Communist communication. "The problem isn't that the river was
| poisoned, the problem is that ecologists have told people the
| river is poisoned."
| Guthur wrote:
| Yeah just like a recession is not a recession and that
| inflation is now 0 apparently.
|
| This is all statism 101, the state must survive above the
| nation.
| hawski wrote:
| In the state television on main news programme they basically
| played a 3 minute clip saying for about a minute that something
| happened with the river and other two slamming opposition for
| an incident on other river that is not really comperable in
| extens or even response. They driely mentioned though that the
| prime minister fired a few officials and ended with a jab at
| Germans.
| jl6 wrote:
| A cool HN feature would be to snooze an article for, say, 2
| weeks, so that we could come back to it when we know some more
| facts. At the moment, it's an interesting event, but discussion
| is plagued with speculation as to the cause.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| It's not specific to HN. And I guess a regular agenda might do.
| I'd guess that's how journalists make sure to follow up with
| things in the "this day 3 years ago x happened" articles?
|
| But I agree I'd like a dedicated place for such reminders.
| Red_Tarsius wrote:
| I don't mind having multiple/recurring threads on some topics.
| They serve different purposes: my main goal was to raise
| awareness on an event that seemed neglected by my country's
| newspapers. Then, if people catch up on the issue, it will be
| easier to engage in follow-up discussions when we get more
| data. I also enjoy to read the speculations and flow of
| thoughts of posters from different backgrounds.
| Joeri wrote:
| AFAIK they still don't know what caused this, which makes it the
| perfect social media rage machine, because everyone is free to
| blame anyone.
| culi wrote:
| The Wikipedia article says testing found mesitylene to be the
| likely cause. So just another case of "improving capitalist
| efficiency" by turning economic costs into economic
| externalizes
|
| If we actually made corporations pay to clean up their bs, I
| wonder how many years of "economic growth" would turn out to
| have been an illusion. The other day an article was posted here
| showing that, in Australia, backyard eggs have 5x the lead
| content of store-bought eggs due to pollution. Today 10% of all
| yearly deaths worldwide are caused by air pollution. Another
| article on the frontpage of HN today is about how rainwater
| even as far as in Antartica is not safe to drink due to PFAS.
| Even if you recycle, chances are the majority of your plastics
| end up in a landfill or the ocean
|
| Imagine if we actually made these companies take into account
| the full lifecycle costs of their products. Styrofoam takes
| around a million years to naturally decompose. A styrofoam cup
| would probably cost thousands of dollars. Other plastics don't
| last as long, but you can imagine the "economic disaster" that
| would be caused by plastics suddenly costing in dollars what
| they cost in total environmental impact
| Sakos wrote:
| I wouldn't be too quick to lay the blame at mesitylene yet.
| I'm still seeing conflicting reports:
| https://www.dw.com/en/mysterious-mass-fish-kill-in-oder-
| rive...
|
| > At the time, the Lower Silesia Water Authority based in the
| nearby Polish city of Wroclaw detected a toxic substance in
| two locations on the Oder that is likely the solvent
| mesitylene, which is known to have a toxic effect on fish.
| However, subsequent tests have shown no trace of the
| substance.
| Jensson wrote:
| Maybe the perpetrator stopped dumping it when it became a
| news story? Like, they started dumping it recently and when
| they realized they were the cause to a catastrophe they
| stopped to try to avoid blame.
| djbusby wrote:
| Doesn't the stuff flow away, down the river? Test further
| downstream right?
| deepdriver wrote:
| The problems of greed, disregard for others' suffering, and
| avoidance of responsibility are universal aspects of the
| human psyche. The Soviet Union and People's Republic of China
| have a legacy of industrial pollution at least as damning as
| any capitalist country:
|
| https://www.gerdludwig.com/stories/soviet-pollution-a-
| lethal...
|
| https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/china39s-polluted-
| ri...
|
| Reporters are routinely arrested in communist Vietnam for
| reporting on industrial pollution:
|
| https://cpj.org/2016/05/two-journalists-arrested-while-
| cover...
|
| As you suggest, the best known solution is identifying these
| externalities, exposing their abuse through a free press, and
| holding polluters accountable through collective action.
| luciusdomitius wrote:
| In which manufactory is mesitylene an active agent, waste
| product?
|
| Now I see that it is a component of coal tar. Weren't the
| Polish and the German using natural gas? And didn't they
| switch back to coal only after a combination of extremely
| retarded policies got recently found out?
| Sakos wrote:
| Per Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesitylene:
|
| > Mesitylene is a colorless liquid with sweet aromatic
| odor. It is a component of coal tar, which is its
| traditional source. _It is a precursor to diverse fine
| chemicals_.
|
| > Mesitylene is mainly used as a precursor to
| 2,4,6-trimethylaniline, a precursor to colorants. This
| derivative is prepared by selective mononitration of
| mesitylene, avoiding oxidation of the methyl groups.[9]
|
| > Mesitylene is used in the laboratory as a specialty
| solvent. In the electronics industry, mesitylene has been
| used as a developer for photopatternable silicones due to
| its solvent properties.
|
| Colorants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colourant
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| Informed only by a degree in chemistry, it seems unlikely that
| either mesitylene or mercury stirred up from the sediment would
| cause such an acute event. The salt water mentioned in the
| Wikipedia articles seems substantially more plausible. But more
| facts will certainly improve our understanding.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| The title is somewhat optimistic by not specifying the month, or
| an ordinal.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| I live near the river and so many rumors and stories on this
| flying around now. It's the perfect storm of information negation
| and whataboutism and panic.
|
| One immediate thing is certain in my surroundings though - a
| neighbors dog is at the vet poisoned from swimming in that river
| a few days back.
| jakzurr wrote:
| From Washington Post,
|
| _Scientists have speculated that factors beyond deliberate
| dumping could be at play. The mercury could have settled in the
| river's sediment because of past pollution, before being stirred
| up by recent dredging. Europe's historic heat wave this summer
| could also be to blame. The continent is facing what is
| potentially its worst drought in 500 years; low water levels and
| high temperatures could be choking off oxygen supplies to the
| river's aquatic life and worsening existing pollution._
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/13/poland-oder-...
|
| BTW, article is viewable on Chrome with scripting turned off
| (NoScript).
| Metacelsus wrote:
| My girlfriend's cousin lives on this river, in Wroclaw. It's
| causing quite a political scandal, with the PiS leadership
| accusing the opposition of causing it (of course, this is
| blatantly untrue) https://wiadomosci.onet.pl/lubuskie/spozniona-
| reakcja-w-spra...
| Ralfp wrote:
| I am living in apartment block next to this river in Wroclaw.
|
| Oder was always considered dirty river here. On hot days it
| smells like something rotten, its absolutely defeating to cross
| it by bridge and I thank god my apartment's windows are on the
| other side.
|
| But people still fish in it in center of city. I can only hope
| they do it for sport and not for food.
| vgtvgt wrote:
| I am also living in an apartment block in Wroclaw next to
| this river. I was also born here and what you describe is a
| gross misrepresentation. While it is not considered clean
| enough for swimming, you cannot actually smell it going over
| any bridge. Crowds of people spend evenings and weekends in
| outdoor pubs right on the banks of Oder and seem unfazed.
| None of my friends or family has ever mentioned being
| overwhelmed or even feeling any sort of odor. I wonder how is
| it possible to have so different impressions of the same
| place? I also wonder what makes you want to discredit the
| place where you live so much and create false image of it in
| other people's heads?
| Ralfp wrote:
| I invite you to cross it by either Sikorski bridge or
| Dmowski bridge when its 30 degree celcius on summer day. It
| absolutely reeks. The stench goes down with temperature, so
| I guess its okay when you are drinking at Slodowa or past
| Grunwald bridge at later hour?
|
| Here is news story about this from 2015 where people
| complaining about river smelling terrible over other
| bridges: https://wroclaw.wyborcza.pl/wroclaw/7,35771,188343
| 96,czemu-w...
| luciusdomitius wrote:
| Well, it is a rather small river and the first major
| conglomeration is Ostrava with a population of 900,000 and a
| shitton of heavy industry to this day. On the other hand
| still having some non-offshore industry (DE, CZ, PL, etc) has
| many advantages too. Especially in the coming years.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| It's part of their playbook to do that with any controversy
| that pops up.
| machinekob wrote:
| Its probably biggest environmental catastrophy in Europe after
| chernobyl, and the best of all polish goverment officials said on
| wednesday: "Everything is fine, you can go swim in the river and
| catch fish" and 2 days later they revert it all and send warnings
| to all people living near the river and this proceder was going
| on for at least 2 weeks.
| southerntofu wrote:
| That's a classic! That was already the government propaganda
| (at least here in France) at the time of Chernobyl, that
| everything is fine and kids should play outside like any other
| day.
|
| The same kind of situation happened 3 years ago in Rouen
| (France) where a Lubrizol chemical factory burnt down and the
| government said everything was just fine, before taking
| emergency measures, before finally saying that everything was
| fine all along. It was not the first incident with that plant,
| and the richer people did not wait for the release of the list
| of chemicals involved in the incident to leave the city.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubrizol_factory_fire_in_Rouen
| prox wrote:
| It's a literal toxic mafia it seems. Just dump without
| consequences and pay the politicians to close their eyes. I
| hope countries wake up soon.
| luciusdomitius wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Could you please stop posting flamebait comments to HN?
| It's against the site guidelines, and we ban accounts that
| do it repeatedly.
|
| Fortunately your account has also posted good comments, but
| if you would please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick
| to the rules, we'd appreciate it.
| luciusdomitius wrote:
| May I ask what classifies this comment as flamebait, what
| the concrete criteria are and some other examples?
|
| Thanks
|
| P.S.
|
| Alright, now I see, that it would be under the "unrelated
| controversy" clause. Could you explain to me objectively
| how the parent comment doesn't fall under the same one
| too? And actually 40-50% of off-topic comments on HN?
|
| On top of that it is not completely unrelated either, as
| it is imo globally the second most prominent example of
| government miscalculation/cover up, the lack of
| accountability which followed it, etc.
| Xylakant wrote:
| There were a few environmental disasters since Chernobyl, for
| example the Sandoz fire which poisoned the rhine.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandoz_chemical_spill
| paganel wrote:
| Back in 2000 there was also a Romanian gold mine polluting
| rivers in Romania, Hungary, Serbia and the Danube all the way
| to the Black Sea. Allegedly 100 tonnes of cyanides were spilled
| into the river ecosystem. The related wikipedia article [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Baia_Mare_cyanide_spill
| [deleted]
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