8DMinamataQ6

//

__**Minamata Q6 What measures have been put in place to stop it happening in the future?**__

Accident Waiting To Happen What do you think of when someone says chemical disasters? Well, whatever you think a chemical disaster is defined as 1 a chemical accident or spill or 2 a natural disaster. In a brief, a natural disaster is like a cyclone or a volcanic eprution & ther are ways in each natural disaster, to either ecaspe the area e.g to leave in floods or bushfires or be protected e.g like under a table in a cyclone/hurricane or earthquakes. Unforatunally some aren't lucky enough to live through natural disasters like pompi ( a volcanic eprution cover the village of pompii and the village was not found until many years later). But what are chemical disasters ? Well, a chemical disaster is an accient or spill that both threatens and harms our environment and our enconomy. But we can't do any thing but to aviod this from happen, it is not certain that if we aviod chemical disasters, that we can stop them altogether. But why can't we do more ? Well, both transporting and manfuacturing chemicals are really accidents waiting to happen. But we need the end product to forfill our daily needs e.g we aren't going to stop making cleaners for the shower or sinks because we need them to help make cleaning up mess easier and so we can go back to working on more important like homework or work that we have. An example of dangerous transporting was recently in the past year or so when an oil spill posioned the Sydeny Habour. The clean up to about a week but in that time all the beaches were closed and no one was allowed to enter the water and fishing in the bay was banned until the government knew the water was clean.

Manfucaturing chemicals are dangerous if the chemical you work with are leathal to your health and others health. But we also need the product that we are manfuacturing e.g shampoo or cleaners. This is a problem that our society is trying to control because although we need the product, the manfacturing companies are really dangerous and can cause serious harm. Not only is the chemical they work with leathel it is the waste after making a product tht is the problem. It is a really big problem because not only can you die from working with chemicals you could kill others. An example of this is Minamata disease. Which happened in Japan. A company called Chisso (which has a plant in Minamata) dumped their waste water into the Minamata river. The sea life was posioned because the waste water contained mercury. The local comminuity was not aware that the sea life was posioned so they continued to fish in the bay. The people living in Minamata were posioned after they ate the fish. The sympoths were splitting headaches, tunnel vision and shaking hands. the whole town was affected and doctors had to treated almost 3 thousand people. The local government and Chisso went to court and after this incident the Chisso plant was shut down.

But what about everyday situtaion tht may occur? well, there are emencey response team that will help to contatct an action team that will arrive at the incident. Actually it is very much like calling 000 when an emeceney occurs. The teams are payed to help anlise the situtation from the people affected to expelling the substance. Chemical spills or accident may threaten our earth but there is always someone some where willing to help the people affected like the scients and engieers that are still working on making manfacturing and transporting chemicals safer for our encominey, society and environment.

Links:// //8DMinamataPage// //8DMinamataQ2// //8DMinamataQ3// 8D Minamata Q4 Why 8DminamataQ5

//Bibiography :// [|//http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata//] [|//http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/16/japan.jonathanwatts//] //If the information isn't enough I have written the information I used in my science workbook.

By Madeline Munro//