It's amazing how little some people have cared, this was not that they didn't know, they certainly knew, otherwise, it'd not have resorted to hiding the stuff by dumping it into the sea..
It'd not be unreasonable to hunt down those responsible, and make them pay for cleaning it up. Sure, they're probably dead by now, but they probably left a lot of money.
I don't think it's even relevant that "it was not illegal at the time", they knew the stuff was toxic, and they chose to release it into the oceans, just because no one had explicitly made a law banning them from doing so.. Common sense should be the first law.
"I don't think it's even relevant that it was not legal at the time".
Imagine setting the precedent that the government can unilaterally decide to steal your property based on something your great grandfather did which wasn't even a crime. Do you not see how such a power might be abused in future when you can retroactively punish people for laws where the ink has yet to dry and that they never even committed?
> I don't think it's even relevant that "it was not illegal at the time"
The idea that a government can make something illegal and retroactively punish previous offenders is so colossally bad that in the United States the Founding Fathers wrote a prohibition against it into the Constitution.
It's not an amendment, such as the right to free speech. They wrote it into Article 1.
The problem with your approach, besides the immorality of arbitrary post-hoc rationalization for punishment, is that it is not pragmatic. What's done is done, and you need people to get behind making it better. If you come out and push a policy that in part entails rooting and punishing those responsible (or even descendent of those responsible), you'll have people come out against it just for that reason and the environment will suffer. I would be one of those people, because I would never give that power to the kinds of people who would argue for the arbitrary execution of collective punishments on people today. If given the choice to fix environment/punish wrongdoers or do nothing, I would go with 'do nothing'. It's why 'The Green New Deal' is so terrible because instead of focusing on pragmatic solutions we can all get behind, it suffers from scope creep of socialist and progressive policies that have little to nothing to do with climate change and environment - and therefore I'd rather have none of it.
To circle back on collective punishment - there's a reason why the North, after winning the civil war, has largely chose not to collectively punish the South - in much the same way that other regions which suffered through terrible civil wars where terrible crimes were committed, frequently choose to replace punishment of many of those responsible with something like reconciliation committees, where symbolic gestures are accepted in lieu of prison or capital punishment.
He didn’t, but suppose my grandfather legally (or even semi-legally) disposed of some DDT and left my father some money. My father later me some money. What’s the legal process to claw some of that money back to pay for the cleanup? Do you or the state have standing to sue me for something I never did, knew nothing about, and can’t reasonably answer to any specifics about?
One of the first paragraphs of the article: at the time it was considered dumping the barrels in the deep ocean was sufficient because the vast amount of water would dilute the chemical. The shortcut they took was that they did not go that far into the ocean but instead kept much closer to shore and dumped the barrels there, as well as punctured them when they floated. The discovery that's lamented is the "shortcut dumping ground". This does not fit with your jumped-to conclusions.
> It's amazing how little some people have cared, this was not that they didn't know, they certainly knew, otherwise, it'd not have resorted to hiding the stuff by dumping it into the sea.
> Common sense should be the first law
They weren't hiding anything, the bulk went to government designated dumping sites. Shortcuts were taken, but it was known and accepted that these were being dumped into the ocean. Common sense at the time was "dilution is the solution to pollution".
1. This dumping was litigated in the 60s and happened before this
2. You can’t predict the future
3. This is the efficient market at work, don’t solve any problem until it becomes a social, political or environmental reality you can’t legalese your way around.
That won't work, we have an entire political party in the United States hell bent on making sure people have no common sense. The GOP are a selfish cancer on civilization.
Adding the latimes.com to my do not click or read mental list. So tired of pop ups or full on blocks just to glance at an article. Yeah I could easily resolve it.. So could the LA Times. Firefox Focus shouldnt need to allow trackers/cookies ... Miss the old days when people posted direct archive links.
It's easy to get outraged (as we should) when we hear about a developing country recklessly polluting the environment but it's important to remember that the West has been doing this on a very large scale for a very long time. Climbing onto this (somewhat) high horse hasn't been an overnight process.
Developing or developed, basically every country engages in questionable environmental practices. The developed nations have the current edge, since many of their offenses occurred in the past and they are less accountable now...just like these DDT barrels.
> “We found actual photos of the workers at 2 in the morning dumping — not only dumping barrels off of the barges in the middle of the Santa Monica Basin,” he said, “but before they would dump the barrels, they would take a big ax or hatchet to them, and cut them open on purpose so they would sink.”
I would make sure that it sunk too if I was dumping toxic stuff in the ocean... That is what BP did when they had that huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico... The dispersant (Corexit[1]) that they used to sink the oil was even more toxic then the oil itself, but at least it hid the mess.
See? This is why we don't need environmental regulations. The market will regulate itself if externalities are properly priced in!
(Just pay no mind to how those externalities might be systematically priced and how penalties might be retroactively enforced. If you do you're a freedom-hating socialist!)
I came to this story after several days immersed in reading the ancient history of peoples who migrated east across the Pacific 5,000 years ago to form the island nations that are dotted over thousands of square miles of ocean to the west of California.
What strikes me as strange is that Californians, or Americans, don't see themselves as one nation of people with one overriding interest - to keep their ecosystem pure and habitable so their people can thrive and prosper.
I know that's naive. In America individuals are free to pursue any activity that is permitted by law. Prosperity is measured in dollars, and breaches of the law require a lot of dollars to be exposed and rectified. The national purpose works differently to other countries, particularly smaller nations in which the people are more in contact with nature every day.
Still, I can't help but wonder whether most Americans would be happier if things worked differently, and catastrophes like the DDT dump were able to be rectified in a unified national effort. I'm not sure why that doesn't happen, or what makes it so unlikely.
The lesson here is that big businesses will argue that their operations are correct not just out of neglect, but knowing perfectly well that they are not.
While this dumping is horrific you also have to understand how beneficial DDT was:
> Between 1945 and 1965, DDT saved millions-even tens of millions-of lives around the world, perhaps more than any other man-made drug or chemical before or since.
1. Saving human lives may not be the best metric (given that even this metric is evolving in time, and I claim unknowable)
2. The green revolution benefits were several orders more significant, and will be seen as the spark that enabled climate change. Responsibly using technology is our biggest task.
Well that was a sad article to read on a Monday morning. If this is what we've just scratched the surface on - I'm nervous to what we don't know in terms of ocean dumping.
Greenpeace did a lot of work in the 80s and 90s against the dumping of nuclear waste, including direct action against the ships doing the dumping. This led to the London Dumping Convention.
More seriously, there is the SS Richard Montgomery, not dumped but sank during the war, carrying a thousand tons of explosives ... right next to London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery
San Francisco also hosts radioactive waste close by, located at the Farallon Islands[1].
> From 1946 to 1970, the sea around the Farallones was used as a nuclear dumping site for radioactive waste under the authority of the Atomic Energy Commission at a site known as the Farallon Island Nuclear Waste Dump. Most of the dumping took place before 1960, and all dumping of radioactive wastes by the United States was terminated in 1970. By then, 47,500 containers (55-gallon steel drums) had been dumped in the vicinity, with a total estimated radioactive activity of 14,500 Ci. The materials dumped were mostly laboratory materials containing traces of contamination. Much of the radioactivity had decayed by 1980.
And the "USS Pandemonium" at Treasure Island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay.
A ship they built on land that they could apply radioactive contamination then teach sailors how to clean it up. Then dump it all out into the bay. Contaminated soil is still being discovered as recently as 2013 on Treasure Island where they have built housing.
More here:
https://www.businessinsider.com/radioactive-contamination-on...
This community is so quick to embrace new technologies and so dismissive of unintended side effects. We cringe at DDT dumps but loved it at the time. Do we not expect similar unintended side effects from other things this community endorses like fusion or seeding the atmosphere with reflecting materials?
We do this to Earth and we think we'll do better on Mars?
It’s hard to fathom how much we’ve fucked up our environment and ourselves overall. I think we polluted ourselves into a corner and are headed for extinction (and taking most of life on earth with us)
It’s sad to think about but it’s hard to argue we don’t deserve it after all.
It's amazing how little this article names and shames. If there is no personal accountability then some people won't learn their lesson. I saw one only one name of the people responsible for this, Samuel Rotrosen, Montrose's president at the time.
And Samuel Rotrosen was only mentioned once, buried deep down many paragraphs in.
So much so that in all the comments here, I am the only one to mention the name of the person who seems ultimately responsible for this, Samuel Rotrosen.
I hope the EPA does a survey to find and count the barrels and find out how many of them still contain waste. Then vacuum them all up and process the waste carefully.
This is pretty insane to me that we were just letting ddt get dumped in the deep (and shallow) ocean. Outside of the environmental impacts - I feel like there’s a parallel to the push in geoengineering and carbon capture and storage in the future in that it’s the ‘let’s just do this now and hope there aren’t bad repercussions in the future’ thought process.
Speaking generally, can nanotechnology be applied to superfund site cleanups? As it currently stands, our tools for cleaning up these chemicals are extremely crude.
Why can't we develop a nanobot that is able to detect the chemical in the soil or ocean and then break down or decompose that molecule?
> Speaking generally, can nanotechnology be applied to superfund site cleanups? As it currently stands, our tools for cleaning up these chemicals are extremely crude.
> Why can't we develop a nanobot that is able to detect the chemical in the soil or ocean and then break down or decompose that molecule?
We could, in theory, but a faster approach (that is already being used) is harnessing existing organisms.
Bioremediation is an approach being actively researched, and recent advances in genetic engineering (eg. CRISPR) ought to help a lot.
A search for "DDT bioremediation" will show you the research on this that is being done (not a huge amount, but progress is being made). There are probably some opportunities for B2G startups in this area.
Wouldn't be possible to make controlled explosions to consume submerged hazardous materials, like DDT? I know it is a drastic solution, but would it make sense?
[+] [-] dusted|5 years ago|reply
It'd not be unreasonable to hunt down those responsible, and make them pay for cleaning it up. Sure, they're probably dead by now, but they probably left a lot of money.
I don't think it's even relevant that "it was not illegal at the time", they knew the stuff was toxic, and they chose to release it into the oceans, just because no one had explicitly made a law banning them from doing so.. Common sense should be the first law.
[+] [-] tsdlts|5 years ago|reply
Imagine setting the precedent that the government can unilaterally decide to steal your property based on something your great grandfather did which wasn't even a crime. Do you not see how such a power might be abused in future when you can retroactively punish people for laws where the ink has yet to dry and that they never even committed?
[+] [-] billyhoffman|5 years ago|reply
The idea that a government can make something illegal and retroactively punish previous offenders is so colossally bad that in the United States the Founding Fathers wrote a prohibition against it into the Constitution.
It's not an amendment, such as the right to free speech. They wrote it into Article 1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law.
[+] [-] macspoofing|5 years ago|reply
To circle back on collective punishment - there's a reason why the North, after winning the civil war, has largely chose not to collectively punish the South - in much the same way that other regions which suffered through terrible civil wars where terrible crimes were committed, frequently choose to replace punishment of many of those responsible with something like reconciliation committees, where symbolic gestures are accepted in lieu of prison or capital punishment.
[+] [-] sokoloff|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] relix|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dahdum|5 years ago|reply
> Common sense should be the first law
They weren't hiding anything, the bulk went to government designated dumping sites. Shortcuts were taken, but it was known and accepted that these were being dumped into the ocean. Common sense at the time was "dilution is the solution to pollution".
[+] [-] relativitypro|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mywacaday|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vaccinator|5 years ago|reply
That's how I thought it was when I was a kid... now I can only wish it was in some instances.
[+] [-] bsenftner|5 years ago|reply
That won't work, we have an entire political party in the United States hell bent on making sure people have no common sense. The GOP are a selfish cancer on civilization.
[+] [-] b0tzzzzzzman|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stanski|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WhompingWindows|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] faitswulff|5 years ago|reply
Incredible.
[+] [-] vaccinator|5 years ago|reply
1. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/04/bp-corexit-d...
[+] [-] 1propionyl|5 years ago|reply
(Just pay no mind to how those externalities might be systematically priced and how penalties might be retroactively enforced. If you do you're a freedom-hating socialist!)
[+] [-] wombatmobile|5 years ago|reply
What strikes me as strange is that Californians, or Americans, don't see themselves as one nation of people with one overriding interest - to keep their ecosystem pure and habitable so their people can thrive and prosper.
I know that's naive. In America individuals are free to pursue any activity that is permitted by law. Prosperity is measured in dollars, and breaches of the law require a lot of dollars to be exposed and rectified. The national purpose works differently to other countries, particularly smaller nations in which the people are more in contact with nature every day.
Still, I can't help but wonder whether most Americans would be happier if things worked differently, and catastrophes like the DDT dump were able to be rectified in a unified national effort. I'm not sure why that doesn't happen, or what makes it so unlikely.
[+] [-] ogurechny|5 years ago|reply
Now let's look at what we have in IT today…
[+] [-] dan-robertson|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] basicplus2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] x87678r|5 years ago|reply
> Between 1945 and 1965, DDT saved millions-even tens of millions-of lives around the world, perhaps more than any other man-made drug or chemical before or since.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/07/02/the-mosquito-k...
[+] [-] alpha_squared|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] relativitypro|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WhompingWindows|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iBotPeaches|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjc50|5 years ago|reply
More recently, see e.g. Trafigura https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-10735255 (and what they've tried to hide with libel lawsuits)
The WW2 stuff is bad but seems now to be inert, although occasionally someone finds a phosphorous shell on a beach in Scotland. https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/a-dangerous-guide-to-bea...
More seriously, there is the SS Richard Montgomery, not dumped but sank during the war, carrying a thousand tons of explosives ... right next to London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery
[+] [-] refurb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fosk|5 years ago|reply
> From 1946 to 1970, the sea around the Farallones was used as a nuclear dumping site for radioactive waste under the authority of the Atomic Energy Commission at a site known as the Farallon Island Nuclear Waste Dump. Most of the dumping took place before 1960, and all dumping of radioactive wastes by the United States was terminated in 1970. By then, 47,500 containers (55-gallon steel drums) had been dumped in the vicinity, with a total estimated radioactive activity of 14,500 Ci. The materials dumped were mostly laboratory materials containing traces of contamination. Much of the radioactivity had decayed by 1980.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Islands
[+] [-] cclark00|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spodek|5 years ago|reply
We do this to Earth and we think we'll do better on Mars?
[+] [-] Google234|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ornornor|5 years ago|reply
It’s sad to think about but it’s hard to argue we don’t deserve it after all.
[+] [-] ElijahLynn|5 years ago|reply
And Samuel Rotrosen was only mentioned once, buried deep down many paragraphs in.
So much so that in all the comments here, I am the only one to mention the name of the person who seems ultimately responsible for this, Samuel Rotrosen.
[+] [-] mleonhard|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boringg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xyst|5 years ago|reply
Why can't we develop a nanobot that is able to detect the chemical in the soil or ocean and then break down or decompose that molecule?
[+] [-] webmaven|5 years ago|reply
> Why can't we develop a nanobot that is able to detect the chemical in the soil or ocean and then break down or decompose that molecule?
We could, in theory, but a faster approach (that is already being used) is harnessing existing organisms.
Bioremediation is an approach being actively researched, and recent advances in genetic engineering (eg. CRISPR) ought to help a lot.
A search for "DDT bioremediation" will show you the research on this that is being done (not a huge amount, but progress is being made). There are probably some opportunities for B2G startups in this area.
[+] [-] happy_path|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimktrains2|5 years ago|reply
I don't believe DDT would be consumed in any normal explosion.
[+] [-] silexia|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EvanKnowles|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] obilgic|5 years ago|reply
https://i.imgur.com/ZztDMIr.png
[+] [-] ebina-chonk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giardini|5 years ago|reply
Is there a free link?