List of environmental disasters

Environmental disasters by category

Agricultural

• Mismanagement and shrinking of the Aral Sea
• Salinity in Australia
• Salinization of the Fertile Crescent
• The Dust Bowl in Canada and the United States
• The Great sparrow campaign; sparrows were eliminated from Chinese farms, which caused locusts to swarm the farms and contributed to a famine which killed 38 million people.
• Africanized bees, known colloquially as "killer bees"
• "Dirty dairying" in New Zealand
• Salton Sea California, U.S.

  Biodiversity

• Chestnut blight
• Extinction of Australian megafauna
• Deforestation of Easter Island
• Destruction of the old growth forests
• Rabbits in Australia
• Red imported fire ants
• Dutch Elm Disease
• Devil facial tumour disease
• Reduction in the number of the American Bison
• Introduction of the Nile perch into Lake Victoria in Africa, decimating indigenous fish species
• The Saemangeum Seawall
• Emerald Ash Borer
• Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef
• 2006 Zakouma elephant slaughter
• Invasive species in New Zealand
• The loss of biodiversity of New Zealand
• Ghost nets
• Grounding of SS Makambo on Lord Howe Island
• Shark finning
• Decline of vultures in India due to Diclofenac leading to increased incidence of rabies
• Extinction of the Tasmanian tiger

  Human health

• Introduction of the bubonic plague in Europe from Africa in the 7th century resulting in the death of up to 60% of the population.
• Introduction of the bubonic plague in Europe from Central Asia in the 14th century resulting in the death of up to 60% of the population and recurring until the 18th century.
• Introduction of infectious diseases by Europeans causing the death of indigenous people during European colonization of the Americas
• Health effects arising from the September 11 attacks
• Goiânia accident, human deaths resulting from dismantling a scrapped medical machine containing a source of radioactivity
• Agent Orange use by the United States during the Vietnam War, resulting in lasting serious health effects on the Vietnamese population, such as cancer, nervous system disorders, and countless related fatalities.

  Industrial

• Spring Valley, a neighborhood in Washington, D.C. which was used as a chemical weapons testing ground during World War I.
• Minamata disease mercury poisoning in Japan
• Ontario Minamata disease in Canada
• Itai-itai disease, due to cadmium poisoning in Japan
• Love Canal toxic waste site
• Seveso disaster, chemical plant explosion, caused highest known exposure to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin in residential populations
• Times Beach, Missouri the town was completely evacuated due to a dioxin contamination
• Bhopal disaster, leak of methyl isocyanate that took place in 1984 resulted in more than 22,000 deaths.
• Sandoz chemical spill into the Rhine river
• United States Environmental Protection Agency Superfund sites in the United States
• AZF Explosion at a Toulouse chemical factory
• 2005 Jilin chemical plant explosions
• The Sydney Tar Ponds and Coke Ovens sites in the city of Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada, known as the largest toxic waste site in North America.
• Release of lead dust into Esperance Harbour.
• Release of cyanide, heavy metals and acid into the Alamosa River, Colorado from the Summitville mine, causing the death of all aquatic life 17 miles downstream.
• Release of 20,000 gallons of lethal chemicals into the Upper Sacramento River near Dunsmuir, causing the death of all aquatic life within a 38-mile radius.
• Release of CFCs resulting in ozone depletion
• Release of sulfur dioxide after a fire at the Al-Mishraq plant in Iraq
• The Phillips Disasters
• Health issues on the Aamjiwnaang First Nation due to chemical factories
• Environmental issues with the Three Gorges Dam
• Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill
• The Great Smog in London in 1952
• 1948 Donora smog

  Mining

• Phosphate mining in Nauru, from 1906 to the 1990s
• Phosphate mining in St. Pierre Island from 1906 to 1972
• 1947 Centralia mine disaster, a coal mine in Illinois
• Centralia mine fire, Pennsylvania, burning since 1962
• Mountaintop removal mining in the US since the 1960s
• Aberfan disaster, collapse of a coal mining waste pile in Wales, 1966
• The tailings dam from the now abandoned Tui mine in New Zealand, 1966 to 2013
• Darvaza gas crater in Derweze, Turkmenistan, burning since 1971
• Uranium mining controversy in Kakadu National Park in Australia, 1981 to 2009
• Ok Tedi environmental disaster in Papua New Guinea beginning in 1984
• Omai gold mine tailing dam breach in Guyana, 1995
• Marcopper mining disaster in the Philippines, March 1996
• Doñana disaster, tailing dam breach of the Los Frailes zinc/silver mine in Spain, April 1998
• 2000 Baia Mare cyanide spill of a gold mine in Romania, January 2000
• Martin County sludge spill in Kentucky, October 2000
• Lead dust from the Magellan Metals mine in Australia, 2006
• Upper Big Branch Mine disaster in West Virginia, April 2010
• Padcal tailings spills of August-September 2012
• Talvivaara gypsum pond leak, Finland, 2012
• Obed Mountain coal mine spill in Alberta, Canada, October 2013
• Mount Polley mine disaster, British Columbia, 2014
• 2015 Gold King Mine waste water spill in Colorado, August 2015
• Mariana dam disaster, Samarco iron ore mine tailings dam failure, Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo to the Atlantic sea. Brazil, November 2015
• Brumadinho dam disaster of an iron ore mine in Brazil, January 2019

  Oil industry

• Lakeview Gusher oil spill in California, 1910 –1911
• Leaded gasoline introduced 1920s; phased out globally by 2012.
• Greenpoint oil spill in Brooklyn, New York, 1940s–1980
• Mississippi River oil spill
• Torrey Canyon oil spill off the SW coast of the United Kingdom, February 1967
• Lago Agrio oil field spills in Ecuador, since 1972
• MV Sea Star and Horta Barbosa tankers collision and oil spill into the Gulf of Oman, December 1972
• Jakob Maersk oil spill off the coast of Portugal, January 1975
• Environmental issues in the Niger Delta relating to the oil industry, 1976–1996
• Arctic Refuge drilling controversy, since 1977
• Amoco Cadiz shipwreck and oil spill off the coast of Brittany, France, March 1978
• Ixtoc I oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico, June 1979
• SS Atlantic Empress collision and spill near Trinidad and Tobago, August 1979
• MT Independența collision and spill near Istanbul, November 1979
• Nowruz oil spills into the Persian Gulf, March 1983
• Castillo de Bellver oil spill off the coast of South Africa, August 1983
• Odyssey tanker shiprwreck and oil spill, off the coast of Nova Scotia, November 1988
• Exxon Valdez oil spill in the Prince William Sound, Alaska, March 1989
• Gulf War oil spill into the Persian Gulf, January 1991
• MT Haven explosion and oil spill of the coast of Italy, April 1991
• ABT Summer explosion and oil spill off the coast of Angola, May 1991
• Mingbulak oil spill in Uzbekistan, March 1992
• MV Braer shipwreck and oil spill at the Shetland Islands, January 1993
• Taylor oil spill off the coast of Louisiana, since 2004
• Sidoarjo mud flow triggered by Lapindo Brantas gas exploration in 2006; East Java, Indonesia
• Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, April to July 2010
• 2010 ExxonMobil oil spill in the Niger Delta in Nigeria, May 2010
• Jebel al-Zayt oil spill in the Red Sea, June 2010
• Xingang Port oil spill into the Yellow Sea, July 2010
• Sanchi oil tanker collision in the East China Sea, January 2018

  Nuclear

• Chernobyl disaster in 1986 in Chernobyl, Ukraine killed 49 people and was estimated to have damaged almost $7 billion of property". Radioactive fallout from the accident concentrated near Belarus, Ukraine and Russia and at least 350,000 people were forcibly resettled away from these areas. After the accident, "traces of radioactive deposits unique to Chernobyl were found in nearly every country in the northern hemisphere".
• Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster: Following an earthquake, tsunami, and failure of cooling systems at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant and issues concerning other nuclear facilities in Japan on March 11, 2011, a nuclear emergency was declared. This was the first time a nuclear emergency had been declared in Japan, and 140,000 residents within 20 km of the plant were evacuated. Explosions and a fire have resulted in dangerous levels of radiation, sparking a stock market collapse and panic-buying in supermarkets.
• Mayak nuclear waste storage tank explosion,, 200+ people died and 270,000 people were exposed to dangerous radiation levels. Over thirty small communities had been removed from Soviet maps between 1958 and 1991.
• Windscale fire, United Kingdom, October 8, 1957. Fire ignites plutonium piles and contaminates surrounding dairy farms.
• Soviet submarine K-431 accident, August 10, 1985.
• Soviet submarine K-19 accident, July 4, 1961..
• Nuclear testing at Moruroa and Fangataufa in the Pacific Ocean
• Fallout from the Castle Bravo nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands
• The health of Downwinders
• Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the acute effects killed 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki, with roughly half of the deaths in each city occurring on the first day.
• Hanford Nuclear, 1986 – The U.S. government declassifies 19,000 pages of documents indicating that between 1946 and 1986, the Hanford Site near Richland, Washington, released thousands of US gallons of radioactive liquids. Radioactive waste was both released into the air and flowed into the Columbia River. In 2014, the Hanford legacy continues with billions of dollars spent annually in a seemingly endless cleanup of leaking underground

  Air/land/water

• Proliferation of plastic shopping bags
• Hong Kong Plastic Disaster

  Air

• The Donora Smog of 1948 in Donora, Pennsylvania in the United States
• The Great Smog of 1952, which killed 4,000 Londoners
• The 1983 Melbourne dust storm
• The 1997 Southeast Asian haze
• The 2005 Malaysian haze
• The 2006 Southeast Asian haze
• The Great Smog of Delhi in November 2016
• Yokkaichi asthma in Japan
• Health problems due to the Jinkanpo Atsugi Incinerator in Japan
• Kuwaiti oil fires
• Burning of the Amazon forest-2019

  Land

• The Dust Bowl of Canada and the United States in the 1930s
• Contaminated soils in Mapua, New Zealand due to the operation of an agricultural chemicals factory from 1932 to 1989
• Basin F, a disposal site in the United States created in 1956 for contaminated liquid wastes from the chemical manufacturing operations of the Army and its lessee Shell Chemical Company
• Nigeria gully erosion crisis, since before 1980
• Exide lead contamination at seven locations in the United States, since 1989
• Electronic waste in Guiyu, since the 1990s
• 2006 Côte d'Ivoire toxic waste dump

  Water

• Sandoz chemical spill, severely polluting the Rhine in 1986
• Selenium poisoning of wildlife due to farm runoff used to create Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge, and the artificial wetland
• The Jiyeh Power Station oil spill in the Mediterranean region
• Effects of polluted water in the Berkeley Pit in the United States
• Ignition and conflagration of the Cuyahoga River in Ohio, United States
• Cheakamus River derailment which polluted a river with caustic soda
• Draining and development of the Everglades
• Loss of Louisiana Wetlands due to Mississippi River levees, saltwater intrusion through manmade channels, timber harvesting, subsidence, and hurricane damage.
• Lake Okeechobee is heavily polluted and during extreme events releases large volumes of polluted water into the St. Lucie River estuary and the Caloosahatchee River estuary.
• Amoco Cadiz oil spill off the coast of France in 1978
• Draining of the Mesopotamian Marshes in the 1990s

  Marine

• Coral bleaching
• Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone due to high-nutrient fertilizer runoff from the Midwest that is drained through the Mississippi River.
• The artificial Osborne Reef off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida in the United States
• Dumping of conventional and chemical munitions in Beaufort's Dyke, a sea trench between Northern Ireland and Scotland
• Marine debris
• Environmental threats to the Great Barrier Reef
• Nurdles, plastic pellet typically under 5mm in diameter
• The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
• Minamata disease, mercury poisoning in Japan
• Mercury in fish
• Ocean acidification due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions
• Industrial waste dumping in Central Vietnam from Formosa Ha Tinh Steel, which kills tons of marine creatures and destroys the ecosystem
• Millions of metric tons of plastic entering the ocean each year for decades due to China's attempt to recycle the world's plastic waste.