Remember
the streak of reddish sea water that appeared along the shoreline of a beach in
the north-central province of Quang Binh in May, when a spate of fish deaths
occurred in central Vietnam?
The
strange phenomenon of the sea water has played a crucial role in unraveling the
mysterious fish deaths, scientists have said, after the ‘culprit’ behind the
environmental disaster was named last week.
On
Thursday, the Vietnamese government announced during a press conference that
the Vietnamese steel business of Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics Group in the
north-central province of Ha Tinh had admitted it was the cause of the fish
death epidemic in central Vietnam between April and May.
The
company apologized to Vietnam’s government and its people, and pledged US$500 million
in damages for recovery efforts in the four affected Vietnamese provinces,
namely Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue.
The
search for what was behind the dead fish had been led by the Ministry of
Science and Technology.
A
national-level scientific panel, steered by the head of the Vietnam Academy of
Science and Technology, was also formed to discover the cause, involving nearly
100 experts from 30 different institutions.
The
scientists have recalled how their extensive efforts have now paid off.
Finding the missing piece
The
mission had begun with scientists conducting numerous studies and tests,
evaluating causes including a potential oil spill, an earthquake, epidemic
outbreaks or red tide, a result of algae blooming at an abnormal rate and
producing toxins.
However,
results from satellite data, seismic analysis and sea water tests rejected all
those hypotheses.
Analysis
of the sediment samples collected from waters of the four affected provinces
also found no excessive amounts of toxicity, frustrating the scientists.
However,
just as the experts were scratching their heads, the reddish sea water
phenomenon was reported, delivering the missing piece of the puzzle.
On May 4,
a 1.5km stretch of sea water in Quang Binh was found to be turning red for
nearly four hours in the morning, drawing special attention from the
scientists.
A streak
of black sea water emerged in Ha Tinh on May 6, and waters near the Son Duong
Port in this province also turned red on May 12.
Scientists
immediately collected samples of all of those abnormal waters for tests, with
results eventually proving the waters contained high levels of ferric hydroxide
and phenol, a toxic substance.
Experiments
in which live fish were put into those waters were also conducted, with the
aquatic animals dying within three to 30 minutes into the unusually colored
waters.
Analysts
later identified that those streaks of water did not owe their strange colors
to either algae blooming or natural alluvial soil, but were in fact “a net of
glue that absorbed such toxic substances as phenol and cyanide” and were
“results of wastewater dumping activities by humans.”
Results
of separate tests by the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, the
Vietnamese Ministry of Health and the University of Sydney later revealed high
levels of phenol and cyanide in the fish washed ashore from the affected
waters.
These
findings led to the conclusion that there must be a source that discharged
dirty water with high levels of those toxic substances that caused fish to die
en masse.
The “net
of glue,” formed by a mixture of phenol, cyanide and ferric hydroxide,” became
a “mobile hub of toxins” that was brought by the current from Ha Tinh to Thua
Thien-Hue, killing all aquatic creatures along its path.
The
reddish sea water was caused by the mixture of substances pushed to the sea
surface by strong tides and waves.
Scientists
then identified that the cyanide and phenol could only stem from the coking
process at the Formosa steel plant, whereas the ferric hydroxide was sent out
during the cleaning of its pipelines.
When
combining, these all led to the final conclusion that Formosa had caused the
fish deaths, which the company was unable to deny.
No comments:
Post a Comment