A massive spillage of dangerous sludge in Hungary made its way to the Danube River on Thurs. The disaster started Monday when a containment berm holding back hundreds of millions of gallons of dangerous red sludge gave way at an aluminum plant near tributaries upstream. Officials claimed a concerted effort to thin down the toxicity of the red sludge by the time it reached the Danube had been working.
Contaminating the Danube with red sludge
Fears that the Danube River, Europe’s second longest waterway, would be poisoned by toxic sludge were voiced soon after the reservoir had been breached at the Ajkai Timfoldgyar Zrt alumina plant 100 miles west of Budapest near the town of Ajka. CNN accounts that the ecological disaster killed 2 children, an elderly woman and a 35-year-old man trapped in an automobile overwhelmed by the flash overflow of toxic sludge. Three people are missing. 250 people had been evacuated. This had been for their own safety. The breached reservoir has been repaired and also the toxic flow has stopped, but not soon enough to prevent the red sludge from draining to the Danube River.
Working to dilute harmful overflow in Danube
The Danube River only has one chance of surviving really. Tributaries diluted the dangerous sludge which should help a lot. There are no more fish alive in the Marcal River which got the majority of the poisonous spillage. Tibor Dobson told this to Reuters as the Hungarian disaster reaction spokesman. Some of the fish, by the time the sludge his the Monsoni-Danube rivers, had survived. Watering down the sludge had been the Emergency crews plan by reducing the alkalinity that had a highly-caustic pH of 13. Once the spill had reached the Raba, it still registered a pH of 9 to 10, although there had been a hope that is would have gone down significantly by then.
Dangerous sludge analyzed to possess a high alkalinity
Aluminum production is where the toxic red sludge came from as industrial waste. It carried heavy metals and processing chemicals because of this. Professor at Newcastle University, Paul Younger, spoke to BBC about this. He said the major trouble is the strong alkalinity that comes from it. It is considered acidic with a pH of to 5. Between 6 and 8 is a different number. It is between 6 and 8 usually. Hot tubs and swimming pools should have a pH of 7, which is considered safe. The lungs and digestive system react really poorly to the pH of 9 which is where the toxic sludge is. Younger compared the millions of gallons of toxic sludge that hit the Danube River with kitchen cleaning goods that could dissolve a top layer of skin with extended contact.
Data from
CNN
cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/10/07/hungary.toxic/index.html?npt=NP1
Reuters
reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69415O20101007?pageNumber=2
BBC
bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11492387
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