Page 199 - Soil and water contamination, 2nd edition

186 Soil and Water Contamination

5. To gain an improved understanding of the mechanisms controlling the dispersion and
fate of chemicals in the environment by quantifying their reactions, speciation , and
movement.

Concerning the first reason (to anticipate accidental releases of pollutants to the environment),
emergency managers need appropriate tools that can quickly give essential information about
the travel and residence time s of pollutants in soil, groundwater, and surface water bodies.
An example of such an accidental spill was the discharge of organic pollutants to the river
Rhine during a fire at the Sandoz chemical manufacturing plant in Basle, Switzerland, on 1
November 1986. Approximately 90 different chemicals were stored at this facility, including
organophosphorus pesticides (disulphoton, parathion, thiometon), mercury -based pesticides
(ethoxyethylmercury hydroxide, phenylmercury acetate), and other pesticides (captaphol,
3
endosulphan, metoxuron). While the fire was being extinguished, 10 000 to 15 000 m of
contaminated firefighting water was discharged to the river and transported downstream
(Figure 10.4). Not only did this have catastrophic ecological impacts (such as fish mortality
in the river Rhine ), it also forced the water authorities in the Netherlands, about 1000 km
downstream from the chemical plant, to close the water intake for drinking water supply for a
number of days. The real-time water quality alarm model available in 1986 was not suitable for
forecasting when concentrations of organic pollutants would exceed the intervention limits for
intake of drinking water in the short-term. As a result of the Sandoz accident the Rhine alarm
model was improved; the improved version is currently deployed by alarm stations along the
Rhine (Spreafico and Van Mazijk, 1993; Van Mazijk et al., 1999).
Other recent examples of accidental releases are the dam-burst at the Aznalcóllar mines
in Andalucia, Spain, in April 1998, the cyanide and heavy metal spills into the headwaters
of the Tisza River in Baia Mare and Baia Borsa, Romania, January/March 2000, and the
benzene and nitrobenzene spills into the Songhua and Armur rivers following an explosion
in the petrochemical plant in Jilin , China, in November 2005. The dam-burst at the
Aznalcóllar zinc mines caused a spill of mine waste sludge contaminated by heavy metals

30
Disulphoton Bulk sample
Maximiliansau
25
362 km
Mainz
20 496 km
Concentration (µg/l) 15

10 Bad Honnef
540 km
Vuren (Waal)
5
952 km

6642 6642 6642 0 3.11 4.11 5.11 6.11 7.11 8.11 9.11 10.11 11.11 12.11 13.11 14.11
Date
1986
Figure 10.4 Chemographs of disulphoton concentrations in the river Rhine following the Sandoz accident in 1986
(source: IKSR, 1986).

10/1/2013 6:44:42 PM
Soil and Water.indd 198 10/1/2013 6:44:42 PM
Soil and Water.indd 198