When UPL's warehouse in Durban was set on fire in 2021, the toxic agrochemicals it housed washed into the river and out to sea, causing a huge marine die-off. Environmental Goldman Prize Winner, Desmond D'Sa, tells us how the catastrophe is still effecting locals, many of whom relied on the sea for their livelihoods.

Some of the pesticides were banned in the EU and numerous other countries. There's been no ongoing health monitoring, but one report showed the chemical inferno "more than doubled" the risk of heart disease and lung cancer. There has been no evidence of deaths directly related to the accident.

This is just one example of the catastrophes that can unfold when things go wrong, but some industrial complexes are polluting our seas as part of their day to day processes. We’ve recently published a couple of stories on this. One about the potential for mercury to be leaching out of abandoned oil and gas pipelines at the bottom of the North Sea:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/24/abandoned-oil-gas-pipelines-poison-pollution-risk-north-sea-scientists

Another about how long-banned and toxic substances called PCBs are still being manufactured in huge volumes as byproducts when other chemicals are made:

https://watershedinvestigations.com/industry-could-be-producing-more-cancer-causing-pcb-chemicals-today-than-at-any-other-point-in-history-despite-their-production-having-been-banned-more-than-40-years-ago/

So much of this chemical pollution in our oceans goes unmonitored. Elsie Sunderland, Professor of Environmental Chemistry at Harvard University, tells us how a new initiative - Back to Blue - seeks to address this problem.

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