AFAIK they still don’t know what caused this, which makes it the perfect social media rage machine, because everyone is free to blame anyone.
If we actually made corporations pay to clean up their bs, I wonder how many years of "economic growth" would turn out to have been an illusion. The other day an article was posted here showing that, in Australia, backyard eggs have 5x the lead content of store-bought eggs due to pollution. Today 10% of all yearly deaths worldwide are caused by air pollution. Another article on the frontpage of HN today is about how rainwater even as far as in Antartica is not safe to drink due to PFAS. Even if you recycle, chances are the majority of your plastics end up in a landfill or the ocean
Imagine if we actually made these companies take into account the full lifecycle costs of their products. Styrofoam takes around a million years to naturally decompose. A styrofoam cup would probably cost thousands of dollars. Other plastics don't last as long, but you can imagine the "economic disaster" that would be caused by plastics suddenly costing in dollars what they cost in total environmental impact
Now I see that it is a component of coal tar. Weren't the Polish and the German using natural gas? And didn't they switch back to coal only after a combination of extremely retarded policies got recently found out?
> Mesitylene is a colorless liquid with sweet aromatic odor. It is a component of coal tar, which is its traditional source. It is a precursor to diverse fine chemicals.
> Mesitylene is mainly used as a precursor to 2,4,6-trimethylaniline, a precursor to colorants. This derivative is prepared by selective mononitration of mesitylene, avoiding oxidation of the methyl groups.[9]
> Mesitylene is used in the laboratory as a specialty solvent. In the electronics industry, mesitylene has been used as a developer for photopatternable silicones due to its solvent properties.
Colorants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colourant
> At the time, the Lower Silesia Water Authority based in the nearby Polish city of Wroclaw detected a toxic substance in two locations on the Oder that is likely the solvent mesitylene, which is known to have a toxic effect on fish. However, subsequent tests have shown no trace of the substance.
https://www.gerdludwig.com/stories/soviet-pollution-a-lethal...
https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/china39s-polluted-ri...
Reporters are routinely arrested in communist Vietnam for reporting on industrial pollution:
https://cpj.org/2016/05/two-journalists-arrested-while-cover...
As you suggest, the best known solution is identifying these externalities, exposing their abuse through a free press, and holding polluters accountable through collective action.