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Comment by Red_Tarsius | Hacker News Reader

I just saw this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT9mrbIxeBE and it sounded like an interesting topic to bring on HN. I didn't know about the "Cancer Alley" in Louisiana, but I figure most countries have their own alleys of death. I live in Italy and Taranto is notorious for this reason. The city was home to one of biggest steel producers in Europe. The local economy revolved around the steel plant, but people from the sorrounding neighbourhoods have suffered from abnormally high rates of cancer and respiratory illnesses for decades. After a trial which shed light on the environmental disaster, the government seized the plant in 2012. Long story short, its fate has been in a limbo since then.

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Although not quite as drastic, same with the Ĳmuiden region in Noord-Holland (originally Koninklĳke Hoogovens, "Royal Furnaces" -- just as royal as Shell) [0]:

> Due to exposure to particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide emitted from the Tata Steel site, Wijk aan Zee residents have a life expectancy that is 2.5 months lower on average

> approximately 4% of the future cases of lung cancer in Wijk aan Zee will be attributable to the current emissions of particulate matter

> around 3% of future [asthma] cases will be associated with the current emissions

And currently, also DuPunt/Chemours in Dordrecht [1]:

> Chemours, which spun off from its legal predecessor Dupont (DD.N), opens new tab in 2015 to regroup the latter's performance chemical business, complied with its permit before July 1984 but that after that it should have better informed the towns surrounding its chemical plant in the city of Dordrecht

And separately, there is an investigation against the local government because then-DuPont was tacitly allowed to exceed the amount of pollution granted by their permit.

[0] https://www.rivm.nl/publicaties/bijdrage-van-tata-steel-nede...

[1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/dutch-court-rule...

(edit: found link in English)

In Australia, it would be Wittenoom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittenoom,_Western_Australia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYAWxJ8a7RA

I wonder about the historical trends in these types of zones. Presumably they didn't exist prior to the industrial revolution?

I would expect that mining, leather-producing and dye-producing areas may very well have seen similar types of toxic waste leading to negative health outcomes even before large scale industrialization. And the areas downstream.

Here's an example of a mine that has had toxic runoff likely for millenia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Tinto_(river) at least partly due to human mining activity. I would expect that people living downstream of the mine would have negative health outcomes, possibly without being aware.

Before the industrial revolution, the primary way to refine gold from diffuse ore was to dissolve the gold in mercury, separate the amalgam, and then boil out the mercury to leave the gold behind. In large-scale mining, this resulted in local air pollution levels that were horrifying even when compared to the worst unmitigated industrial revolution era sites. Entire communities would get mercury poisoning from the air they breathed.

Certain biocides were a problem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bordeaux_mixture

(This one was invented after the Industrial Revolution started but it was used far away from most factories.)

Preindustrial cities were population sinks due to communicable diseases.

Go far enough back and no one lived long enough to get cancer.

I would expect any medieval lead and gold mines surrounding to be horribly unhealthy.

sorrownding: neat

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