What do you get if you dump 400 tonnes of petrochemical sludge into open tips around one of west Africa’s largest cities? At least seven deaths and up to 40,000 people complaining of vomiting, rash, breathing difficulties and headache, according to reports from Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, where such a shipment was unloaded on 19 August. The main poison seems to have been hydrogen sulphide – rotten egg gas – with lacings of mercaptan, another sulphureous poison.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. The 1980s saw repeated scandals in which noxious wastes were dumped cheaply in poor countries. In 1989, numerous countries signed a treaty in Basel,…
