Talk:2006 Ivory Coast toxic waste dump

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A news item involving 2006 Ivory Coast toxic waste dump was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 21 September 2009.

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A news item involving 2006 Ivory Coast toxic waste dump was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 24 July 2010.

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I think the list of chemicals is incomplete: the smell is due to thiols (mercaptans, thio-alcohols, names vary: like the -OH of alcolcol but with sulphur making it -SH). They are very, very smelly indeed: look up the wiki entry for ethyl mercaptan.

As for what was actually done, 'caustic washing' is far from new. 'Sour' crude with lots of sulphur compounds and 'waxes' ( a mess of phenolic compounds collectively called 'naptha') have long been a headache for refinery managers. You can treat them, and inject the safe products into the main refining stream, but it's expensive to do and hopelessly uneconomical when you factor in the destruction of the unusable residues of the process... Assuming you're in a country with environmental laws and effective enforcement: luckily, it stayed uneconomical, even for corrupt polluters.

So mostly it's not cost-effective to get the worst sour crudes out of the ground. Mostly. It was economical for a while after the 1979 price-spike, and a large part of the Dumping at Sea Convention was aimed at 'Tank Washings' that, in part, arose from loading a tankful of sour crude and caustic soda, sailing across the ocean, unloading the clean oil from the top of the tank and pumping out the rest in mid-ocean.

I hope that I do not exaggerate here when I say that there is no chemical as nasty as the residues left from running industrial-grade (not reagent grade!) caustic soda through sour crude. The sulphur compounds precipitate out into a mess of sulphonated organic chemicals that contain hundreds of different compounds - 'naptha' and benzene and long-chain thiols, explosives and carcinogens, heavy metals in organometallic compounds that nobody will handle. Oh, it effervesces hydrogen suphide on a good day, and ethyl mercaptan on a bad one. Every chemist can name one or two 'favourite' nasties when you give him beer, but when you push him, he'll admit that he only ever heard them in quantities that you measure out in grammes. Tank-washing residues arrive in tens and hundreds of tons.

I suspect that the only reason we still have an ocean ecosystem is that oil got cheap again in the early nineteen-eighties; and no refinery would take the 'cleaned' oil, because doing so would've meant acquiescing in a crime and - far worse - allowing cheapskates to steal a (then) profitable business in pre-processing sour crude. The last five years of rising prices have, once again, created the economic space for 'caustic washing' alongside the onshore processing of sour cruce - which creates toxic residues that it might just be cheaper to pay criminals to take away than to dispose of properly.

I'm going to ask around, see if I can get a qualified industrial chemist to add something here that corroborates all this. Me, I'm just some joe with high-school chemistry and a background in banking that covered commodity trading and a bit of crack-spread trading, and I can't even begin to dig up the citations that would be required to put this in the main article as an acceptable edit.

Also: maybe I should ask a marine lawyer to add something. The reason some-or-other-company unloaded this ashore (allegedly! I hasten to add, and I invite them to offer a full reply) is that the Convention on Dumping At Sea appears, astonishingly, to have real teeth and an active enforcement regime.

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Dutch or Swiss. According to this page, Dutch. According to Trafigura page, Swiss.

technicalhitch:

Both are correct, and the Trading HQ is in London. The whole issue of the PK and the TW is a classic example of misrepresentation and misreporting for personal benefit, whether financial or intellectual. At the end of the Court case in London, it was declard in court, and accepted by Leigh Day, that there was no link between the TW and the injuries/deaths occasioned in Abidjan. This will set the record straight, and should be on the appropriate Wikipedia pages - Referring to the Joint Statement (see below) which had been agreed by both parties and which was read out in Court, Mr Justice MacDuff confirmed that:

“I know from my own reading of the [court] papers that the experts were quite clear that the slops could not give rise to the sort of symptoms and illness which were being claimed in some of the press. I hope that the media will take account of the Joint Statement and will put it right, and put things in perspective. I need say no more except to underline that from where I sit and from what I have seen of the [court] papers, the Joint Statement is 100% truthful.”

The Judge also voiced his concerns as to the widespread press coverage of this matter. He said:

“I have been following what has been happening in the media both in the newspapers and on TV and radio. I have witnessed myself how wildly inaccurate some of the statements have been. It can all be put right with the Final Joint statement. Speaking for myself, I hope the press that have made statements which have been wrong will take note of the Joint Statement.”

92.27.174.73 (talk) 13:01, 5 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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Hello. I added in a sentence about the pigs getting slaughtered, and managed to get the reference link into the main body, but the style I found on wikipedia to list refrences didn't match the style in the reference section. Slawdogg 09:48, 22 November 2006 (UTC)Slawdogg[reply]

Spill?

Surely dump. Perhaps a move is required --Mongreilf (talk) 20:00, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Controversial topic

Please note that this topic is controversial, the subject of two current lawsuits, and (in the Dutch language version) has been documented as edited in the past by one of the parties to remove information with which they disagree. Statements need to be referenced, and both sides need to be represented without undue weight given to views. Note that, for instance, the substance dumped has been systematically changed across this article to be described here as "slops" (the product of washing of fuel tanks). The is the term used (only, as far as I can tell) by the company accused here of dumping toxic waste. We are not here to solve their legal issues, and should report their view,. But it should be noted that reliable news and government sources for at least two continents describe this incident as the dumping of Toxic waste, not the washing of ship tanks.

A number of statements added to this article come directly out of company talking points, are unreferenced and un-attributed. There's no fault in giving the company's pov, but it must be so attributed, not as some weasel worded "this is discounted by others who have found..." with no references. Just a heads up. T L Miles (talk) 17:05, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm continuing to cleanup and expand this. Just to note, the pov stuff doesn't seem limited to nl.wikipedia. User 83.235.44.238, from an IP Prime Marine Greece's offices removed the fact that the ship in question was owned by that company, and user Special:Contributions/Peter.inzell Peter.inzell, who only ever made contributions to this article and Trafigura added a link to an article claiming the ships contents couldn't be linked to the people who died. He made a a similar change on Trafigura which was later incorporated here. Just a heads up. T L Miles (talk) 21:51, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Company edits

It would be interesting to see what edits the company man made to the Dutch article rather then just a blanket statement that he tried to alter the history of the event. It would stand to reason that in a case of vandalism that serious on Wikipedia the precise nature of the change would be very relevant to the article!--Senor Freebie (talk) 15:41, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Guardian gagged from reporting Parliament

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44460&c=1

BBC apologise

Hi, I was on the Trafigura site and see that the BBC have had to make a Statement in Open Court on this case. I am not 100% sure how to integrate it into the article so I leave it here in the hope that someone else can do it. (How does it square with the fact that Trafigura had to pay so much compensation, is what I'm not sure about. Is it because they never admitted any wrongdoing?) It is here: [1] . Nach0king (talk) 18:28, 21 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Suppression of Median and Super Injunction" section

This section was added by an anon ip earlier this month, but it's evidently not formatted correctly or may have been copied from elsewhere on WP or even another website. I don't know enough about this subject to revert it/integrate it properly, but it probably ought to be sorted out/revised and checked for accuracy. Bob talk 12:44, 21 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]