Topic > The Seveso disaster - 977

CausesThe factors that caused the series of events to occur and the dangers were foreseeable and could have been avoided. The ICMESA factory was owned by Givaudan SA, based in Geneva, Switzerland. ICMESA produced the intermediate compounds that Givaudan needed to produce cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and soaps. Compounds produced at this plant ranged from benzyl chloride and cyanide to phenylacetic acid and TCP [4]. The reaction of interest was the one that produced TCP, commonly used in surgical soaps. This was not the first plant producing TCP to suffer an accident, but it was the first to seriously affect the villages surrounding the plant. TCP was already known to be toxic in its surgical soaps and its use was already banned in the United States [1]. Although there were rumors about TCP's safety at the time, TCP itself is only moderately toxic. The real culprit for the toxicity found in these soaps was a byproduct called 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin (TCDD, but commonly referred to as dioxin). This compound was significantly more toxic than TCP, but not much else was known about the compound before the Seveso disaster. Events began to occur when the remaining contents of Reactor B from the previous night's shift were not completely cooled. According to Italian law, all factories and plants had to be closed during the weekend and only cleaning and maintenance operations could be carried out [1]. The batch reaction was almost complete by Friday evening, but the final step of removing ethylene glycol from the reaction mixture was not performed and the plant was shut down [1]. The reagents remained in the reactor and the residual heat left from the reactor ... middle of paper ... these people included chloracne, reduced white blood cell count, liver cancer, leukemia, and in some cases, death [5 ].References[1] Fuller, John G.. The Poison That Fell from the Sky. New York: Random House, 1977.[2] Carson, Rachel, Lois Darling and Louis Darling. Silent spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin;, 1962.[3] “Seveso-30 Years Later: A Timeline of Events Alleviating the Consequences of the Accident: Milestones between 1976 and 2006.” The Roche Group. http://www.siznursing.be/index.php?preaction=joint&id_joint=71790 (accessed April 21, 2014).[4] Fara, GM "The ICMESA accident. First intervention to protect man and the environment." Chemistry, Man and Environment 1 (1999): 3-16.[5] Axelson, O.. "Epidemiological evidence of the health effects of tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD) in humans." Chemistry, Man and Environment 1 (1999): 29-38.