Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 2.3
Famous pollution incidents outside Japan and influential topics or movies
Incidents
London Great Smog of 1952
Muse Valley incident of 1930
Los Angeles smog of 1945
Dorano pollution incident of 1948
Love Canal incident of 1978: enactment of laws for a Superfund
Environmental problems in developing countries such as Peking smogs
Books and movies with great impact
Rachel Louise Carson, “Silent Spring” 1962
Tomoyuki Tanaka produces “Godzilla vs. Monster of Chemical Ooze” 1971
Theo Colborn, John Peterson Myers, Dianne Dumanoski, “Our Stolen Future” 1996
Deborah Cadbury, “The Feminization of Nature” 1997
“Erin Brockovich” movie 2000
“The Day After Tomorrow” movie 2004
Al Gore, Jr., “An Inconvenient Truth” 2006
As can be seen from Table
2.2
, Japan's history of pollution events goes back
many years—even to the nineteenth century and the first involvement of politicians
in trying to solve a public pollution problem. This was well before the days of par-
liaments and laws, and in one example in the 1890s, Shozo Tanaka had to make a
direct appeal to the Meiji Emperor to take action against the Ashio copper mine's
environmental damage to local citizens, farming, and forests. Perhaps this might be
categorized as an early example of an environmental leader!
Of course Japan's experience is not unique and has been mirrored across the
world; many similarly famous incidents in other countries have led to new laws
and regulations to try and overcome the basic problem of environmental pollution
(Table
2.3
). Some environmental issues have truly entered the public consciousness
through topics such as Rachel Carson's “Silent Spring”, topics on hormone disrupt-
ing chemicals (“Our Stolen Future” and “Feminisation of Nature”), and of course
Al Gore's “An Inconvenient Truth” on global warming.
In Japan, the gross impacts of pollution even entered the public consciousness
through famous monster characters such as Godzilla! In the 1971 movie “Godzilla
versus the Monster of Chemical Ooze”, the monster Hedorah (Fig.
2.1
) was able to
feed on pollution. In this way a pollution event in real life (Hedorah is the name for
a waste sludge from paper production at Tagono-Ura, Shizuoka Prefecture) causing
local social problems, became a theme and message reaching children around the
world.
In tackling pollution problems, a contrast is often drawn between developed and
developing countries. We can summarise the different influences and interactions
between developed and developing countries and environmental issues in Fig.
2.2
.
This shows that some of the central environmental issues may appear at first sight
