In an incident of environmental racism on a global scale, at least 400 tons of extremely toxic waste was dumped from a Dutch-owned ship at 11 open air sites in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. The noxious fumes from the “slops” have sent 36,000 people to see doctors with symptoms including rashes, vomiting and fainting. Seven people have died.
Update: Estonia blocks tanker linked to Ivory Coast toxic waste from leaving port after Greenpeace activists chained themselves to the ship and urged authorities investigate.
As commented by me today on BBC’s Africa Have Your Say a tanker
cannot physically dump anything inland. instead it was unloaded and
a) paid to be unload
b) paid to be unload with breach of normal procedures
either way the tanker’s behaviour is secondary to the behaviour of
the shore servicemen who unloaded the tanker and then dumped
the waste. Very little to do with racism since the shore servucemen
are unlikely to be of different race.
Environmental racism refers to where the toxins were dumped, not by whom. There are no toxic waste dumps in Beverly Hills, but you do find them in South L.A., which is primarily low-income Latino and Black.