Right now, we’re all watching to see if BP’s latest efforts to plug the oil spill will succeed. We don’t know how many gallons of crude have been released into the Gulf of Mexico or how extensive the damage will be, but it’s safe to say that coastal waters will be suffering the effects of this disaster for some time. The Deepwater Horizon spill isn’t the first manmade environmental catastrophe, and unfortunately, it won’t be the last.

Even more unfortunately, not all environmental catastrophes happen all at once, like Chernobyl or Union Carbide. Some build for decades, and even though we know exactly how to stop them, lack of outrage or lack of funds allows them to continue. These potential disasters are looming all across the globe, getting ready to become tomorrow’s headline news.

1. Guiyu, China: The E-waste Capital of the World
Located in the rural Guangdong Province, the village of Guiyu has become the world’s largest repository of e-waste, including cell phones, computer components, and all varieties of other gadgets. About 5,500 trash-related businesses in the area reportedly dismantle up to 1.5 million pounds of waste per year. The inhabitants of the city work to extract small amounts of valuable metals from the detritus, a process that is messy, dangerous, and toxic. After years of burning plastic, boiling the trash, and etching circuitry with acid, the soil is contaminated with lead and other metals, and the water is full of toxic sludge and factory runoff. Wells have become unusable, and potable water has become scarce. According to reports, the poisonous conditions in the village have led to elevated rates of cancer and miscarriages, and up to 80 percent of the children in the town suffer from elevated levels of lead in their blood. The United States (where up to 80 percent of the e-waste comes from) is the only nation that has not ratified the United Nations treaty banning the exporting of hazardous wastes to developing countries.

2. Sharks Fished Toward Extinction
Despite what Jaws would have us believe, sharks pose virtually no danger to humans. However, populations of shark species are dwindling all over the world, with disastrous consequences for marine ecosystems. Some sharks are caught as bycatch in commercial fishing nets, but up to 75 million sharks per year are killed in the process known as “finning,” where the shark’s fins are sliced off for sale in Asia and the body is tossed back into the ocean to drown.

Marine biologists at Dalhousie University in Canada have estimated that populations of some shark species have plummeted 97 percent since the 1980s. As the apex predator of the ocean, sharks control the food chain, and in North Carolina, unregulated mid-level predators have already decimated scallop and bivalve populations, collapsing fisheries. In the Caribbean, the proliferation of predator fish, such as grouper, has resulted in shrinking numbers of herbivorous fish, along with dying coral reefs without filter-feeders to cleanse the water. Sharks now represent the greatest percentage of endangered marine species.

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