Chemical Aftermath: Contamination and Cleanup Following the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami

Thirty days after the most powerful earthquake and tsunami in Japan’s recorded history struck the northeastern coast of that country’s main island, the city of Ishinomaki was a scene of devastation. The busy manufacturing and industrial port town in Miyagi Prefecture,1 close to the epicenter of the quake, had suffered some of the worst damage of any community in the Tohoku region. Pulverized houses, skeletons of factories, and mountains of debris lined the dusty streets. Crumpled cars were tossed across graveyards, broken shipping containers strewn across fields. Ruptured oil tanks leaked glossy black liquid, bags of agrochemicals sat in iridescent puddles, and the doors to a shed labeled “Chemical Storehouse” flapped open, revealing an emptied room. Townspeople and officials walked through this huge field of wreckage, picking at the remains of their homes or simply gazing over the surreal landscape as if immobilized by the scale of damage.2 A man makes his way through the devastated town of Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture, March 2011. The magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011 inundated 561 square kilometers of coastline, reaching up to 5 kilometers inland.3 The disaster wrought havoc from Aomori Prefecture in the north to Chiba Prefecture in the south (about 35 kilometers east of Tokyo); aftershocks affected areas far beyond the coast. The earthquake and tsunami combined may have killed nearly 23,600 people4 and severely damaged or destroyed more than 187,000 homes.5,6 Damage to the region’s industrial facilities also has been extensive. Oil refineries burst into flames in the days after the disaster, sending black smoke billowing into the air. Sewer and gas lines burst, and old electrical equipment containing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) was washed away.7 Petro- and agrochemical plants, iron foundries, steel works, and automotive, electronics, food processing, paper, plastics, and pharmaceutical plants were among those that suffered damage. Potential for Contamination: An Emerging Picture As cleanup continues in the disaster area, questions remain about the fate of chemical contaminants released by these damaged industrial facilities and other sources, and the environmental health hazards they might pose to the hundreds of thousands of people living and working in this area. Similar questions have arisen in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, and the World Trade Center attacks on 11 September 2001. But in Japan, the vast human catastrophe and deepening Fukushima nuclear disaster have tended to eclipse these issues of chemical contamination.