List of man-made mass poisoning incidents
Incidents
- 1857, Hong Kong. Esing Bakery incident: 300–500 people consumed bread adulterated with large quantities of arsenic. Only three deaths were recorded, since the amount of arsenic was high enough to induce vomiting and prevent digestion. It is unknown whether the contamination was deliberate or accidental.[1]
- 1858, England. Bradford sweets poisoning: Sweets accidentally made with arsenic were sold from a market stall which led to the poisoning of more than 200 people, including 21 deaths.
- 1900 English beer poisoning
- 1923 Elks National Home in Bedford, Virginia. Nine killed by apple cider contaminated by a pesticide.[2]
- 1971, Iraq. Iraq poison grain disaster: A mass poisoning by grain treated with a methylmercury fungicide which was imported to the country as seed and never intended for human consumption. According to several estimates, the recorded death toll varies from 459 to 650 people, though much higher estimates have been offered.
- 1973, USA. Michigan cattle poisoning with PBB:[3] A fire retardant chemical was accidentally mixed in with cattle feed and consumed by over 30,000 dairy cows.[4]
- 1981, Spain. An outbreak of Toxic oil syndrome supposedly caused by contaminated colza oil killed over 600 people.
- 1982, USA. The Chicago Tylenol murders, an unsolved case of drug tampering in the Chicago area. 7 deaths were linked to the potassium cyanide poisoning, leading to a nationwide recall of Tylenol products. [5]
- 1984, India. The Bhopal disaster (also known as Bhopal gas tragedy): A gas leak incident which led to at least 3,787 deaths.
- 1988, England. Camelford water pollution incident: The accidental contamination of the drinking water supply to 20,000 local people and up to 10,000 tourists of the town of Camelford with 20 tonnes of aluminium sulphate. Officially, there were no deaths caused by the accident.
- 1998 Delhi oil poisoning, adulterated mustard oil resulted in 60 deaths.
- 2010, Nigeria. A series of lead poisonings in Zamfara State led to the deaths of at least 163 people.
- 2016, Pakistan. Punjab sweet poisoning: An accidental contamination of baked confectionery with illegal agriculture pesticides led to at least 33 deaths.
- 2021, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Tribistovo poisoning: A carbon monoxide leak from a power generator led to the deaths of eight teenagers.
See also
References
- Lowe, Kate; McLaughlin, Eugene (2015). "'Caution! The bread is poisoned': The Hong Kong mass poisoning of January 1857" (PDF). The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 43 (2): 189–209: 190, 197. doi:10.1080/03086534.2014.974904. S2CID 159790706.
- "VA Poisoned Cider Kills Nine at Elks Home". New York Times. 12 November 1923. Retrieved 23 September 2020.
- Gleason, Rachael (2010-06-04). "Poisoning Michigan: Author revisits PBB crisis 30 years later". Great Lakes Echo. Retrieved 2016-05-05.
- "PBB; How 30,000 cows in Michigan died in 1970's still haunts people, environment today". Vimeo. Retrieved 2016-05-07.
- "POISON DEATHS BRING U.S. WARNING ON TYLENOL USE". New York Times. 2 October 1982. Retrieved 23 October 2021.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.