1991 Nakdong River phenol contamination incident
The Nakdong River phenol contamination incident(낙동강 페놀 오염 사건, 洛東江-汚染事件) is an incident where phenol was leaked into the river from Doosan Electronics. There were two leaks, the first on 1991 March 14 and the second on April 22 with 30 and 1.3 tons of phenol being leaked into the river, respectively. The phenol ended up at a water processing facility used for drinking water in Daegu and started letting off a smell after changing into chlorophenol during water sanitization with chlorine.
The first leak
The first leak occurred at March 14 from 10 pm to 6 am the next day. Due to the 30 tons of phenol, there were places where the phenol concentration of tap water went up to 0.11 ppm, which was 22 times the maximum allowed concentration of phenol in South Korea (0.005 ppm) and 110 times the maximum allowed concentration by the WHO (0.001 ppm). For a short while after this, water processing facilities stopped using chlorine and started using activated charcoal, ozone and chlorine dioxide. 7 employees at the Daegu Department of Environment and 6 Doosan Electronics personnel were arrested, with 11 related public service personnel being jailed as well. Doosan Electronics was shut down for 30 days, but due to the fact that the incident was not done on purpose it was allowed to reopen after 20 days.
The second leak
The second leak happened on April 22, 12:05 pm. Due to this leak, Park Yong-gon Doosan Group chairman, Hu Nam-hoon Ministry of Environment minister and Han soo-sang Ministry of Environment vice minister were forced to retire. Doosan Electronics was shut down for 64 days. However, that was after the nearby Daegu citizens suffered from events such as bad smelling water and environmental pollution. Also, it was revealed that there were numerous incidents before this where companies dumped phenol without decontaminating it to save the (relatively) small amount of money required for decontamination. This incident showed how at that time companies had an unethical and non-environment friendly operating procedure.[1]
Aftershocks
This incident expanded into a Doosan boycott as well.
The Green Association included the Nakdong phenol contamination incident as number one in their article "The top 10 environmental pollution incidents after 1950" written in 1999.