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 thirty tons on March 14 1991 and the second 1.3 tons on April 22. The phenol ended up at a water processing facility used for drinking water in Daegu and began to smell after becoming chlorophenol when the water was sanitized with chlorine.
The first leak
The first leak occurred at March 14 from 10 pm to 6 am the next day. After the 30 ton spill, in places the phenol concentration in the 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 concentration set by the World Health Organization (0.001 ppm). For a short while after this, water processing facilities stopped using chlorine and started using activated charcoal, ozone and chlorine dioxide. Seven 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 an accident was allowed to reopen after 20 days.
The second leak
The second leak happened on April 22, at 12:05 pm. Due to this leak, Park Yong-gon Doosan Group chairman, Hu Nam-hoon Minister of Environment and Han soo-sang, a Ministry of Environment vice minister, were forced to retire. Doosan Electronics was shut down for 64 days, after the citizens of nearby Daegu suffering from bad smelling water and environmental pollution. Also, the investigsation discovered numerous incidents before this where companies dumped phenol without decontaminating it to save the (relatively small) sums decontamination required. At that time companies' operating procedures were not environment.[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.