Disasters, Man-Made

The Sarin Attack

The sarin gas attack involved the release of packets of the chemical during morning rush hour on the Toyko commuter transport system. One drop of this chemical agent is sufficient to kill an adult. In total, there were five separate releases of the chemical on different trains by a team of attackers that resulted in 12 deaths and over 1,000 injuries. The event has been described as domestic terrorism, although some researchers are now viewing it from the perspective of a toxic disaster. A toxic disaster has some unique features, which include the “invisible” nature of the attack. Specifically, radiation, germs, and chemicals are invisible to the human eye and thus create special stresses. The stresses flow from the lack of awareness of how the toxin will impact victims over the long term. In particular, there may be no specific end point for the impact of the toxin as it may have increasing and unknown negative health impacts over time. As such, there can be a variety of mental health consequences concomitant to the exposure. These may include depression, anxiety, somatization, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other negative outcomes.

Three Mile Island

The Three Mile Island event involved the escape of radioactive steam due to equipment failures and human errors. The governor issued an announcement that those 3,500 individuals in the immediate area should evacuate. Surprisingly, reports indicate that a total of 150,000 to 200,000 people left the area, some for several weeks. The event caused no immediate deaths, and a variety of epidemiological studies have focused on the longer-term health consequences to residents. This type of “accident” has led commentators such as Kai Erikson to describe Three Mile Island as falling into a “new species of trouble” in the form of technological disasters. Included in this grouping are events such as Chernobyl, Bhopal, and the Buffalo Creek flood disaster. As is the case with the sarin gas example, these technological disasters involved toxins that elicit a special type of fear as well as a variety of psychological symptoms. This is because toxinbased disasters may leave a residue and create a contamination effect rather than a time-limited damage trajectory as in the case of such natural disasters as tornadoes. Some toxin-based technological disasters can invisibly wreak havoc on the human body, and so victims can carry the impact of the disaster with them continually for the remainder of their lives.

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