US EPA

1383731 

Technical Report 

Aeolian Sky packaged chemicals pollution incident 

Dixon, TR; Dixon, TJ 

1981 

PESTAB/81/1575 

Pollut 

2 

PESTAB. The Aeolian Sky, a cargo vessel which sank off St. Alban's Head in 1979, was loaded with 84 hazardous substances including pesticides, herbicides, disinfectants and general lab chemicals. During the 5 mo after the shipwreck, a total of 3500 packages of chemicals were recovered from a 300 km stretch of shoreline in southern England. During this time 20 persons were hospitalized as a result of contact with opened or leaking chemical packages. No evidence of ecological damage was found. Fishing was prohibited within 1.6 km of the wreck as a precautionary measure. Three sperm whales and 1 pilot whale were found dead on the shore in the affected area; no abnormal levels of chemicals were found in tissue samples taken from these whales, however. Emergency control centers were established in each of the affected counties. Several of the recovered containers were later discovered to have been lost from another shipping accident in the channel. Chemicals recovered from the ship and from the beach areas included 15,000 kg Gramoxone (paraquat), 500 kg of Ferosan (thiram), and 8 l of arsenic trichloride.