The Amazon Has Seen Our Future 2: Already Sick, Now Sicker
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Just since the beginning of the pandemic, 14 oil spills have occurred in the Peruvian jungle. Eight of them are in Block 192. Frontera Energy del Perú S.A., the company in charge of that block, has not been operational for months, but the crude from its facilities continues to seep into the water and soil. “Nobody is containing the spills,” warns Mr. Hualinga. “There are places where oil accumulates and the rains make it overflow.” Environmental authorities are still investigating the causes, but it’s clear that the oil company doesn’t maintain its old wells and pipes, which leak and need constant cleaning.
Between 2000 and 2019, there were 474 oil spills in the Peruvian Amazon: 65 percent were caused by corroded pipelines and the operational failures of companies like Pluspetrol Norte, the predecessor of Frontera Energy, the country’s most polluting oil company. In Block 192 alone — according to a report by the National Coordinator for Human Rights and Oxfam — about 2,000 sites have been devastated by oil activity. Thirty-two of these areas contain enough contaminated material to fill 231 national stadiums.
The health consequences of oil spills are dire. In 2016, specialists from the Ministry of Health collected blood and urine samples from 1,168 people living in the area around Block 192. Half of those evaluated, including Mr. Hualinga, his wife and their young son, had toxic metals — lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium — at levels higher than those permitted by the World Health Organization. This can affect the nervous system and the brain’s ability to learn, and can cause hypertension, kidney failure and cancer.
This catastrophe is unfolding in a place where seven out of 10 people are poor, where there is no drinking water, and where women and children fall ill with anemia because of chronic malnutrition. The Quichua people of Nueva Andoas are at high risk for any disease, let alone a pandemic that has already killed more than 31,000 Peruvians, a death toll approaching that of the war waged against the terrorist group Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/opinion/amazon-pollution-oil.html