Western Amazon 'polluted by oil activity'

The Western Amazon may have become contaminated due to oil pollution, according to a new study. Research looking at pollution records has suggested the Western Amazon may have been affected by widespread oil pollution that occurred over a 30-year period. The Amazon is not only an area of cultural diversity, its biological diversity is unparalleled by anywhere else on Earth. The study will be presented at the Goldschmidt conference in California.

The majority of tropical rainforests have reserves of both gas and oil, making them huge energy resources as well as environmentally important areas. Work began on tapping the oil resources in the Western Amazon in the 1020s, peaking in the '70s. 

However, as global demand grows, so too does the level of activity when it comes to extracting the Amazon's reserves. Between the years 1970 and 2009, almost 70 per cent of the Peruvian Amazon was tapped for oil.

For the first time, a group of researchers from Spain created a database all chemical analyses performed in the Western Amazon area between 1983 and 2013. The analyses come from a number of different sources, including oil companies and public agencies. While the results need to be studied further to reinforce initial observations, concerns have been raised by the findings so far.

According to Raul Yusta Garcia, a researcher on the team, of the 18 wastewater dumping sites from ten Amazon tributaries over the 30-year period, 68 per cent were found to have levels of lead that are above the Peruvian limits. Testing for nine different pollutants also revealed that 20 per cent of the samples had cadmium levels above regulation limits.

"We were also able to compare pollution upstream and downstream of some of the dumping sites. With some samples, we found chlorine levels averaged 11-times higher downstream of the wastewater dumping site than it had been upstream. Pollution from oil extraction declined from around 2008, but the danger is that increased demand causes increased pollution," he continued.