Ecological Attack: Liquid Nitrogen Released, Kills Nearly 750K Fish in Iowa River

submitted by Questionable from (nypost.com)

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[–]Questionable[S] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

This can be used to destroy farm lands, via new laws. Who opened the valve?

[–]zyxzevn 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Liquid nitrogen does not much, it is like frozen air. This article is about liquid nitrogen Ferilizer . Probably some NO2 chemical.

[–]SoCo 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They say liquid nitrogen, but that doesn't make sense. Then they mention ammonia....

An anhydrous ammonia would be thousand times worse for the environment than nitrogen. Yet, it's not really used for its nitrogen impact.

Most likely, this was a release of a liquid urea-ammonium nitrate (UAN solution). Commonly, this can be ammonium nitrate, urea-ammonium sulfate. One could dumb it down as mass synthetic pee, sort of.

This stuff kills plants, but is generally considered safe for humans and animals....in normal amounts / concentrations. I don't think the dead fish would agree this was normal amounts.

The largest long-term risk, that anyone will admit exists, is the toxic algae blooms that result from these kinds of spills.