After flooding seven villages with toxic mud and completely contaminating the Doce River, one of the largest in southeastern Brazil, the almost 62 million cubic meters (around 2.2 billion cubic feet) of mining waste reached the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday.
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This footage shows the devastation on the River Doce following the dam’s collapse.
A fireman rescues a dog that was trapped in the mud that swept through the village of Bento Rodrigues in Brazil.
The company also widened the river mouth to speed up the flow of the mud where the toxins are expected to stretch to a wider area and become diluted.
The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights cited “new evidence” but did not say what studies were the basis for the evidence nor who had conducted them.
Samarco is owned by mining giants Vale, from Brazil, and Anglo-Australian company BHP Billiton.
BHP declined to comment on the UN’s report as it had not seen it, but said it was trying to contact the UN’s rapporteur to understand his comments.
The United Nations human rights agency has found mud from the Samarco tailings dam collapse in Brazil is toxic and the government and corporate responses to the disaster were “clearly insufficient”.
A plume of mud and mining waste travelled down the Rio Doce from the site of the iron ore mine over the past two weeks and reached the Atlantic Ocean on Monday.
BHP said the fish were most likely being choked to death by the sheer volume of fine sediment released by the dam burst clogging their gills, rather than the chemical composition of the sludge.
“The government and companies should be doing everything within their power to prevent further harm, including exposure to heavy metals and other toxic chemicals”, the pair said in a joint statement.
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A spokeswoman for Samarco, in an emailed statement, reiterated that the tailings from its dam consist “basically” of water, iron-ore particles and quartz.
