900,000 Liters of Abandoned Fish Sauce Prompt Cleanup—and a Chemistry Lesson
TL;DR
In St. Mary’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, 900,000 liters of fish sauce sit in 110 vats at a defunct plant, triggering a $2 million cleanup to remove the sludge and seal it in a lined landfill. The piece blends local history with science, as a food chemist explains how salt and gut enzymes drive umami and preservation, while long-term fermentation could produce rancid aromas and new compounds over years—making the stinky saga both hazardous and oddly intriguing.
Topics:worldscience#environmentalcleanup#fermentation#fishsauce#newfoundlandandlabrador#science#stmarys
- Let Me And A Food Scientist Sample The Abandoned Fish Sauce Terrorizing A Small Canadian Town Defector
- Rotten fish sauce that has long stunk up a small Canadian town is finally being removed AP News
- St. Mary’s, Newfoundland, Will No Longer Reek of Rotten Fish Sauce The New York Times
- First load of rotting, decades-old fish sauce trucked away from abandoned N.L. plant cp24.com
- Decades in the making, work begins to remove rotten fish sauce from St. Mary's plant cbc.ca
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