2006 Ivory Coast toxic waste dump tonnes' of hydrogen sulfide. Trafigura, following an investigative report by the BBC's "Newsnight" program, announced on 2009 that they would sue the BBC for libel. The scope of the dumping and the related illnesses were slow to emerge. While the first cargo was offloaded in August 2006, the dumping continued for almost three weeks before the population knew what was happening. But as early as 19 August, residents near the landfill at knew that trucks were dumping toxic liquid into the landfill and blocked the entrance of one of the trucks to the dump, which had been freshly painted with
History of Ivory Coast areas northward from the West African coast. Ivory Coast, like the rest of West Africa, was subject to these influences, but the absence of sheltered harbors along its coastline prevented Europeans from establishing permanent trading posts. Seaborne trade, therefore, was irregular and played only a minor role in the penetration and eventual conquest by Europeans of Ivory Coast. The slave trade, in particular, had little effect on the peoples of Ivory Coast. A profitable trade in ivory, which gave the area its name, was carried out during the seventeenth century, but it brought about such a decline in elephants that