The city hosts important industries that make use of environmentally harmful chemicals, including a petrochemical plant and a paper mill.

is responsible for contaminating the Paraná River with chlorine-derived chemicals and others (methoxyphenols such as chloro-guaiacol, di- and tri-chloro-phenols, alkylbenzenes, sulfur compounds, long-chain hydrocarbons, and chloroform).

Similar charges have been made about the petrochemical plant Electroclor, owned by Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), which manufactures chlorine.

[1][2][3] In 1991, fragments of the Soviet Union's Salyut 7 space station showered the town after burning up on re-entry.

It had overshot its intended entry point, which would have placed its debris in uninhabited portions of the southern Pacific Ocean.