A mudflow thick with toxic mining waste, which initially spilled earlier this month from the collapse of two tailings dams into a main river in southeast Brazil, has now reached the Atlantic Ocean, says Brazil's environmental agency, Ibama.

Ibama told Al Jazeera on Sunday that thousands of hectares of land and water in the region have been affected by what has been described as the country's "worst environmental catastrophe in history", after the flood of sludge travelled at least 500km through the Rio Doce (Sweet River) over the past few weeks.

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