Chemical disasters Love Canal

In the 1970s, an unusual number of community residents (especially those who attended the elementary school) developed serious health problems. Moreover, the residents complained of noxious fumes and of chemicals oozing out of the ground. Subsequent government investigations found extensive contamination of the area, including groundwater supplies. In 1978, President Carter declared Love Canal a federal disaster area, and most of the residents in the area around the site were relocated. 

The Bhopal disaster was a watershed in the area of environmental policy and legislation worldwide. Suddenly the horror of the industrial model of development became very stark and real. How and where industries were sited and how they dealt with the dangers that they posed to the communities around them became real questions. After the Love Canal saga (see the case study later in this chapter), Bhopal was the one incident that led to worldwide regulation on chemicals and toxicity. Intertwined with all the information was the fact that communities be given information and be included as participants in industry decision making. 

From the late 1960s to the 1970s, homeowners in the community in Love Canal, New York suffered a number of well-publicized health problems, such as miscarriages, chronic infections, chemical bums, internal disorders, and genetic mutations. These maladies were traced to 20,000 tons of hazardous waste buried by Hooker Chemical and Plastics Company from 1947 to 1954. President. Timmy Carter declared the town a disaster area in 1978. In 1980 the neighborhood was evacuated and in the same year, the Superfund [the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA)] was created. This program was created to clean up toxic waste sites using a fund collected from chemical manufacturers and oil producers (3). 

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