Love Canal

In any industrial facility, from offices to factories and laboratories, spills happen and create a variety of risks to workers. Inside a plant, spills result in chemicals on the floor, in the air, or on the workers themselves. When releases occur outside the plant (e.g., chemical releases from tank cars or trucks, the spread of noxious fumes from an internal spill), the potential for harm extends far beyond the facility, particularly with major catastrophes such as the Bhopal chemical release, the Exxon Valdez oil spill. New York s Love Canal, and dioxin-contaminated Times Beach in Missouri, have led several federal departments and agencies to enact protective regulations. These protections are aimed at protecting a much broader range of people, property, and the environment than most regulations administered by OSHA. 

A number of environmental issues have received widespread publicity (Table 7.1), from major accidents at plants (e.g., Seveso and Bhopal) to the global and regional impacts associated with energy utilization (e.g., carbon dioxide, acid rain, and photochemical oxidants), the improper disposal of chemical waste (e.g., Love Canal and Times Beach), and chemicals that have dispersed and bioaccumulated affecting wildlife (e.g., PCBs and DDT) and human health (e.g., cadmium, mercury, and asbestos). 

Site-specific Dioxins (Seveso, Love Canal, and Times Beach)... 

An old chemical dump in New York (Love Canal) started to... 

Trichloroethylene was qualitatively detected in the soil/sediment matrix of the Love Canal waste site near Niagara Falls (Hauser and Bromberg 1982). Sediment concentrations were found to be <0.5 pg/kg (dry weight) (<0.5 ppb) near a discharge point for effluent containing 17 ppb trichloroethylene in Los Angeles (Gossett et al. 1983). 

Hauser TR, Bromberg SM. 1982. EPAs monitoring program at Love Canal 1980. Environ Monit Assess 2 249-272. 

Envlroiunental testing Is a critical element In this process since It enables the qualitative and quantitative determination of toxic chemicals In the environment and the definition of environmental pathways which may lead to human exposure This paper briefly reviews the overall process of health risk assessments and the particular role which environmental testing plays Recent efforts to assess environmental health risks In relation to Love Canal Illustrate both the usefulness and the limitations of environmental testing In risk assessment ... 

Since simultaneous health effect surveys were conducted in the Love Canal area, environmental test results In the homes adjoining the Canal were examined in an effort to demonstrate the presence or absence of correlations between environmental chemical levels and frequencies of particular health abnormalities. This effort was largely unsuccessful, since the total exposed population proved to be too small for meaningful interpretation of most health endpoints of Interest and since difficulties in controlling for subjective reporting of health symptoms made it difficult to Interpret health survey results O, ). 

Environmental Monitoring at Love Canal, Environmental Protection Agency, EPA 600/4-82-030a, 1982. 

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. 

Soil contamination was not perceived as a problem until the 1970s, when incidents in the U.S. and Europe (Love Canal, NY Times Beach, MO Lekkerkerk, the Netherlands) awakened public awareness about the serious threats posed to human health and the environment by abandoned or improperly managed hazardous wastes. In response to the growing public concern, the U.S., the Netherlands, and a number of other European countries started a systematic effort beginning in 1980 to identify potentially contaminated sites, assess the level of contamination, establish priorities for remediation based on risk assessment studies and gradually implement the required remedial actions. 

Niagara River 1991 contaminated sites (Buffalo River, Love Canal) vs. reference site Total PAHs 3.3-5.4 vs. 0.4 26... 

Policymakers can read stories of real people who face this risk of marginalization due to the brutal effects of everyday toxicant exposures, and take the experience of these people into their policymaking. Famous Love Canal environmentalist Lois Gibbs says Pollution begins in the boardroom. ... 

Colton, C. E. and Skinner, R N., 1996, The Road to Love Canal Managing Industrial Waste before ERA. University of Texas Press, Austin, 217 pp. 

Think how many carcinogens are household names asbestos, cigarette smoke (a mixture of several thousand chemical compounds), DES, dioxin, saccharin, arsenic, PCBs, radon, EDB, Alar. Hundreds more of these substances, some very obscure, are known to the scientific and medical community, and many of these are scattered throughout the land at thousands of hazardous waste sites similar to Love Canal. People are exposed to these dreadful substances through the air they breathe, the water they drink and bathe in, and the foods they eat. Chemicals can also produce many other types of health damage, some very serious, such as birth defects and damage to our nervous and immune systems. 

An old chemical dump in Niagara Falls, New York, near Love Canal, began leaking into the environment. A state of emergency and an evacuation of the neighboring area resulted. This episode helped approve the 1980 Superfund law. In 1994, OxyChem agreed to pay New York 98 million. 

A chloralkah business should be located either near cheap salt or near cheap electricity, and much of the chemical industry in this country started near Niagara Falls because of the cheap hydroelectric power there. Most of these industries have left this area, and the polluted Love Canal is one of the few remnants of this industry. 

In recent decades, much of the chemical industry has been scrutinized with respect to its products and practices. National stories on hazardous wastes generated by the industry (Love Canal, Times Beach) paint a picture of a toxic cornucopia. 

The only direct measurements of isophorone in soil were found for samples taken from hazardous waste sites. Ghassemi et al. (1984) found isophorone in leachates from hazardous waste landfills, and Hauser and Bromberg (1982) detected the presence of isophorone in the "sediment/soil/water" of Love Canal. These studies suggest that isophorone also was present in the soil. The Contract Laboratory Program Statistical Data Base (queried April 13, 1987) reported that isophorone has been detected at 4 of 357 hazardous waste sites at a concentration range of 1.68-6500 ppm. 

Some POPs, such as the insecticide DDT (Chapter 15) are created on purpose. Many persistent organic pollutants, however, are created inadvertently, such as POPs that form upon the chlorine bleaching of paper. When possible, these POPs are sequestered as wastes. In the past, these wastes were not known to be harmful and they were often improperly buried only to create later environmental hazards, as occurred at Love Canal, NY, in the late 1970s. 

In 1980, President Carter pushed hard for the CERCLA to be passed — mainly in response to various environmental tragedies in the news, such as the Love Canal toxic waste site near Niagara Falls and the valley of drums in Kentucky. People wanted someone to be held accountable for the toxic waste sites that littered the country. The CERCLA focuses on two issues responding to existing uncontrolled hazardous waste sites and preventing... 

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