Love Canal dump

Love Canal dump, Niagara Falls, New York Largely hydrocarbon residues from pesticide production Inactive landfill in residential area Direct, airborne, and waterborne contacts... 

Note the orientation of the chlorines relative to the cyclohexane ring this is the aaaeee-isomer, where a is axial and e is equatorial. HCHs are abundant in the Love Canal dump because the Hooker Chemical Corp. in Niagara Falls, NY, made them. HCHs have environmental half-lives of a few years, and they have been found in mammals from the Arctic. Lindane s use in the United States is being phased out starting in 2009. 

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

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. 

By the summer of 1979, other residents in the neighborhood had begun to complain of increased incidence of rashes, headaches, urinary problems, heart disease and cancer, complicated by the allegations of one former health department employee that he "knew" the location of a chemical waste dump in the area. By the following April, the Director of the health department indicated that there was a "highly charged atmosphere, virtually identical to that at Love Canal."... 

How can we prevent the crying of "wolf" and the unnecessary psychological distress caused by government actions at Love Canal and the "phantom dump " These problems are real and are described in detail in Love Canal Residents Under Stress, 208 Science, June 13, 1980 at p. 1242, which graphically discusses the psychological impacts of the uncertainty created by the muddled governmental response. 

The Love Canal, a neighborhood in the southeast LaSalle district of the city of Niagara Falls, New York, takes its name from the failed plan of 19th-century entrepreneur, William T. Love. From 1942 through 1953, the Love Canal Landfill was used principally by Hooker Chemical, one of the many chemical plants located along the Niagara River, as a municipal and chemical disposal site. Nearly 21,000 tons (42 million pounds) of what would later be identified by independent scientists as toxic chemicals were dumped at the site. 

Contaminated sites such as industrial chemical dumps contain mixtures of numerous toxicants. These include multiple lipophiles and hydrophiles that can undergo chemical reactions, migrate, and be absorbed by plants and animalsJ30 Such sites are often acutely and chronically toxic, environmentally persistent, and lead to bioaccumulation of toxicants in food webs. An excellent example of such a site is the Love Canal in the state of New York. 

In the United States, the Love Canal debacle near Buffalo, New York is an example of a dangerous landfill used for homes. A mixture of industrial and domestic waste was dumped into an abandon canal. After only a few years, the land was used to build homes. Toxic waste seeped from the ground and made many of the residents sick. The Government had to buy the homes and spend a large amount of money cleaning up the site. In the United States thousands of highly hazardous landfills and disposal sites have been identified. Similar hazardous sites exist through the world. 

In 1978 New York State officials began something that has long haunted America. What they did led to a Presidentially ordered, complete emergency relocation of the residents of Love Canal, a small community in Niagara Falls, NY. From 1942 to 1952 some 21000 tons of various chemical wastes were dumped in a 70 acre site. In 1953 the landfill was sealed. Subsequently an area close by was extensively developed and... 

Perhaps the most studied landfill site is the Love Canal site in Niagara Falls, New York State. Between 1920 and 1953 part of Love Canal was used extensively as a dumping ground for a range of extremely toxic waste, including organic pesticide residues. Later, the area was sold and formed part of a residential neighbourhood which included a school. Public concerns were raised in 1978... 

Elevated levels of tetrachloroethylene in human breath of the general public (i.e., non-occupational exposure) appear to be related to tetrachloroethylene emissions from nearby factories or from chemical waste dumps. A sample of 6 children living near a factory in the Netherlands had a mean concentration of 24 pg/m (3.5 ppb) tetrachloroethylene in their breath, compared with 11 control children with a mean levelof2.8 pg/m (0.4 ppb) (Monster and Smolders 1984). Nine residents of Love Canal, New York, a site of serious chemical contamination for many years, were found to have tetrachloroethylene levels ranging from 600 to 4,500 ng/m (0.09-0.66 ppb) in their breath, from 0.35 to 260 ng/mL (0.35-260 ppb) in their blood, and from 120 to 690 ng/mL (120-690 ppb) in their urine (Barkley et al. 1980). This same study indicated that the participants were exposed to 120-14,000 ng/m (0.02-2.06 ppb) in ambient outside air and levels of 350-2,900 ng/L (0.35-2.90 ppb) in their drinking water. 

Other incidents— the oily, black, carcinogen-laden liquids that heavy rains brought to the ground surface of Love Canal, a community built on a toxic chemical dump mercury dumped from a chemical plant into the estuary at Minamata, Japan, which caused paralysis and mental disorders in thousands of people and death for several hundred and in 1984 the methyl isocyanate leak in Bhopal, India, that killed some 2000 people and injured tens of thousands more— have not helped the negative image of chemistry. 

From 1940 to the early 1950s the company dumped chemical wastes into Love Canal. In 1977 the health impacts from contaminated soil and water on the occupants of the housing estate built on the property was noticed. In 1978 the families affected were evacuated. 

After Love Canal, near Niagara Falls, NY, received national attention (see Case 27-1), a study by New York State reported that companies had dumped nearly 22,000 tons of chemical waste into Love Canal (see Table 27-1). The study also found that 152 of 215 waste disposal sites in Niagara (Niagara Falls area) and Erie (Buffalo area) Counties of New York had had or potentially contained hazardous waste. Some contained even more waste than Love Canal. One site contained entire tank cars of waste. 

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