Love Canal, environmental

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

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). 

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, ). 

Hauser TR, Bromberg SM. 1982. EPA s monitoring program at Love Canal 1980. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 2 249-271. 

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... 

The migration of chemical waste containing CDDs from disposal sites has also resulted in environmental contamination of sediment. For example, at Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York, where an estimated 200 tons of 2,4,5-TCP production waste were disposed of during the 1940s and early 1950s,... 

Silkworth JB, Cutler DS, Antrim L, et al. 1989b. Teratology of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin in a complex environmental mixture from the Love Canal. Fundam Appl Toxicol 13 1-15. 

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. 

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. 

Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins, or PCDDs, are highly toxic substances that are present in trace amounts as byproducts of some chemical manufacturing processes. They have been implicated in a number of environmental incidents—for example, the chemical contamination at Love Canal and the herbicide spraying in Vietnam. The structure of dibenzo-p-dioxin, along with the customary numbering convention, is... 

See also Love Canal National Environmental Policy Act, US Pollution Prevention Act, US Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, US Valley of the Drums. 

By early 1978, the problems at Love Canal had attracted the attention of the local media as well as the local member of congress. This led to sampling of the site and homes around the canal by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the State of New York. These tests revealed the presence of benzene in indoor air and seepage of a number of chemicals off-site. These discoveries led to the conduct of preliminary health studies that indicated an increased rate of miscarriages in women living near the canal and identified several cases of congenital abnormalities in children from this same population. 

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. 

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