Toxic waste dumping

At one point it was assumed that the earth, its oceans and rivers, and its atmosphere were so vast or self-cleansing that we could discharge anything into them without damage to our planet. We now know this is not true. Currently, we must deal with toxic waste dumps, with smog, with acid rain that kills forests, and with pollution of rivers and the ocean by chemical discharges. How did this happen ... 

Hexachloroethane has occasionally been reported in drinking water in the United States. Hexachloroethane was detected in drinking water from Cincinnati, Ohio and three water supplies in the New Orleans area at concentrations ranging from 0.03 to 4.3 pg/L (Keith et al. 1976) in the municipal water supply in Evansville, Indiana (Kleopfer and Fairless 1972) and in 4 of 16 samples of Philadelphia drinking water (Suffet et al. 1980). It was also reported in 19 of 31 samples from private wells within 1 mile of a toxic waste dump in Hardeman County, Tennessee, at a median concentration of 0.26 pg/L (Clark et al. 1982). 

All of our clothes were sent to a cleaners and we hired a different restoration company to come and clean everything in the house while we stayed in a hotel. I told the supervisor of this company that only nontoxic, natural products could be used in my house. She assured me that would be no problem, and that in three days I would be able to move back home. But when I walked in to inspect the house I could actually taste the chemicals they d used and my mouth and lungs burned. Someone from our insurance company found a spray bottle they d left behind in our rec room closet. That s how we found out they had used strong solvents. Eventually they came back and tried everything to make the house safe. They scrubbed with TSP and they scrubbed with vinegar. They tried everything in the world, but nothing worked. This house that had been custom built for us was now a toxic waste dump. 

The news about toxic waste dumping aroused the anger of many viewers of the news broadcast. 

What would you do if you discovered that your neighborhood was built upon a leaking toxic waste dump Might you be able to sell your house What would you do if governmental agencies told you that there was no proof that the toxic wastes were causing you harm ... 

What about risks from "chemicals" News reports sometimes make it seem that our food is covered with pesticides and filled with dangerous additives, that our land is polluted by toxic waste dumps, and that our medicines are unsafe. How bad are the risks from chemicals, and how are the risks evaluated ... 

Anyinam, C. A. Transboundary movements of hazardous wastes the case of toxic waste dumping in Africa. International Journal of Health Service, 21(4) 759-777 (1991). 

There are some 30,000 chemical waste dump sites in the United States. Many of these were established in the 1950s and 1960s when little was known about the need to contain the wastes buried in them. One such site is located in Hardeman County, Tennessee, where residents were exposed to leachate from that toxic waste dump in the drinking water drawn from nearby wells. The contaminants detected in these wells include the following chemicals ... 

Meyer CR. Liver dysfunction in residents exposed to leachate from a toxic waste dump. Environ Health Perspect 1983 48 9-13. 

Subsurface contamination by organic-rich wastes from landfills, leaky septic tanks, sewerage tile fields, and toxic-waste dumps, can also produce high CO2 concentrations in both the unsaturated and saturated zones. For example, a shallow well 50 m from two septic tanks had an apparent CO2 pressure of 10 bar (see Chap. 6 and Table 6.7, analyses 3 to 5 and 9). 

The District of Columbia undertook this study because of three important observations. First, the contaminants potentially present were not industrial chemicals but were expressly designed to kiU people. Second, the containers unearthed to date are shell casings— which are thicker than the drums and cans usually associated with toxic waste dumps—or bottles, increasing the likelihood of lethal concentrations. Third, there was open air testing, which likely left behind metal contamination such as arsenic. There is mounting evidence that the Spring Valley site encompassed a massive production facihty for poison gas in addition to its development and experimentation functions. 

The NRC [48] also calls attention to the excavation marsh where bulldozers unearthed an old landfill that contained toxic materials. The sediment was sufficiently contaminated with lead that large quantities had to be trucked to a toxic waste dump at a large and unanticipated cost. Wetlands can both remove and transform organic and inorganic substances from inflow-... 

A dump of toxic waste containing hydrogen sulfide is believed to have caused 17 deaths and thousands of illnesses in Abidjan, on the West Africa coast, in the 2006 Cote d Ivoire toxic waste dump. 

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