"The future will depend on our wisdom not to replace one poison with another." |
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Love Canal, NY DUMPED AT LOVE hexachlorocyclohexane (known as Lindane), chlorobenzenes, chlorinated hydrocarbons, benzene, chloroform, trichloroethylene, methylene chloride, benzene hexachloride, phosphorous rocks, polychlorinated biphenyls, and dioxin (130 lbs) three ounces of dioxin can kill in excess of one million people “Pesticides and plastics have common ingredients and common hazardous waste by-products. The famous Love Canal and Hyde Park toxic dumps (both near Niagara Falls, New York) from Hooker Chemical and Plastics Company came from one-site manufacturing of several chlorinated products. Among these products are DDT (pesticide), Mirex (pesticide), lindane (pesticide), PVC (plastic), and PCBs (plasticizer, fire-retardant, and insulator). These products were made at the one manufacturing site because of many common feedstocks that are necessary for all these products. (Feedstocks are the chemicals needed for the manufacture of these products.)...Most people don't even know that there is a close relationship between plastics and pesticides, or that they are often manufactured on the same site with the same feedstocks.” In the Mouth of the Dragon: Toxic fires in the age of plastics, by Deborah Wallace, 1990, Avery Publishing Group, ISBN 0-89529-440-0. Was Anyone Harmed At Love Canal? (Yes, Children Were.) Excerpt from:Peter Montague, "WAS ANYONE HARMED AT LOVE CANAL?," RACHEL'S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #276 (March 11, 1992), pg. 1. [From: Environmental Research Foundation, P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403; phone: (410) 263-1584; internet: erf@igc.apc.org.] Not long ago at a conference for science writers, a distinguished health reporter from the WASHINGTON POST stood at the podium and told the audience, "The weight of the evidence showed no effects at Love Canal." No one in the audience raised a hand to say, "Wait a minute--what about the published studies that showed health damage to the children?" The audience accepted without question the claim that no one had been harmed at Love Canal. Evidently none of the 100 scientists and journalists in the room--including the gentleman at the podium--knew about any of the five separate studies, two of them by the New York Department of Health[1,2] and three by independent scientists,[3,4,5] showing that children at Love Canal suffered an excessive number of major and minor birth defects, chronic illnesses, and stunted growth. It was a shocking revelation of ignorance among science writers and scientists, and an impressive demonstration of how easily we ignore history. Love Canal is a trench in the ground nearly two miles long, named for William Love who began digging in 1896. He hoped to carry barge traffic from the upper to the lower Niagara River, providing a way for ships to bypass Niagara Falls. For various reasons, Mr. Love's canal was never completed. Starting in 1942, the canal was filled with nearly 21,000 tons (42 million pounds) of benzene, toluene, chloroform, trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, hexane, xylenes and leftovers from the manufacture of pesticides, such as hexachlorocyclohexane (Lindane) and hexachlorocyclopentadiene (used in the manufacture of Mirex and Kepone). As of 1980, U.S. government scientists had identified 248 individual chemicals in the Love Canal dump--a typical stew of refined petroleum products and chlorinated hydrocarbons. In 1953, when the canal couldn't hold any more toxic waste, dirt was piled over it, and the land was sold to the local government for $1.00. The local government then built a school on top of the dump. By 1977 chemicals could be detected in neighborhood creeks, sewer lines, and soil, in sump pumps in the basements of homes, and in the indoor air of those same homes. Chemicals had moved through the soil and seeped through basement walls. Pesticide residues bubbled up on the school playground. It wasn't the health department that discovered the problem. It was young mothers talking to other young mothers about miscarriages, still births, and birth defects in their babies. One young woman named Lois Gibbs watched her children come down with one illness after another--rashes, serious breathing difficulties, near-fatal blood disorders. She screwed up her courage and started knocking on her neighbors' doors, asking if anything similar was happening in their families. An informal tally showed roughly half the babies born in homes near Love Canal during a 2-year period were born with birth defects. This finally got the state health department's attention and in 1978 the department published its first study[1] showing an unusually high number of miscarriages among Love Canal women. New York state then began to evacuate 325 families. Love Canal Collection |
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Lindane Education And Research Network
is a project of the National Pediculosis Association® (NPA) |