Love Canal Essay -- History Love Canal Research Papers

relish lineWhen one thinks about an environmental disaster, the image of a too large explosion in a highly industrial area comes to mind. Such is not the case in the Love Canal emergency. Un wish well most environmental disasters, the events of Niagara Fallss Love Canal werent characterized by a known and uncontrollable moment of impact. It developed over a period of several decades, since the effects of leaching chemicals is indistinct and slow in development and the visual effects are very limited. This disaster could have been identified earlier or later for as further as the rest of the world was concerned there was no emergency until the authorities made it public. The importance of Love Canal is that acknowledging the danger that existed made the countrified and world aware of the hazards of abandoned toxic waste disposal sites. The events that led up to President Jimmy Carter and the New York Department of Health declaring Love Canal the nations first federal emergency f or a nonnatural environmental disaster extend all the way back to the 1890s when the entrepreneur William T. Love cute to build a canal to supply power to a utopian industrial community called Model City (Deegan 329). However, Loves dreams were crushed with the discovery of alternating galvanizing current which enabled manufacturing plants to be located further away from their sources of energy. Yet, Niagara Falls still became a center of chemical manufacturing due to the large amount of cheap electric energy available. One of the chemical companies that was attracted to the area was Hooker Electrochemical Company (now a division of Occidental Petroleum Corporation), who in 1942, with the permission of the Niagara Power and ripening Company began using the a... ...the safety risk is worth assuming and that is something that each individual has to decide for themselves. In the meantime, it is up to companies, like Occidental/Hooker and the government, like the EPA or Department o f Health to maintain safe production limits and methods of disposal, so that another such environmental disaster wont take place in the future. work CitedDeegan, John. Looking Back at Love Canal. Environmental Science and Technology 21 (1987) 328-331.Hoffman, Andrew. An Uneasy Rebirth at Love Canal. Environment 37 (1995) 5-9. Levine, Adeline. Love Canal Science Politics, and People. Massachusetts Lexington Books, 1982. Phibbs, Pat. N.Y. state begins 5-year Love Canal health study that includes noncancer effects. Environmental Science and Technology 31 (1997) 81A. http//web.globalserve.net/spinc/atomcc/lovecana.htm