Hazardous Waste

Introduction

Human activities create a continuous waste stream, amounting to around 600 million metric tons in the United States alone each year. Some of this waste material may present a hazard to either human health or to the environment. It may pose a fire risk, or be toxic. Waste of all kinds is dealt with by disposal, destruction, or recycling. Dumping it is no longer considered acceptable and poses the highest risk where hazardous waste is concerned.

Many countries have environmental legislation dealing with hazardous waste. Generally this requires those generating these wastes to keep track of them and prevent them from emerging into the public domain. There are many sites that were contaminated before legislation was put in place and present an ongoing hazard. Governments often have measures in place to force clean up of these locations. Meanwhile, alternative approaches to make industrial processes less hazardous are becoming increasingly popular.

Historical Background and Scientific Foundations

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines hazardous wastes as materials that are dangerous or potentially harmful to human health or the environment. The EPA further describes a hazardous waste as one that is ignitable, corrosive, reactive, or toxic. Some materials possess more than one of these properties. There are at least 265 million metric tons of hazardous waste produced in the United States every year. The petrochemical, chemical, metal, and mining industries are responsible for the majority of this waste, but it can also be generated by municipal sources in the form of cleaning materials, car oil, personal medical waste, and garden pesticides.

Hazardous waste comes from a wide variety of sources. It may consist of by products of industrial processes or discarded commercial products and could be in the form of solid, liquid, or gas. The EPA deals with this diversity by setting out lists of hazardous wastes in three different categories. The F-list refers to non-specific source wastes, coming from common manufacturing and industrial processes. A typical example of an F-list waste would be solvents used in degreasing operations.

The K-list covers wastes from specific industries, such as pesticide manufacturing or petroleum refining and refers to items such as wastewater or sludges that they would typically produce. The P-list and U-list include discarded commercial chemical products that can pose a hazard, such as pesticides or pharmaceuticals.

Impacts and Issues

Hazardous waste causes the most problems when it is merely dumped with no attempt to treat or contain it. This practice can be harmful in many ways. For instance, children may expose themselves to infection by playing with syringes in abandoned medical waste. Meanwhile, oil and other toxic chemicals can seep into groundwater and contaminate the water supply, maybe for many years to come. Vast as the oceans are, dumping here rather than on land is not the answer to the hazardous waste problem. Millions of bottles, tins, plastic containers, and fishing nets, among other things, are in the oceans. They may seem harmless in themselves, although unsightly, but when marine animals such as dolphins and seals become entangled in them and thereby drown or starve, then this waste also becomes hazardous.

WORDS TO KNOW

BIOREMEDIATION: The use of living organisms to help repair damage such as that caused by oil spills.

BROWNFIELD SITE: A site contaminated with hazardous waste.

GREEN CHEMISTRY: An approach to chemical manufacturing that reduces its negative impact on the environment.

Dumping is illegal in many industrialized nations. To get around this, some companies took to exporting hazardous waste to developing countries that were often ill equipped to deal with it. Most countries banned this practice in 1989, but it continues. In 2006, for example, 400 tons of petroleum waste were dumped in Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory Coast, killing ten people and producing severe symptoms among at least 100,000 others.

A growing problem is the export and dumping of so-called electronic waste in the form of old computers, cell phones, and television sets. The electronic components of these gadgets contain toxic heavy metals including nickel, mercury, and lead, as well as valuable metals like gold, silver, and copper. Around 80% of this waste is shipped to China and other countries in Asia and Africa where people, including young children, break them up to retrieve precious metals, often without the necessary protective gear. Exposure to these metals is particularly hazardous for children whose brain and nervous systems are still developing. Soil and water in the areas where electronic waste is processed are found to have levels of heavy metals far in excess of World Health Organization limits.

The most important step in dealing with hazardous waste is to identify it and keep it separate from other forms of waste. Thereafter, it may be stored or disposed of, recycled, or converted into a harmless form. The method of choice will depend on the exact nature of the waste and the hazard it poses.

Many countries have now put in place legislation to protect their populations and environment from the effects of hazardous waste. In the United States, the Resource, Conservation & Recovery Act was introduced in 1976, and it requires those who generate, ship, use, and dispose of hazardous waste to account for its treatment from “cradle to grave.” This lifecycle approach to managing hazardous waste is intended to minimize the risk it poses.

Hazardous waste can pose a threat for many years, and there is a legacy of contamination dating from before legislation was introduced. Brownfield sites are places where industries or facilities generating hazardous waste were once located. People are often reluctant to build on or otherwise develop Brownfield sites in case local populations are then affected by health problems. A famous example is Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York, where more than 20,000 tons of toxic chemical waste were buried under what was to later become a housing development. Local residents noted a high incidence of miscarriage and birth defects and campaigned to link these to the presence of the waste. Eventually, President Jimmy Carter declared a national emergency at the site and had the residents relocated and compensated. There is an ongoing study into their health.

The United States introduced the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, also known as the Superfund Act, in 1980, following the Love Canal incident. This legislation deals with the treatment and liability for these contaminated sites, the most seriously polluted of which are designated as Superfund sites. The level of cleanup obviously depends on the use intended for the land. There are various new technologies for remediation of such land. For instance, bioremediation uses microbes or plants to convert or absorb toxic materials. Aquatic plants like water hyacinth have been used in this way, and there are many species of bacteria that can render long-lasting toxic wastes such as polychlorinated biphenyls harmless by breaking them down.

Both industry and the general population can make a contribution to reducing the amount of hazardous waste in circulation. The chemical industry is investing in so-called green chemistry, where they look for chemical reactions that can be carried out in an aqueous, rather than organic, solvent, thereby reducing the amount of flammable and toxic waste. People can opt for less hazardous household chemicals for cleaning and pest control. They should also be sure to dispose of metals in batteries and old electronic equipment as advised by local environmental authorities.

Primary Source Connection

The catastrophe of Love Canal described in the article that follows exemplifies the dangers of unrestricted dumping of hazardous waste.

Love Canal is symbolic of the havoc that unregulated chemical disposal can cause. Although much suffering and death came from Love Canal, the disaster did galvanize opposition to the unregulated environmental disposal of dangerous compounds. In the wake of Love Canal, the U.S. Congress enacted the Superfund legislation holding polluters accountable for cleanup of high-priority sites. Under the Superfund program, over 10,000 toxic dumpsites have been identified across the United States.

THE LOVE CANAL TRAGEDY

Quite simply, Love Canal is one of the most appalling environmental tragedies in American history.

But that’s not the most disturbing fact.

What is worse is that it cannot be regarded as an isolated event. It could happen again—anywhere in this country—unless we move expeditiously to prevent it.

It is a cruel irony that Love Canal was originally meant to be a dream community. That vision belonged to the man for whom the three-block tract of land on the eastern edge of Niagara Falls, New York, was named—William T. Love.

Love felt that by digging a short canal between the upper and lower Niagara Rivers, power could be generated cheaply to fuel the industry and homes of his would-be model city.

But despite considerable backing, Love’s project was unable to endure the one-two punch of fluctuations in the economy and Louis Tesla’s discovery of how to economically transmit electricity over great distances by means of an alternating current.

By 1910, the dream was shattered. All that was left to commemorate Love’s hope was a partial ditch where construction of the canal had begun.

In the 1920s the seeds of a genuine nightmare were planted. The canal was turned into a municipal and industrial chemical dumpsite.

Landfills can of course be an environmentally acceptable method of hazardous waste disposal, assuming they are properly sited, managed, and regulated. Love Canal will always remain a perfect historical example of how not to run such an operation.

In 1953, the Hooker Chemical Company, then the owners and operators of the property, covered the canal with earth and sold it to the city for one dollar.

It was a bad buy.

In the late 1950s, about 100 homes and a school were built at the site. Perhaps it wasn’t William T. Love’s model city, but it was a solid, working-class community. For a while.

On the first day of August, 1978, the lead paragraph of a front-page story in the New York Times read:

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y.—Twenty five years after the Hooker Chemical Company stopped using the Love Canal here as an industrial dump, 82 different compounds, 11 of them suspected carcinogens, have been percolating upward through the soil, their drum containers rotting and leaching their contents into the backyards and basements of 100 homes and a public school built on the banks of the canal.

In an article prepared for the February, 1978 EPA Journal, I wrote, regarding chemical dumpsites in general, that “even though some of these landfills have been closed down, they may stand like ticking time bombs.” Just months later, Love Canal exploded.

The explosion was triggered by a record amount of rainfall. Shortly thereafter, the leaching began.

I visited the canal area at that time. Corroding waste-disposal drums could be seen breaking up through the grounds of backyards. Trees and gardens were turning black and dying. One entire swimming pool had been popped up from its foundation, afloat now on a small sea of chemicals. Puddles of noxious substances were pointed out to me by the residents. Some of these puddles were in their yards, some were in their basements, others yet were on the school grounds. Everywhere the air had a faint, choking smell. Children returned from play with burns on their hands and faces.

And then there were the birth defects. The New York State Health Department is continuing an investigation into a disturbingly high rate of miscarriages, along with five birth-defect cases detected thus far in the area.

I recall talking with the father of one the children with birth defects. “I heard someone from the press saying that there were only five cases of birth defects here,” he told me. “When you go back to your people at EPA, please don’t use the phrase ‘only five cases.’ People must realize that this is a tiny community. Five birth defect cases here is terrifying.”

A large percentage of people in Love Canal are also being closely observed because of detected high white-blood-cell counts, a possible precursor of leukemia. When the citizens of Love Canal were finally evacuated from their homes and their neighborhood, pregnant women and infants were deliberately among the first to be taken out.

“We knew they put chemicals into the canal and filled it over,” said one woman, a long-time resident of the Canal area, “but we had no idea the chemicals would invade our homes. We’re worried sick about the grandchildren and their children.”

Two of this woman’s four grandchildren have birth defects. The children were born and raised in the Love Canal community. A granddaughter was born deaf with a cleft palate, an extra row of teeth, and slight retardation. A grandson was born with an eye defect.

Of the chemicals which comprise the brew seeping through the ground and into homes at Love Canal, one of the most prevalent is benzene—a known human carcinogen, and one detected in high concentrations. But the residents characterize things more simply.

“I’ve got this slop everywhere,” said another man who lives at Love Canal. His daughter also suffers from a congenital defect.

On August 7, New York Governor Hugh Carey announced to the residents of the Canal that the State Government would purchase the homes affected by chemicals. On that same day, President Carter approved emergency financial aid for the Love Canal area (the first emergency funds ever to be approved for something other than a “natural” disaster), and the U.S. Senate approved a “sense of Congress” amendment saying that Federal aid should be forthcoming to relieve the serious environmental disaster which had occurred.

By the month’s end, 98 families had already been evacuated. Another 46 had found temporary housing. Soon after, all families would be gone from the most contaminated areas—a total of 221 families have moved or agreed to be moved.

State figures show more than 200 purchase offers for homes have been made, totaling nearly $7 million.

A plan is being set in motion now to implement technical procedures designed to meet the seemingly impossible job of detoxifying the Canal area. The plan calls for a trench system to drain chemicals from the Canal. It is a difficult procedure, and we are keeping our fingers crossed that it will yield some degree of success.

I have been very pleased with the high degree of cooperation in this case among local, State, and Federal governments, and with the swiftness by which the Congress and the President have acted to make funds available.

But this is not really where the story ends. Quite the contrary.

We suspect that there are hundreds of such chemical dumpsites across this Nation. Unlike Love Canal, few are situated so close to human settlements. But without a doubt, many of these old dumpsites are time bombs with burning fuses—their contents slowly leaching out. And the next victim cold be a water supply, or a sensitive wetland. The presence of various types of toxic substances in our environment has become increasingly widespread—a fact that President Carter has called “one of the grimmest discoveries of the modern era.”

Chemical sales in the United States now exceed a mind-boggling $112 billion per year, with as many as 70,000 chemical substances in commerce.

Love Canal can now be added to a growing list of environmental disasters involving toxics, ranging from industrial workers stricken by nervous disorders and cancers to the discovery of toxic materials in the milk of nursing mothers.

Eckardt C. Beck

BECK, ECKARDT C. “THE LOVE CANAL TRAGEDY.” EPA JOURNAL (JANUARY 1979).

See Also Chemical Spills; Electronics Waste; Industrial Pollution; Medical Waste; Superfund site; Toxic Waste; Waste Transfer and Dumping

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Cunningham, W.P., and A. Cunningham. Environmental Science: A Global Concern. New York: McGraw-Hill International Edition, 2008.

Web Sites

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “The Love Canal Tragedy: EPA History.” January 1979. http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/lovecanal/01.htm (accessed March 17, 2008).

Susan Aldridge