In the following years the site was filled in and given by the company to the growing city of Niagara Falls which allowed housing to be built on it. Love Canals notorious history began when Hooker Chemical used the abandoned canal from 1942 to 1953 to dump 21800 tons of industrial hazardous waste.

America S Hazardous Waste History Part 2 Love Canal

Almost immediately there were problems.

The love canal chemical waste dump. In October of 1976 the Niagara Gazette reported on the abundance of toxic chemicals resting beneath Love Canal. That canal was later capped and homes. From 1942 to 1953 the Hooker Chemical Company with government sanction began using the partially dug canal as a chemical waste dump.

As part of the deal the school agreed that the dump was now their problem. Originally a dream power canal project of the entrepreneur William Love at the turn of the 20th century the Love Canal was abandoned before completion in 1910. Love Canal was just the place.

At the end of this period the contents of the canal consisted of around 21000 tons of toxic chemicals including at least twelve that are known carcinogens halogenated organics chlorobenzenes and dioxin among them. Love Canals notorious history began when Hooker Chemical Co. Two decades after Love Canal became the first polluted site on the newly created Superfund list federal officials announced yesterday that the neighborhood that epitomized environmental horror in.

A USA Today journalist a national newspaper in 2013 told the story this way. Dioxin is a byproduct from different types of chemical manufacturing in particular the production of herbicides and it takes a long time to break down. In November of 1978 it was discovered that roughly 200 tons of toxic dioxin was dumped at the Love Canal site.

Between 1942 and 1952 the canal was used as a toxic dump for chemical waste by Hooker Electrochemical Company one of the first heavy industrial companies that grew up around the great natural resource of Niagara Falls. Only the occasional scientist recognized the dangers of chemical waste in the 1940s. She is the Executive Director of the Center for Health Environment and Justice which she founded in 1981 following the Love Canal struggle.

Love Canal was sold to the local school district in 1953 after the threat of eminent domain. The Love Canal was lined with clay and covered with dirt to supposedly seal it and Hooker Chemicals experts declared it safe. A landfill a hospital a waste-treatment plant an elementary school.

Scientists minimize the possibility. Residents were startled and started connecting the dots of what at first seemed like anomalous unrelated incidents. Love Canal will always remain a perfect historical example of how not to run such an operation.

Hooker sold the site for 1 and buried the chemicals. Landfills can of course be an environmentally acceptable method of hazardous waste disposal assuming they are properly sited managed and regulated. A portion of Love Canal was a dump site for toxic chemicals and waste for much of the 20th century.

CHEMICALS FOUND AT THE LOVE CANAL To determine the extent of chemical migration into private residences 800 basement air samples from 400 homes within a four block radius of the landfill were analyzed for seven chemical compounds. The canal was turned into a municipal and industrial chemical dumpsite. Used the abandoned canal from 1942 to 1953 to dump 21800 tons of industrial hazardous waste.

Between 1942 and 1952 the canal was used as a toxic dump for chemical waste by Hooker Electrochemical Company one of the first heavy industrial companies that grew up around the great natural. The Love Canal area was originally the site of an abandoned canal that became a dumping ground for nearly 22000 tons of chemical waste including polychlorinated biphenyls dioxin and pesticides produced by the Hooker Chemicals and Plastics Corporation in the 1940s and 50s. What stood atop a covered chemical waste dump at Love Canal New York.

No one thought that the same companies could engage in any potentially dangerous activities. Lois Gibbs a 27-year-old housewife had a son whose health suffered after enrolling in the 99th Street School. During the 1940s the canal was purchased by Hooker Chemical Company which used the site to dump 21800 short tons roughly 19800 t of chemical byproducts from the manufacturing of dyes perfumes and solvents for rubber and synthetic resins.

That canal was later capped and homes and a school were built on top of it. Chloroform benzene trichloroethene toluene tetrachloroethene chlorobenzene and chlorotoluene. From 1942 to 1953 Hooker Chemical and Plastics Corporation which purchased the land from the city buried nearly 22000 tons 20000 metric tons of toxic waste products at Love Canal.

Lois Marie Gibbs was the key leader of Love Canal residents in their fight to be relocated away from a toxic dump containing over 20000 tons of chemicals. Among the chemicals found at Love Canal is 2 4 5 trichlorophenol a compound related to dioxin the deadliest chemical ever synthesized by man.