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Perhaps the classic example of a hazardous-waste site is Love Canal in Niagara Falls. Over a period of 20 years, Hooker Chemical Co. dumped millions of barrels of industrial wastes into a landfill site. The acres were covered over and sold to the city in 1953. Houses were constructed, families moved in. By the early '70s, the basements of the homes were flooded with black ooze from the toxic wastes, and the people living atop the mess were complaining to their doctors of asthma, kidney disease, hepatitis and birth defects. In 1978, dozens of families were evacuated and some of their houses were bought from them by the state. The words "Love Canal" became synonymous with poison.
Elsewhere in the nation, communities have been disrupted by toxic chemicals. Children in Woburn, Mass., are victims of one of the highest rates of leukemia in America. Eleven of the 17 who have died from that cancer lived within half a mile of two wells that have been contaminated by a chemical dump. Even California's Silicon Valley, once the picture of high-tech wholesomeness, now suffers from waste woes. The problem first came to light two years ago, after a group of residents claimed that the birth-defect rate in Los Paseos, a suburb of San Jose, had jumped. At the same time, it was discovered that the Fairchild Camera and Instrument company, among others, was leaking perilous solvents into the community drinking water, although the two events have not been conclusively linked. By the reckoning of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, chemical leaks from dumps at computer and bioengineering firms threaten many more sources of water supply. Says Activist Lawyer Ted Smith of San Jose: "If we lose the underground water basin, it's back to the desert here."
A brief trip around the world might reveal a globe bulging at the seams with man's effluvium. Last September, the owners of a Re-Chem International chemical-waste-reprocessing plant in central Scotland announced that they were closing "for financial reasons." Local citizens and Greenpeace activists blame the plant for the local babies that have been born with severe visual defects and sometimes without eyes at all. There is an unusually high rate of cancer in the area. Analysis from the government chemist's office confirmed that the plant's burning of PCBs was giving off dioxins.
Although critics of nuclear-waste disposal have been particularly outspoken, the problem has not yet become as pressing as toxic dumps. In the U.S., there are many sites where low-level radioactive wastes are discarded, but scientists have yet to figure out what to do with the highly radioactive material that is stockpiling at nuclear plants around the country.