Environment, Hazardous Waste

Hazardous wastes are among the by-products of industrial production in societies in which there is intensive use of chemicals (e.g., acids, bases, chlorinated hydrocarbons) and materials (heavy metals [e.g., mercury] or paint pigments) that are toxic and can cause poisoning and death. Official definitions of hazardous waste promulgated by state and federal environmental protection agencies usually require that the material have at least one of four characteristics: ignitability, corrosivity, reactivity, or toxicity.

Hazardous wastes can become severe social problems for entire societies and smaller populations within them. Unregulated industrial dumping of such wastes can poison large land areas and residential neighborhoods, or foul drinking water or swimming beaches, with potential or real damage to human and other populations. Even when placed in special dump sites, some wastes can dissolve into groundwater and soils, a process known as leaching. Once transported by streams or tides, dissolved wastes can endanger populations far from the original dump site.

Industry is not the only major source of hazardous waste. Household waste often contains corrosive, toxic, ignitable, or reactive ingredients like paints, cleaners, oils, batteries, and pesticides, all of which contain potentially hazardous ingredients. These require special care in disposal, and consumers must be continually educated about safety in the use of these products, as well as the proper procedures to follow in disposing of them. Improper disposal of household hazardous wastes often results from pouring them in drains, on the ground, or into storm sewers or mingling them with other trash. Such improper disposal of these wastes can pollute the environment and pose a health threat, which is why communities in the United States and other industrial nations now offer a variety of options for their safe disposal.

Most hazardous wastes have histories of earlier public, and even scientific, ignorance about their potential dangers. For most of the industrial age, people paid little attention to the consequences of indiscriminate dumping of the by-products of mining and manufacturing. As late as the 1960s, containers of pesticides, household insulation materials containing asbestos, old car batteries, and used paint cans—all containing extremely hazardous materials—were handled and disposed of quite casually. Quantities of poisonous materials were transported in unsafe containers and disposed of in public dump sites or even in vacant lots. Industrial corporations frequently dumped hazardous wastes into rivers and streams, resulting in long-term damage to plants and animal species and eventually to humans. In the developing world these [Page 306]unsafe practices often continue and present a growing danger to the world's oceans and animal species.

Public awareness about hazardous materials and wastes in the United States was almost nonexistent until publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring in 1962. Drawing extensively on new scientific studies of the dangers of pesticides and other toxic chemicals to human and other animal species, Carson exposed the dangers of the insecticide DDT to the earth's food chains. The tragic case of widespread mercury poisoning in the Japanese fishing village of Minamata in the 1950s and 1960s brought world attention to problems of hazardous waste disposal and indiscriminate dumping of hazardous wastes by private companies. Not until the 1978 crisis of environmental poisoning and the high incidence of children with birth defects in the community of Love Canal in New York State, near Buffalo, did the federal government pass effective legislation to identify and begin cleaning up areas of land polluted and empoisoned by hazardous wastes. In response to the Love Canal disaster, Congress in 1980 passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, known most commonly as the Superfund Act.

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