What were the health effects of Love Canal?

What were the health effects of Love Canal?

Public awareness of the disaster unfolded in the late 1970s when investigative newspaper coverage and grassroots door-to-door health surveys began to reveal a series of inexplicable illnesses—epilepsy, asthma, migraines, and nephrosis—and abnormally high rates of birth defects and miscarriages in the Love Canal …

How was Love Canal treated?

Industrial chemicals dumped into the partly completed canal by the Hooker Chemical Company from 1947 to 1952 have been removed or contained in one area that was lined with impermeable materials and capped by clay. A drainage system collects water runoff and treats it.

Are people living in Love Canal today?

Today, there are still a few occupied homes on 101st Street and many on 93rd Street, but there are also plaintiffs in the new Love Canal litigation who lived on 93rd Street and say they got sick, some of them recently. So the answer to the question is, maybe two blocks, maybe six, maybe more.

What was the health problem in the Love Canal?

Public awareness of the disaster unfolded in the late 1970s when investigative newspaper coverage and grassroots door-to-door health surveys began to reveal a series of inexplicable illnesses—epilepsy, asthma, migraines, and nephrosis—and abnormally high rates of birth defects and miscarriages in the Love Canal neighborhood.

What was the total cost of the Love Canal disaster?

New York State paid $98 million to EPA and the US government paid $8 million for pollution by the Army. The total clean up cost was estimated to be $275 million. The Love Canal tragedy helped to create Superfund, which has analyzed tens of thousands of hazardous waste sites in the U.S. and cleaned up hundreds of the worst ones.

What did they put in the Love Canal?

Then, the company put into Love Canal an estimated 21,000 tons of hazardous chemical waste, including the carcinogens benzene, dioxin, and PCBs in large metal barrels and covered them with more clay.

How did the Love Canal affect Niagara Falls?

Decades of dumping toxic chemicals harmed the health of hundreds of residents; the area was cleaned up over the course of 21 years in a Superfund operation. In 1890, Love Canal was created as a model planned community, but was only partially developed. In the 1920s, the canal became a dump site for municipal refuse for the city of Niagara Falls.