I decided on an incident close to home. Close to home, in a housing development from the 70’s, some homes’ backyards began to sink. I had no idea the whole area was built over an old landfill. The building company was aware and took precautions but they clearly weren’t thorough enough. As the ground sank people started finding ‘items’ such as car exhaust pipes, paint cans and much more. Tests revealed the presence of heavy metals and other carcinogens. A volley of litigation attempts for compensation have been made with more to surely follow.
I had a lot of primary sources with my in-laws living just up the hill. Here’s one article that attempts to sum up what’s happened thus far:
The question posted to a social media site and the responses:
Prompt: How do environmental tragedies affect you on a daily basis? Why should we care about them?
Sam - Environmental tragedies affect me very little on a daily basis. I do feel that we should care about them and try to keep them to a minimal, however, because I don’t want them to affect me more on a daily basis.
David - It doesn’t ever affect me, at least not as far as I can tell. But we should care about the environment and try to preserve it.
Justine - I have a friend who’s uncle was born with defects because of a similar environmental tragedy. I think it’s awful and we should search for a solution to toxic dumping.
Michael - The earth is fine. If these kinds of things happened more regularly then you guys in public health wouldn’t have to be advertising it. ;)
Pauline - We should care about the environment to help our children to have a good environment where they can grow and learn and have a good environment for their children as well.
Jen - I never thought that environmental issues like this would affect me, but I grew up in the town where this happened. This makes me realize that these issues are closer to home than I thought. It definitely will make me question things more when it comes to the environment. This could have been my house.
Theresa - This kind of stuff has never happened to me, but I know it could any day. I have no idea whats under my house nor did I think to ask. I would be pretty freaked out if I went outside one day and found that my yard had sunk. Its important to ask questions about a place before you buy it.
Nick - The government should not allow things like this to happen. I shouldn’t have to ask if my home was built on a toxic waste dump or not. It should not be allowed. I think that the government should be held liable when it fails to protect its citizens from tragedies like this.
Greg - We wouldn’t know what environmental tragedies have affected us until we are dying of cancer 30 years from now. Its important to be safe, but not paranoid. Everything is bad for you these days.
Megan - No environmental tragedies in my life so far, but I live in a town with an oil refinery. I suppose a tragedy could happen any day. I would not know what to do. I guess I live in a bubble. I hope nothing bad ever happens.
Kelly - People are killing the earth by being irresponsible with their waste and use of energy. We all need to be more aware of how our behaviors today will affect future generations. These families lives have been affected forever because of the neglect of a business trying to make money and not showing concern for others or the environment.
My own thoughts on the matter:
Were you aware that environmental tragedies of this magnitude still exist today? Yes, this story came instantly to mind when I read the love canal. It hans’t been so serious because they caught it in advance but this is happened to the neighborhood where my wife grew up. There is still active litigation over the matter.
In your opinion are environmental hazards something we should be concerned about on a daily basis? No, people should not be concerned with environmental hazards. I think that is the goal, to enact proper regulations to ensure everyone is safe and never has to worry about something like this.
Why should we care about something that happened over 30 years ago? As made clear in the video, there is still nothing at the love canal site. They’ve “contained” the problem, but there is no getting rid of it. Nuclear waste, chemical waste, it’s all the same- keep it away from people, because honestly no one knows what to do with it. We need to find better, more effective ways to handle our waste/byproducts. If not, the only responsible thing we can do is change the way we live to eliminate that waste/byproducts.
No comments:
Post a Comment