Love Canal Assignment - Erin Brady

For my assignment, I shared the article to the recent Aral sea disaster in 2010, which can be found at the following link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7554679/Aral-Sea-one-of-the-planets-worst-environmental-disasters.html, along with the Love Canal tragedy film and article. I asked the questions: Why should we care about something that happened over 30 years ago? And were you aware that environmental tragedies of this magnitude still exist today?

Here are the 10 comments I collected:

1. Allison Wilson: I think that Love Canal was a frightening show of what people will do for a quick dollar. I think that there is little people can do about these things now, but that laws should be put in place to prevent something like this from happening again. It really is terrible.

2. Lori Brady: I find it disgusting and disappointing. Particularly when the government bought the land knowing full well what was there. We should care in order to prevent it from happening again. Have they followed the continued health problems with people from that area? Were they resolved once they moved away? I find it horrible that businesses don't take the well-being of the environment and people into consideration of their decisions. Unfortunately, these decisions need to be legislated to protect the common citizen.

3. Sophie Juliana: Environmental tragedies of the past cannot be written off as archaic and unimportant; if we allow ourselves to forget about past tragedies we are doomed to repeat them in our ignorance. They may not come in exactly the same form, but we don't have enough land or water to sacrifice to repeating mistakes unnecessarily. Stories like Love Canal should be more than cautionary anecdotes; they should inform our policies and be part of required training for corporations that may be tempted to take short cuts that cost them less, but end up costing the world far more than we can afford

4. Jessica Corelli: That is so crazy that the government did that. How utterly messed up. I wasn't aware that stuff like that still went on, it's horrible!

5. Thomas Perkins: We are directly responsible for the care of the land that we own. Something like this should never have happened and those responsible should have been prosecuted. Also, it could happen again. We need laws preventing this from happening.

6. Kent Brady: I think that this really shows the danger we have in our world today. The government has to take responsibility for this and ensure that it will not happen again, anytime and anywhere. There is no reason that the people should have even been sold that land! Any little bit of background investigation into that land could have shown the government that it was a contaminated area. In addition to the danger that this presents to the people, in short and long to consequences, this event also highlights the future that our entire world is heading towards. As long as the human population continues to use hazardous chemicals and pollute the earth, every single human being on this planet has a risk of being deceived and contaminated. Steps must be taken to prevent this future. There are no more excuses now. For anyone. Whether it be government officials, private companies or even just citizens, it is time to take responsibility for our actions.

7. Gina Martinez: We really should be more aware of the surroundings. And I don't understand why the government didn't do anything about it if there was a warning on the contract that chemicals had been disposed there. And yes sadly, I know that things like this still happen, even though I think really the governmment should've learned from that. Life sucks, it's a sad tragedy at times, but we should be more aware so it doesn't happen again.

8. Sarah Buckner: I know that this kind of stuff happens at times because of an environmental article I read recently for my English class. It's so terrible and it makes me want to be more aware of where I'm going to live, because you can't rely on other people to take precautions for your life.

9. Devery Jones: That's unfortunate. We should take measures to prevent something like that, because it's just stupid to build on top of toxic waste.

10. Haley Frampton: I did learn about this Love Canal instance in my chemistry class, and how we need to be careful about not dumping stuff down the drain. And I want to look at past owners for wherever I live throughout my life, becauase I want to know what the land was used for before I live on it.

Here are my 3 responses to the questions:

1. In your opinion are environmental hazards something we should be concerned about on a daily basis?

Yes, in general in our communities, I do think we should be concerned about environmental hazards on a daily basis. I do not think about environmental hazards on a daily basis in my life, but as a community we should always have professions or programs where environmental hazards are consistently evaluated so that we can reduce risks.

2. Why should we care about something that happened over 30 years ago?

I think even though the Love Canal tragedy happened 30 years ago, it is not something that we should forget, because there can be lessons learned from that situation. If we forget what happened, we might repeat similar mistakes, such as not adequately treating or warning about a chemical disposal sites or selling land to communities without enough awareness of what has happened on them in the past.

3. Were you aware that environmental tragedies of this magnitude still exist today?

I was aware that huge environmental problems still existed today, such as the commonly cited Bp oil spill. However, what struck me about the Love Canal tragedy is that even though it occurred several decades ago, the health effects from the problem affected multiple generations, and might still be continuing to affect generations, meaning that really this tragedy still exists today. To me, this just reinstates the importance of prevention, so that we do not have environmental tragedies that affect multiple generations to such a high degree.