Mikayla Burton--Love Canal Report

After reading about and watching the Love Canal videos, I found an article about the recent problems with possible horsemeat in food. I posted these articles on my Facebook and talked to a few roommates and friends and these are their responses and answers to the question: In your opinion, are environmental hazards something we should be concerned about on a daily basis and why?

Kenny: Yes. Because problems like the Love Canal, if not attended to, could result in serious problems in the future. Who knows how far the chemicals would've/did spread, and what effect they have on the soil, and people who live on them? It could be devastating, especially if it kept spreading.

Brooke: I didn't realize that chemical waste sites were such a dangerous and abundant part of American life. Because of the belief that there are other sites, I do believe we should be concerned constantly. These incidents proved to have serious negative effects, and if we are consistently aware, we can more easily avoid the detrimental consequences.

Bailey: Yes, environmental hazards are something we should be concerned about because like "The Love Canal Tragedy" article said, a tragedy like that is not just an isolated event, it could happen anywhere. There are serious health effects that come as a result of being exposed to these different environmental hazards. Birth defects, cancer, and "puddles of noxious substances" are definitely something to be concerned about.

Laurie: Yes, we should be concerned about environmental hazards. I didn't realize that instances like the Love Canal Tragedy are happening everywhere. These mistakes can lead to damaging and unrepairable affects in the lives of Americans. Hopefully making people more aware of these incidences can lead to a change for the better.

Emily: On a daily basis? No. Not everything we do is going to have disastrous effects on the environment. But there are some obvious things we should be mindful of. For example: caution whenever you are using/disposing chemicals, throwing things away as opposed to recycling, wasting food, etc. It's not everyday that you're going to encounter circumstances that will cause lasting, negative affects.

Lindsay: I think it is a concern but not something to worry about on a daily basis. The EPA estimated that there were a number of "unknown" sites but speculated they were not in residential areas as in the Love Canal. Going forward we should be environmentally concerned and take care of the earth by properly disposing of waste and holding accountable industry and individuals who do not.

Tyler: I believe that we should be more concerned about the affects that our actions have on the environment than we currently are. On the other hand, I also believe that some people can take this to an extreme and overestimate the harm of human development. For these reasons, I agree with Emily. We should be more concerned, but it is not necessarily a daily occurrence that these types of incidences are caused.

Kyle: To me it is not a concern on a daily basis. The chemical waste article is one example that happened in the 1920s, when very little was known about chemical waste problems. If there were more examples of this happening, then Eckhardt C. Beck would have referenced them to further justify her claim, but one happenstance instance isn't enough to worry about. The horsemeat makes a little better case, however the government said that it does not pose a health risk. Therefore why should we worry about it if there are no health concerns? Yes both of these showcase that there is potential for a massive outbreak of an environmental hazard, but this is a long term worry, and not a short term one. Studies should be conducted that see what possible outbreaks could happen, but nobody should be paranoid about environmental hazards on a daily basis.

Steven: There have been other environmental hazards in the news, including some that have happened more recently like the 'pink slime' outcry and several salmonella outbreaks in vegetables. I don't think that we should be concerned about environmental hazards on a daily basis, but it is a valid concern. We should definitely be concerned citizens on how we dispose of our chemicals/batteries, etc, but it does not need to be constantly on our minds.

Cameron: There should definitely have been more attention paid to this issue at the time. I think that for other issues that are starting to pop up that are similar to this, there should be a certain cautious awareness. We should not be in a panic about these issues, but they are certainly of concern. I think the key is identifying those with the most potential for negative effects.

The questions I answered are as follows:

Do you believe that environmental crises affect you/your family today?

I don’t think they affect my family, at least not every day. There may be minor ones, such as Ecoli or food poisoning, but we don’t suffer from any unknown health problems and haven’t had to change anything in our normal, everyday activities in regards to our environment, so I don’t think they affect us often.

In your opinion are environmental hazards something we should be concerned about on a daily basis?
I don’t think they’re something to worry about every day since they don’t affect everyone all the time. However, I do think that we should be aware of them so that we know the signs of them or how to treat it when it happens. We need to be prepared, but not paranoid.

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

These things that happened a while ago could happen to us, even today. If we don’t care about what happened and how it was solved or how it could have been prevented, we may end up with the same environmental tragedies again and again. But if we learn from the past ones and remember them, we can prevent them and move on to solve other environmental tragedies.