Love Canal Report - Marie Passey

On Facebook, I posted about the electronic waste disaster that is occurring in China and the Love Canal article and posed the question to my peers, “In your opinion, are environmental disasters something we should be concerned about on a daily basis?” Some responses included:

1. I think that yes, we should be slightly concerned on a daily basis. There are small things that we can do everyday, such as proper waste disposal, that in the long run will prevent catastrophes like these

2. Definitely something to be a daily concern. If we don't take care to help whenever we can, what's to stop the future of Earth becoming a trash covered, lifeless rock in space?

3. I think we should be concerned about these things. If we ignore these things, its going to hurt people on the other side of the world and our communities.

4. Its irresponsible to destroy the earth for our children. We can reuse these materials if we pay a small price and recycle..

5. I can’t believe things like this happen and we are oblivious to it. I think we should all be concerned daily for these things, every one of us.

6. Yes, I believe environmental disasters are things that we need to be thinking about all the time..

7.  I think these things are important to know and I would be surprised if no one was concerned about them.

8. Wow, these things really happen?! Yes, definitely we should be concerned about them. If not, I think I would be a terrible person to not care while people are affected by our decisions, or lack of them.

9. In my opinion, yes. We should be concerned about things that could potentially affect us and other people.

10. Yes, we should be concerned about these things. On a daily basis, well I think that’s conditional. I think it is important to be aware of what is going on, and especially to be conscious in not helping the problem, but daily, there’s not so much that we can do other than the choices we make.

Other Questions:

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

I think that we should care about something that happened over 30 years ago because we can learn from the mistakes that have been made in the past. It becomes possible to see how these mistakes affect us, our families, and other people and how we can avoid making the same mistakes through our own awareness.

Environmental tragedies still exist today; what can we do today to mitigate these problems?

I believe that in order to mitigate these problems, we must first start by raising awareness for these problems and the potential they have to create adverse health effects. People must then act in their own families and communities to ensure that they are making informed decisions on how to prevent these environmental disasters.

In your opinion, are environmental disasters something we should be concerned about on a daily basis?

Environmental disasters are something that we should be concerned about daily. I believe that we must be aware of how we may help in causing these disasters, and should take great care in the environment around us. By being aware of how we are affected by such disasters and the potential problems that may arise from decisions we make, we can make steps towards eliminating environmental disasters from occurring and overall protect the safety and wellbeing of other people.