Abandoned and contaminated land - Environmental Deterioration and Contamination: Problems and their Management - page 78

and water-dissolved wastes. Many of the hazardous wastes of the chemical indus-
try have been buried (literally under the ground), sometimes with tragic and very
costly consequences. Industry and mining were always “in the lead'' among soil pol-
luters, but military, rail and road transportation and agriculture have also contributed
significantly.
2 CONTAMINATED LAND
In the early management of contaminated land, priority was attributed to human health
risk, and not to the value of the soil itself. This is the reason why risk management
and risk reduction, in particular, aimed at reducing access by humans and used dig
and dump, thermal oxidation (burning) or chemical clean-up methods, which did not
consider soil as a habitat of living organisms and did not target maintaining soil quality.
Until the late 1980s, soil was overloaded with chemicals, fuels were sprinkled
generously when charging locomotives and rolling stock, and used engine oils were
dumped into the soil as if there was any use for them there. Oil stains betrayed acci-
dental or intentional emissions into the soil around garages and railways. An extreme
story of a “tidy'' railway station was where oily surfaces were cleared away by applying
chlorinated aliphatic hydrocarbons to dissolve and wash the oil down to not visible
depths in soil.
The first much publicized scandalous case in the US was the contamination due
to hazardous chemical waste disposal in Love Canal, near Niagara Falls. The site had
formerly been used to bury 21,000 tons of toxic waste; later on, a residential area
was built on the site with two schools, one with 400 pupils in 1955 and another one
in 1958. Heavy rainstorms in 1962 released benzene and dioxin from the chemical
waste, which was leached and seeped into the basements of houses and evaporated
inside thereby contaminating indoor air. The extent of the catastrophic contamination
became visible in the late 1970s, when corroded containers and injured seals finally
became unfit for their purpose to store hazardous chemicals safely. Waste disposal
drums, and chemical spills were unearthed from deeper soil layers; the dying vegetation
drawing attention first. An informal door-to-door survey in early 1978 showed high
frequency of developmental disabilities, cancer, nervous disorders and miscarriages.
Later on, blood tests found chromosome anomalies and high white blood cell counts.
After evacuating it, the residential area was demolished and residents were reimbursed
for their homes. The handling of the case revealed all the mistakes that could have
been made: politicians tried to mask the problem and the mayor denied the facts.
National media from 1978 onward showed particular interest in the theme by calling
the case a “national tragedy'' and a “health time bomb.'' In spite of the evidence and
the activities of evacuation, demolition and site rehabilitation, much controversial
and confusing information was spread about the case. For example, a study in 1998
claimed that health consequences for the inhabitants may have been caused by stress
due to hysteria created by the media.
Another infamous case in the US occurred in Times Beach, Missouri. The town
hired a waste hauler to spray oil on the roads in and around the town from 1971 onward
to prevent the dusting of dirt roads. From 1972 to 1976, waste oil was regularly sprayed
on the roads. At some stage, a new, dioxin containing oily waste from a chemical