1)alar
2)asbestos
3)acid rain
4)dioxin
5)TCE in drinking water
6)chemicals in Love Canal
7)radiation at Three Mile Island
8)mercury poisoning in Lake Erie
9)chlorofluorocarbons destroying the ozone layer
The story of your number 6, chemicals in Love Canal, is far more upsetting than simply the issue of environmentalist exaggeration.
In fact, love canal was not exaggerated. The environmental problems there were real.
However, the reasons chemicals were disposed of there, and the reasons why a housing subdivision (and elementary school) was built on top of the disposal site, are such that - if one takes time to study them - they will reveal that the management of Hooker Chemical was entirely innocent, that they were doing exactly as they were ordered to do by their customer - the United States Government - as the massive chemical orders of World War II wound down.
Hooker warned the Government that they were producing large amounts of dangerous chemical waste as they filled huge orders for chemicals used in various ways for the war effort. They asked the Government to help them figure out how to dispose of these chemicals, which were stored in 55-gallon drums. They were told to bury them in an abandoned half-finished canal (Love Canal) which they first lined with clay in a vain attempt to create an impermeable seal around the chemical dump.
After the war, they warned anyone who would listen that the area was dangerous, that people should stay away from it, and that nothing should ever be built on it.
The entire episode can be laid to the ignorance, stupidity, corruption and perfidy of irresponsible local elected officials of Niagara Falls. Which irresponsibility and dishonesty lead to the destruction of a great company, founded by a great industrialist, whose name is now unjustly tarnished.
Don’t you know?
They are cutting down the equivelant of 100 football fields of Rain Forest per hour!!!!!
There will be no Rainforest left by the year 1995