Love Canal in the Reference Stacks

Abstract

During the 1940s and early 1950s, the Hooker Chemical and Plastics Corp. buried metal drums in the earth in Niagara Falls, New York. The drums, hundreds of them, contained chemical wastes. The company's actions were perfectly legal and its intentions good; it was placing these potentially harmful substances out of harm's way — secure in metal drums, secure beneath the earth. Hooker's use for the land ended and in 1956 the company sold it. A school and houses were built over the chemical dump. The unfortunate aftermath is well known. The drums corroded; their contents leached out and into the earth and, apparently, into the bodies of those who lived on it. As a result, residents of the Love Canal area experienced unusually high rates of miscarriages, birth defects, and liver disorders. Such were the worst of the effects. Many residents had to abandon their contaminated homes. Suddenly Love Canal became a forlorn place. Good intentions in the 1940s had unwittingly wrought evil consequences in the 1970s.

Citation

Rettig, J. (1982), "Love Canal in the Reference Stacks", Reference Services Review, Vol. 10 No. 4, pp. 7-7. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb048768