=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #97
—October 3, 1988—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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WHAT WE MUST DO–PART 7: TOXICS IN YOUR DRINKING WATER: WHEN DID PEOPLE KNOW IT WAS BAD?
When someone in industry claims that they contributed to the
creation of a Superfund site by dumping toxics into the ground,
but did it out of ignorance, what is the truth behind such
claims? When some polluter says, “I didn’t know. It’s not my
fault. Twenty years ago, no one knew,” can you believe them? When
did people really understand that dumping chemicals into the
ground would contaminate soil and subsurface water?
Human knowledge of toxicity has its roots shadowed in the mists
of time. Prehistoric humans no doubt understood that some fruits
and berries are toxic and others are not. There were practicing
toxicologists in early Greece and Rome, selling their wares to
would-be murderers and suicides. They sold chiefly vegetable
potions that killed or injured their victims, but they also sold
arsenic. The toxic properties of lead and mercury were understood
by the Romans, but they did not come into use as intentional
poisons until the renaissance (14th through 17th centuries).
Between 1830 and 1880 the field of “organic chemistry” developed
and by 1880, 12,000 compounds had been synthesized. The goal was
to create dyes, solvents and pharmaceuticals, but many of the new
chemicals were toxic and sometimes the chemists themselves were
killed by their creations. This quickly led to the practice of
dosing dogs and cats (later rats and mice) with new chemicals, to
reduce the need for experiments on humans in the laboratory and
in the workplace.
By the mid-1930s, three major chemical firms (DuPont, Dow and
Union Carbide) had established their own laboratories of
industrial toxicology where they systematically looked for toxic
effects of the chemicals they sold. Others soon followed suit
because it made good business sense not to poison your workers or
your customers–at least not to poison them so they died right on
the spot. The effects of long-term, low-dose poisoning were
always hard to detect and hard to prove, and many industrial
leaders have been willing to wink at this sort of poisoning from
earliest times.
It is simply not true that people 20 years ago did not understand
the toxicity of chemicals. If you want exhaustive proof that
people have understood the toxic properties of modern chemicals
since the early 1900s, you have only to glance through a book
like Donald Hunter’s The Diseases of Occupations. The third
edition of Hunter’s classic appeared in 1964, 24 years ago and
among its 1225 pages one can find early knowledge of every
chemical we are concerned about today. Benzene toxicity was first
reported in 1897. Phenol toxicity was reported in the 1880s.
Cyanide toxicity was well understood in 1934. The toxicity of
halogenated organic compounds (chloroform, trichloroethylene,
carbon tetrachloride, for example) was reported extensively in
the 1930s. And on and on.
But what about the relationship between polluted water and human
disease? How long has that been recognized?
In 1854, 134 years ago, the greatest pollution disaster of modern
times struck the city of London, England. Nearly 20,000 people
died of cholera in two separate epidemics. Scientists and doctors
of that time had no idea that bacteria and viruses caused
disease, and it would be another 25 years before that discovery
was made. Despite this important gap in knowledge, careful
detective work in 1854 pinpointed sewage-contaminated drinking
water as the source of the cholera outbreaks, and public health
measures were instituted to prevent epidemics from recurring.
Physicians and scientists throughout the western world have
recognized ever since that clean water is essential to human
health.
In 1906 the U.S. Geological Survey published its first paper on
the prevention of groundwater contamination by careful well
construction. By 1910 the Survey published its recommendation
that dumping garbage and other filth into sinkholes in limestone
be abandoned because the practice was contaminating groundwater.
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Americans
conducted studies of water contamination. As early as 1923,
researchers injected dye into the soil along with bacteria,
indicating that bacteria did not flow through soil as far as
chemicals did. In 1937 in Alabama, another study showed that
chemical pollution traveled through soil farther than bacteria.
Bacteria seemed to be filtered out by soil, but chemicals were
not. Two additional studies in 1938 confirmed these findings.
More dye studies in 1957 confirmed these findings once again.
In 1952 a task force of the American Water Works Association
surveyed state governments for evidence of groundwater pollution.
In 1953 the task force reported, “although ground water pollution
by industrial-waste disposal is reported as relatively minor in
many states, and even non-existent in some, it is, nevertheless,
nationwide in distribution.” Specific compounds mentioned as
contaminating groundwater in 1952 and 1953 were gasoline,
phenols, picric acid, and cleaning fluid. When the same task
force surveyed the states in 1957, 47 states replied and 42 of
them reported groundwater contamination. Clearly the problem was
growing or awareness of the problem was growing, or both. By 1960
the task force found the following chemicals contaminating
groundwater in the U.S.: creosols, 2,4-D (a pesticide),
dichlorophenol, gasoline, hexachlorocyclohexane, hydrocarbons,
kerosene, pentachlorophenol, phenol, picric acid, pyridine, and
trichloroethylene.
The modern era had clearly arrived. In 1960.
The U.S. Public Health Service sponsored a national conference in
April, 1961, entitled “Ground Water Contamination.” Attendees at
the conferences reported all the pollution facts we’ve given
above, and a great deal more. In fact, the 1961 report of the
conference makes it crystal clear that the entire problem of
groundwater contamination from chemical waste disposal, and from
landfilling of municipal wastes, was well known, well documented,
and the subject of urgent warnings in 1961.
The picture in 1961 was basically as we know it today:
near its surface, the earth is made up of soils that contain
small amounts of water, but which are not saturated. About 30
feet below the surface (more in some places, less in others), you
run into a saturated zone. This is groundwater; it is like a
large lake. It flows toward the sea very slowly (two feet per day
to two feet per year), pulled by gravity.
Chemicals dumped onto or into the soil are pulled downward by
gravity until they run into the groundwater table (the upper
surface of the saturated zone), at which time they start moving
horizontally with the groundwater. Dilution does not take place
in groundwater as it does in a turbulent stream, and there’s
little oxygen, so groundwater remains contaminated for long
periods. Furthermore, cleanup is difficult at best, and usually
impossible, so groundwater contamination must be thought of as
essentially permanent.
In 1961, geologists said that 95% of the nation’s surface waters
were already in use and that future drinking water would have to
rely on clean supplies of groundwater. They urged that pollution
be stopped.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: history of pollution; culpability;
responsibility; liability; groundwater; water pollution;