What Is the Love Canal and Why is It Important?
Simply put, it is an incomplete canal, or just a trench, built in western New York state in the 1890s. From the 1930s through the 1950s, it was used as a chemical waste dump. The surrounding land was then sold and used for residential purposes, and soon people began complaining about strange odors and possible health problems. Since the late 1970s, many studies have been done to ascertain whether any health problems can be traced to the waste dumped into Love Canal. It is significant because it was the first case concerning hazardous waste disposal and its possible health effects that received major national attention. The information in this site is drawn primarily from two publications: Monitoring the Community for Exposure and Disease, a report to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (Nicholas Ashford, Principal Investigator, and Linda Schierow, Project Manager, Center for Technology, Policy and Industrial Development, 1991) and Love Canal: Science, Politics, and Peo
