This paper explores the tragedy of the Love Canal. The Love Canal was the site of a toxic chemical dump in upstate New York. With their drinking water contaminated, local residents from the canal had increased rates of spontaneous abortions, crib deaths, birth defects, and many forms of health issues. In 1978, it was discovered that hazardous waste had contaminated homes and schools in the Love Canal area, a previous chemical landfill of the City of Niagara Falls, New York. The Love Canal turns out to be the first manufactured disaster to receive a recognition based on various environmental and health studies. The history of the Love Canal, spontaneous abortions rates, crib deaths, birth defects, public health issues, safe reoccupation, …show more content…
The Love Canal is known as a “hazardous-waste dump site located in the center of a middle-class community in Niagara Falls, New York” (Gibbs, 2010). As stated by Brown (1979), the Love Canal is the first dumpsite to be recognized aside from the other thousands of dumps across the nation. Michael H. Brown (1979), a local newspaper writer for Niagara Gazette, is well known for breaking open the case of Love Canal and determining toxic chemical wastes as a national issue. Therefore, a critical analysis will be used to identify and discuss the environmental and public health issue of the Love Canal’s effects on many …show more content…
Gibbs (2010, p. 23) stated that the results of their studies showed above-normal amounts of miscarriages while living in Love Canal to be a fifty to seventy percent chance. After numerous times of being denied an answer to her questions, Gibbs (2010, p. 153) got angry with Doctor Axelrod, the next health commissioner, and angrily asked what would her chances of having a miscarriage be. Axelrod finally gave in and said the miscarriage rate in Love Canal or Gibbs’ chance of a miscarriage was thirty-five to forty-five percent (Gibbs, 2010, p. 153). When examining for pregnancies that had occurred in the last year at Love Canal, two out the fourteen pregnancies resulted in normal births while the rest were stillborn or miscarriages (Gibbs, 2010, p. 167). Brown (1979) stated that on July 14, he received a call from the state health department that showed women living at the southern end of the Love Canal had suffered a high rate of