The Sydney Tar Ponds are a huge waste site in Nova Scotia, Canada that contains large amounts of toxic chemicals. The ponds formed in a river mouth, where steel corporations let their largely coal-based pollutants and sludge drain off for many decades.
Powerless Science? looks at complex historical, social, and political dynamics, made up of public controversies, environmental and health crises, economic interests, and political responses, and demonstrates how and to what extent scientific knowledge about toxicants has been caught between scientific, economic, and political imperatives.
After decades of precious metal recovery and recycling on the Evor-Phillips Leasing site, the EPA tested and found high levels of volatile organic compounds and heavy metals in the site’s soil, surface water, and groundwater, including the nearby marsh and wetlands.
This project examines the history and legacy of arsenic contamination at Giant Mine, a large gold mine located on the Ingraham Trail just outside of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada.
Times Beach, a former summer resort town for citizens of St. Louis, Missouri, was evacuated due to the EPA’s discovery of large amounts of toxic dioxin in the soil.
Love Canal was placed on EPA’s National Priorities List in 1981 to receive federal cleanup aid. The Niagara Falls School District built communities on soil contaminated by long-term toxic waste from the Hooker Chemical Company, causing miscarriages of children and birth defects decades after the dumpsite was closed.
Silent Spring describes the harmful effects of pesticides on the environment, and is widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement.
The Centralia mine fire in Centralia, Pennsylvania is a massive underground fire that has been burning for more than 50 years. Beginning in 1962, it has since driven away all but ten (as of 2012) residents.
Wild Earth 2, no. 4 with essays on environmental devastation and the war in Lebanon, the Colorado River delta, reef protection, and zoos and the “psychology of extinction.”
An interdisciplinary collection of essays that investigates the various approaches and research fields of environmental history.
