How Toxic Waste Affects Our Natural Environment
Canada and all of the developed countries in the world produce some kind of toxic waste(s). It doesn’t matter whether it’s a chocolate bar wrapper or a canister of highly radioactive plutonium, they’re potentially dangerous to us and/or our natural environment unless properly disposed of.
Toxic waste is defined as any waste that is hazardous to human health or to our natural environment. According to the Institute of Chemical Waste Management, about 15% of our garbage is classified as toxic, and only 85% (approximately) of that is disposed of properly. The rest is either illegally dumped or accidentally mixed up with non-toxic garbage. That 15% may not seem like a lot, but when you consider the millions of tons of toxic waste that we produce every year, that 15% is enormous. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that we produce one ton of toxic wastes for every single person living in Canada every year. That means that the 15% represents about 4.2 million tons of toxic waste.
Toxic wastes which are dumped in improper sites can seep into underground water supplies and contaminate huge areas. If the land that is intoxicated supports plant life, most of the plants and trees will die off. If the area is lived on by humans, it could cause serious illness or death. For example, an area by Niagara Falls (US side) was used during the 1930s by a chemical company to dump it’s wastes. Most of them were hazardous, and the containers that held the chemicals later (after the company had gone out of business) began to leak. The chemicals spread for miles killing off plants and causing cancers and deadly diseases in humans. Included in these wastes was a chemical called dioxin… one ounce of it used under the right circumstances was enough to kill off everyone in living in Toronto.
One of the most popular places to dump toxic wastes is in the oceans. People figured that the oceans were so huge that garbage would just „disappear“, and sink to the bottom. Well, they were wrong. Chemicals have turned up in dead whale bodies and dead fish in high enough concentrations to kill people. Medical wastes such as used needles and vials of blood (some carrying the AIDS virus) have washed up along the Atlantic coast and in one of the Great Lakes. Mutated and disfigured fish as well as other water animals have washed up dead or been caught by fishermen. The list of stories goes on, and it’s still growing.