How environmental Issues impacted America
Stephen Tonelson
5-20-12
How Environmental l issues have influenced the U.S.
In this article, we will be looking on how two horrible incidents have shape the U.S.A. way of dealing with Environmental Disasters. You will see the disasters of Love Canal, the horrible Three Mile Island incident, and our way to try to give back for these two horrible incidents; Conservation.
Love Canal
What is Love Canal? Love Canal one of the worst environmental tragedies in American history. It is horrible that Love Canal was supposed to be a dream community for all of the inhabitants. But what happened is in the early 1900’s William T Love wanted to make a canal running from the upper and lower Niagara rives and it would make power for the people that would live in the area nearby. His dream did not come true and the canal became a chemical landfill for the Hooker Chemical company. In 1953, Hooker Chemical filled the landfill and sold it to the city for one dollar but after there were schools and homes built. Sadly, the chemicals leaked through the ground and pregnant women and young kids were forced to evacuate and soon after so were others but they were already poisoned and many people in Love Canal would have kids with birth defects and worse. Many people also developed cancer due to the hazardous chemicals in the ground.
Graph on Love Canal and Three Mile Island
Three Mile Island
What is Three Mile Island? Three Mile Island was a partial nuclear meltdown on a nuclear power plant in Dauphin county Pennsylvania on March 28, 1979. It was the worst accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history. When the nuclear meltdown happened, it released radioactive gases and radioactive iodine into the surrounding environment. Right after it happened the evacuated all the pregnant women and all young kids from the area so they would not breathe in the toxic fumes. The Radiation and Public Health Project by Joseph Mangano who has authored 19 medical journal articles and a book on Low Level Radiation and Immune Disease that reported a spike in infant mortality in the downwind communities two years after the accident. Also they reported that the wild animals and the livestock in a ten mile radius had a sharp rise in the reproductive rate of the different animals. Finally the clean up took a very long time it started in August 1979 and officially ended in December 1993, with a total cleanup cost of about $1 billion. It cost a total of 2.4 billion dollars in property damages.
Conservation
What is Conservation? Conservation is trying to conserve our natural resource, wildlife, and to clean up if something has happened. The biggest company that works on Conservation is the EPA(Environmental Protection agency). The EPA was founded on December 2, 1970 and it was made to protect the wildlife and people around the wildlife. There is also The Wildlife Conservation Society, founded in 1895, they want to save wildlife and wild places across the globe from Habitat loss, Climate change, Pesticides and toxic chemical, Unregulated Hunting and poaching. Pollution, and Over-exploitation of resources. So without these horrible incidents great things like the EPA and The Wildlife Conservation Society would never been founded and it has change America for the better.
Bibliography
http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/lovecanal/01.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
http://www.pahighways.com/features/threemileisland.html
thewoottonpost 
very descriptive and clear!