Environmental contamination - deliberate and accidental.

Workshop Date 7 November 1990 at Australian Counter Disaster College, Mt. Macedon

Environmental contamination with manufactured chemicals may occur through the accidental release of chemicals from storage, the deliberate disposal of hazardous wastes to land-fill sites, or the flushing into waterways of stored chemicals by fire-fighting water and foam. Spectacular accidental discharges have occurred in Bhopal in India and Seveso in Italy, resulting in much human suffering, while major environmental damage resulted from a fire in a pharmaceutical factory in Switzerland. The long term problem of hazardous waste land-fills leaching chemicals into waterways and being used for housing and schools was first highlighted internationally by the `Love Canal' affair in the USA. This form of environmental contamination is the one with the most significance for Australia, where we have a legacy of poorly documented land usage for waste disposal purposes in the past and significant urban expansion in the last thirty years