Customer Reviews

The Road to Love Canal: Managing Industrial Waste before EPA

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This is an outstanding book that deals with the history of industrial hygiene and risk management. In a step-by-step fashion, the authors walk the reader through the development of large-scale chemical production plants and their need to deal with the waste associated with their production process. The changes from prior to 1930s to the 1950s and into the 1970s shows distinct changes in how industry addressed industrial waste. It is a refreshing approach to see an explanation of how industry slowly developed their procedures based on their dealings with the public and government, without the usual bias against management as evil-doers and tree-killers.

The authors discuss the understanding of industrial wastes and developing rationale with no appologies, but do it in a concise fashion that is readable to the layman as well as professionals. The section discussing how decision makers can be influenced by this information is particularly good-reading. The authors end by discussing several case studies (of course, Love Canal is one of them) and identifying the mistakes made in each case. This is the real lesson of the book - if we can't learn from our mistakes, how will we ever improve?