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Historical Questions in Hazardous Waste Management Author(s): Craig E. Colten Source: The Public Historian, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Winter, 1988), pp. 7-20 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3377810 Accessed: 05/10/2009 17:51 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. 1 University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Public Historian. STOR http://www.jstor.org Issues and Analysis Historical Questions in Hazardous Waste Management Craig E. Colten One chore facing environmental agencies at the state and federal level is the accurate and reliable inventory of relict hazardous waste sites, those abandoned refuse heaps which continue to present health risks. Estimates suggest that hazardous materials were once deposited at more than 16,000 now inactive sites, yet the number of documented cases falls far short of this total.1 The preoccupation of public agencies with post-1940 synthetic organic chemical wastes has caused investigators to lose sight of a major segment of the country's industrial legacy. The early industrial city be queathed an abundance of derelict waste disposal ground which has not been fully appreciated.2 Lewis Mumford graphically described the perva siveness of manufacturing refuse in the late nineteenth century: As witness to the immense productivity of the machine, the slag heaps and rubbish heaps reached mountainous proportions, while the human beings whose labor made these achievements possible were crippled and killed almost as fast as they would have been on a battlefield.3 Urban residents also confronted health threats from water tainted by factory effluent. There were myriads of dirty things given it [a river] to wash, and whole wagonloads of poisons from dye houses and bleach yards thrown into it to carry away; steam boilers discharge into it their seething contents, and drains and sewers their fetid impurities; till at length it rolls on--here The information in this article is the result of research funded wholly or in part by the Hazardous Waste Research and Information Center of the Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources; it does not necessarily reflect the views of the center. I would like to thank the journal's anonymous peer reviewers, whose careful reading improved this paper. 1. Michael Greenberg and R. F. Anderson, Hazardous Waste Sites: The Credibility Gap (New Brunswick: Center for Urban Policy Research, 1984), 84. 2. See Kenneth L. Wallwork, Derelict Land (London: Newton Abbot, 1974), esp. 42 73. 3. Although Mumford referred to the onerous working conditions, part of the high mortality rate was due to toxic materials in the work place. Lewis Mumford, The City in History (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1961), 446. 7 The Public Historian, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Winter 1988) 1988 by the Regents of the University of California The Monsanto Chemical Company's Krummrich Works began producing a variety of com mercial acids in 1907. Emissions of chlorine and other toxic gases during the 1930s prompted neighbors to file suits against the chemical company, but the local courts seldom awarded damages to the plaintiffs. (Photograph courtesy of the Illinois State Historical Library.) The Laclede Steel Company, Alton, Illinois, circa 1967. The open lagoons, ditches, and mounds of slag and raw materials typified the use of vacant land for storage and disposal of industrial wastes. (Photograph courtesy of the Illinois State Historical Library.) 8 THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN between tall dingy walls, there under precipices of red sand-stone-- considerably less a river than a flood of liquid manure.4 Some of the offensive wastes churned out during the first half of this century were hazardous, and some remain so. Unless public agencies seriously consider the historical component of our industrial past, their inventories will remain incomplete and only marginally useful. There are two overriding reasons for making historical analysis an inte gral component of hazardous waste management policy. First, older sites, some of which continue to present public health threats, received indus trial wastes during a period of uncontrolled waste disposal, and many contain substances that are now regulated. Furthermore, many of the sites created during the first half of the twentieth century have undergone subsequent redevelopment. Reworking the urban landscape has erased visible traces of many such sites. Without historical sleuthing, they may remain unknown. Second, hazards assessment techniques attempt to assign a degree of risk that communities may face from known disposal sites. These tech niques rely on databases heavily biased toward recent hazardous waste activity. Lacking a strong historical component, the databases cannot yield satisfactory results in all cases. Inaccurate ranking can lead to misap plication of limited clean-up funds, dislocations of neighborhoods without due cause, and a persistence of reactive public response to hazards. This paper will review the methods used to identify hazardous waste disposal sites and will analyze their historical weaknesses. It will also offer a brief overview of pre-1940 hazardous wastes and then discuss the treat ment and disposal methods used by the industries that created large quantities of troublesome wastes. Since the 1930s was a period of height ened concern with manufacturing wastes, the review of disposal methods will focus on that decade. This will illustrate the scope and nature of environmental contaminants left by industries before the Second World War and will underscore the value of historical contributions to hazardous waste research. Identifying Historical Hazards The fact that long-forgotten waste disposal sites could continue to affect nearby populations has not been lost on environmental agencies. The highly publicized case of Woburn, Massachusetts has centered on a late nineteenth-century industrial district5 and the U.S. Environmental Pro tection Agency (U.S. EPA) has sponsored research to identify nineteenth- 4. Ibid., 459-60. 5. For a summary of the industrial history of Woburn, see Tufts University, Depart ment of Environmental Policv, Hazardous Wastes in Woburn (Medford, Massachusetts, May 1980). ' HAZARDOUS WASTE MANAGEMENT - 9 Table 1. Historical Hazardous Waste Sites Inventory Number of Sites Percentage Pre-1950 Pre-1940 National Priorities List (1981) Waste Disposal Sites National Priorities List (1984) Waste Disposal Sites RCRA (1981) Active Treatment, Storage, or Disposal Sites 115 538 4,818 24 6.4 9 4.7 Sources: Greenberg and Anderson, Hazardous Waste Sites, 1984; USEPA, Hazardous Waste Sites, 1984; USEPA, National Survey ofHazardous Wastes, 1984. century hazards.6 The initial National Priorities List (NPL), a preliminary inventory of the country's most hazardous sites prepared by the U.S. EPA, identified a total of 115 sites throughout the country, 24 percent of which received wastes prior to 1950 (Table l).7 An expanded list (N = 538) documented contamination in the vicinity of at least forty-eight sites used before 1940.8 Although the proportion of historical sites declined, the number is significant, particularly in light of the biases for recent sites built into the inventory system. The development of procedures to track the flow of wastes and to identify disposal grounds has been spearheaded at the national level and has produced systems largely dependent on reports from industries. While practical, they automatically exclude most defunct businesses. The first of the tracking systems came about with the passage of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) in 1976. It instituted a system to monitor hazardous wastes "from the cradle to the grave," with the goal of preventing accumulations of improperly disposed hazardous wastes in the future. It also sought to identify only active treatment, storage, and dis posal facilities. Consequently, a meager 4.7 percent of the facilities inven toried in 1981 were in use before 1941 and the U.S. EPA saw this as a problem with the inventory.9 Passage of the Comprehensive Environmen tal Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund) 6. An overview of hazards left by nineteenth-century industries is Vary Coates, et al.. Nineteenth Century Technology--Twentieth Century Problems: A Retrospective Mini-Assess ment (National Technical Information Service, PB 82-242058,1982). 7. Greenberg and Anderson, Hazardous Waste Sites, 127. 8. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Hazardous Waste Sites: Descriptions of Sites on Current National Priorities List, October 1984 (Washington, D.C., December 1984). 9. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Survey of Hazardous Waste Gen erators and Treatment, Storage, and Disposal Facilities Regulated Under RCRA in 1981 (EPA 530/SW-84-005, Washington, D.C., April 1984), 103-6. 10 THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN in 1980 authorized the U.S. EPA "to respond to past, present or potential releases of`hazardous substances' into the environment."10 This legisla tion provides for emergency cleanup activities at priority sites and the creation of an inventory system to identify and rank hazardous waste sites. All suspected sites are evaluated in terms of the hazardous material, local geological and hydrological conditions, and potential targets. Yet many sites have not been disclosed, particularly the older ones. This historical failing reappears in the NPL inventory, which is compiled from the CERCLA listing, and is compounded by the circumstance that less accu rate information is available for older sites. Inaccurate or inspecific data can prevent older sites from qualifying for the NPL and this in part explains the low total of pre-1940 sites on the NPL. The under-reporting of inactive sites in the CERCLA inventory prompted the U.S. EPA to develop a separate catalog of abandoned sites. The Emergency Remedial Response System (ERRIS) combines information on inactive sites from both the RCRA and CERCLA inventories to allow separate analysis of abandoned sites. The ERRIS inventory contains more than 16,000 sites, but it is burdened with the same historical shortcomings as its source and is only suggestive of the complete number of inactive sites.11 Several states are developing programs to extend the historical reach of inventories. New York has requested information on all hazardous waste disposal activity since 1952, although their system too relies on reports from existing businesses.12 Currently, Illinois and Washington are devel oping computerized listings of inactive and active businesses that handled hazardous wastes in the past.13 These inventories will identify companies left out by self-reporting procedures and assist in the assessment of dere lict hazards. The Illinois listing is being augmented by a series of case studies of major industrial districts to account for actual waste disposal practices before 1970.14 Despite progress in the approach to past hazards, deeply entrenched attitudes inhibit analysis ofhistorical sources ofindustrial hazards. The ten fold growth of the organic chemical industry since 1940 has led many investigators to discount the significance of wastes produced before 10. Greenberg and Anderson, Hazardous Waste Sites, 68. 11. Ibid., 118. 12. New York Department of Environmental Conservation, Community Right-To-Know, vol. 2, Past Hazardous Waste Disposal Practices (Albany, New York, April 1985). 13. Sue Schock, et al., Enhancement of the HWPJC DataBase: 1986, Illinois Depart ment of Energy and Natural Resources, Hazardous Waste Research and Information Center (Savoy, Illinois, August 1986); and Washington Department of Ecology, Site Discovery Project: Pilot Program Summary Report (Olympia, Washington, March 1987). 14. C. E. Colten Industrial Wastes in the Calumet Area, 1869-1970, Illinois Depart ment of Energy and Natural Resources, Hazardous Waste Research and Information Center (Savoy, Illinois, September 1985); and C. E. Colten and G. E. Breen, Historical Industrial Waste Practices in Winnebago County, Illinois: 1870-1980, Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources, Hazardous Waste Research and Information Center (Savoy, Illinois, September 1986). HAZARDOUS WASTE MANAGEMENT 11 Table 2. Estimated Volumes of Hazardous Wastes, 1935 Year Chemical Emps. (1000) 1000 Tons of HW per year* Metals Emps. (1000) 1000 tons of HW per year* Leather Emps. (1000) 1000 tons of HW per year* Total HW per year* (1000 tons) 1950 1935 1929 1919 1889 457 306 550 497 144 1759 978 4655 1178 792 3770 2118 n.a. n.a. 1913 n.a. n.a. 554 n.a. n.a. 342 311 319 350 250 923 840 861 945 675 7337 5788 Sources: Rudolfs and Setter, 1936; U.S. Census, Historical Statistics, 1976. *The volume of hazardous wastes for each industry represents 10 percent of the estimate for all wastes using a multiplier developed by Rudolfs and Setter in 1936. then.15 They assume that few hazardous materials were discarded and that the small quantities that were produced do not warrant serious consider ation. Yet estimates of industrial waste production in 1935 illustrate that chemical producers, primary metal firms, and tanneries emitted substan tial hazardous wastes.16 Based on a 1935 survey of New Jersey industrial wastes, I have estimated that U.S. chemical, primary metal, and tanned leather goods manufacturers accounted for approximately 5.7 million tons of hazardous wastes (Table 2), and a more complete accounting of all indus tries would undoubtedly raise the total. Among the wastes released in the mid-1930s were a variety of acids, toxic metals, carcinogenic solvents, and oils--all classified as hazardous materials by current law. While the level of hazardous waste generation in 1935 is far lower than the current estimates of 190 million tons annually, sizable amounts were produced. Another reason to discount historical wastes is the supposition that older sites no longer contribute to public health problems, that the hazar dous materials would deteriorate or become diluted through the years. A review of the problems caused by the forty-eight NPL sites predating 1940 discredits this argument (Table 3). Persistent ground- and surfacewater contamination has resulted from such typical turn-of-the-century industries as wood preservers, paint manufacturers, chemical plants, watch factories, smelters, local gas works, pesticide producers, and min ing operations. Similar long-term releases of toxic materials in English 15. Currently the industrial chemical industry generates an estimated 400 billion pounds of hazardous wastes annually. See David J. Sarokin, et al.. Cutting Chemical Wastes (New York: An INFORM Report, 1985), 16-19. 16. Willem Rudolfs and Lloyd R. Setter, Industrial Wastes in New Jersey, New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 610 (November 1936). The authors surveyed the wastes of more than 1,900 industries and based their estimates of industrial wastes on measurements taken at the sampled factories. The volume of hazardous wastes was calcu lated using the U.S. E PA figure of 10 percent of all wastes. U.S. EPA, Report to Congress on Hazardous Waste Disposal (Washington, D.C., June 1973), 5. 12 THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN Table 3. Pre-1940 National Priorities List Sites, 1984 Industry Number On-Site Disposal Contamination Ground Water Surface Water Mining Primary Metals Petro-Chemicals Wood Treating Municipal Landfills Other 5 10 10 9 10 4 5 10 10 9 4 4 1 10 5 9 9 3 5 1 2 3 1 Totals 48 42 Source: U.S. EPA, Hazardous Waste Sites, 1984. mining and manufacturing districts add to the documentation of persistent hazards associated with pre-1940 wastes.17 A final factor influencing the compilation of historical inventories is the relatively recent reliance on landfills. Prior to World War II, industrial wastes were often released into waterbodies where dilution was thought to be an adequate means oftreatment. Since 1945, urban wastes have increas ingly been interred in landfills which until very recently were considered safe. The shift to landfills in the past few decades has prompted a focus on land-based wastes.18 Yet the possible accumulation of toxic sediments in stream beds is ignored by most inventories. Manufacturers of Hazardous Waste The inventory systems, although weak on long-term historical data, do provide valuable insight into the general location of unidentified hazar dous substance accumulations. There is a strong correlation between states with large manufacturing sectors and hazardous waste sites, and this has not gone unnoticed. However, analysis of historic manufacturing pro cesses has only touched on the scope of hazardous waste generation.19 A review of several durable toxic materials will hint at the widespread use of hazardous materials in manufacturing districts. 17. U.S. EPA, Hazardous Waste Sites. English examples are discussed in Raymond P. Gemmell, Colonization ofIndustrial Wasteland (London: Edward Arnold, 1977), 35. 18. Joel A. Tarr chronicled the general pattern of diverting wastes from one sink to another during the last century. See Joel A. Tarr, "The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban, Air, Land, and Water Pollution in Historical Perspective," Records ofthe Columbia Histori cal Society ofWashington, D.C. 51(1984), 1-29. 19. The most complete survey is Coates, Nineteenth Century Technology; see also Joel A. Tarr, "Historical Perspectives on Hazardous Wastes in the United States," Waste Manage ment and Research 3 (1985), 95-102. HAZARDOUS WASTE MANAGEMENT 13 In 1923, occupational health expert Alice Hamilton wrote, "Lead is not only the most important of the metallic poisons, but it is probably the most important toxic element used in industry."20 Her review of leadrelated diseases focused on worker exposure, but in the context of this paper, where there was lead there was inevitably lead waste. Crushing and smelting operations left residue in the form of dust or slag which can continue to affect workers or residents in the vicinity of such operations. Significant exposure occurred in plants making batteries, ammunition, paint, piano wire, and plumbing supplies. Potters, printers, and typeset ters also came into contact with dangerous levels of lead.21 Despite recog nition of the serious problems posed by lead, it remained the leading occupational hazard in 1941. In fact, the list of high-risk occupations grew to include glass making, tinning, the manufacture of lead alloys, the cut lery industry, automobile body works, and rubber producers.22 Accumula tions of lead dust at these types of industries could, if disturbed in later years, pose risks to workers and nearby residents. With the current inter est in revitalizing "rust belt" industrial complexes,23 release of lead dust will certainly accompany redevelopment. Organic chemicals, such as benzene, toluene, and naptha, were dis tilled from coal and petroleum early in this century and they remain major environmental hazards. The most common means of exposure were inhal ing fumes released in factories where these chemicals were present or consuming chlorine-treated water containing organics.24 There were nu merous sources of these products in 1914, including chemical cleaning plants, rendering operations, lacquer, varnish and India rubber indus tries, dye works, and coal gas plants.25 T.N.T. poisoning of munitions workers during World War I alerted medical authorities to still another source of exposure.26 Workers' reactions to gases given off by organic solvents ranged from headaches and dizziness to sensory paralysis.27 By venting the fumes, employers reduced worker exposure; accidental and 20. Alice Hamilton, "Industrial Toxicology," in Frederick Peterson, ed., Legal Medicine and Toxicology (Philadelphia: Saunders Company, 1923), 774. 21. Hamilton, "Industrial Toxicology," 775-76; also see George M. Price, The Modern Factory: Safety, Sanitation, and Welfare (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1914), 442-43; and Carey McCord, Industrial Hygiene for Engineers (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1931, 58-95. 22. Howard Collier, Outlines of Industrial Medical Practice (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1941), 231-33. 23. Ralph R. Widner, "Physical Renewal of the Industrial City, " Annals of the American Academy ofPolitical and Social Science 448 (1986), 47-57. 24. Robert H. Harris, "The Health Risks of Toxic Organic Chemicals Found in Ground water," in C.C. Travis and E.L. Etnier, eds.. Groundwater Pollution: Environmental and Legal Problems (Boulder: Westview Press, 1984), 63-64. 25. Price, The Modern Factory, 442. 26. Antonia Ineson and Deborah Thom, "T.N.T. Poisoning and the Employment of Women Workers in the First World War," in P. Weindling, ed., Social History of Occupa tional Health (London: Croom Helm, 1985), 89-107. 27. Hamilton, "Industrial Toxicology," 794. 14 - THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN intentional spills of solvents to the ground and to streams, however, were not uncommon. As organic chemicals entered public water supplies, they were mixed with chlorine and then delivered to homes throughout metro politan areas.28 Such exposures, although common, were generally inter mittent. However, before automobile drivers created a demand for ben zine, or gasoline, it was an unnecessary by-product of oil refineries that was commonly dumped on the ground or into streams. Domestic con sumption of contaminated water was therefore a common experience downstream from refineries before 1920. Arsenic was a third ingredient widely used in industry before 1940. It is highly toxic in concentrated form and debilitating ifingested in small quanti ties over lengthy periods. Paris green, an arsenate coloring agent used in wallpaper and paints, caused illness in homes and factories in the nine teenth century.29 Its use in wallpaper was halted, but paint manufacturers continued to use Paris green well into this century. Lead arsenate pesti cides were another troublesome product.30 Increasing use of pesticides during the first quarter of the century broadened the impact to include not only farm families and factory workers,31 but town residents consuming water drawn from contaminated sources.32 In addition, glass, chemical, and metallurgical industries released arsenic-laden fumes which caused tempo rary air-borne exposure, while dumps of zinc slag and pesticide mixing operations have caused long-term contamination ofground water.33 Toxic materials were used widely by pre-1940 industries and the NPL listing strongly suggests that industries handling such wastes created accu mulations of those same materials on site.34 Thus, the search for hazardous wastes must start with industries handling hazardous materials. How wastes were treated and disposed, however, determined their ultimate fate. Public Policy and Management Concerns During the period from roughly 1880 to 1940 there were continuous efforts to reduce the amount of waste produced by industry. These in cluded converting wastes to profit-making by-products and eliminating inefficiencies--both engineering solutions to an environmental problem. 28. Joel A. Tarr, "Industrial Wastes and Public Health: Some Historical Notes, Part I, 1876-1932," American Journal ofPublic Health 75 (1984), 1059-67. 29. Henry Carr, Our Domestic Poisons (London: William Ridgway, 1883), 6-7. 30. Hamilton, "Industrial Toxicology," 781. 31. A 1930s arsenic dump poisoned the drinking water of a small business in Minnesota. This well-known example of arsenic poisoning is described in U.S. EPA, Hazardous Waste Sites, 249. Coates, et al. suggest that ground-water contamination due to arsenic spills is not a likely source of persistent hazards, Nineteenth Century Technology, 5-12. 32. U.S. EPA, Hazardous Waste Sites, 244. 33. Ibid., 468. 34. Ibid. HAZARDOUS WASTE MANAGEMENT 15 Yet there was little incentive in the legal, economic, or technical frame work of 1930s business to impel managers to purchase effective wastetreatment equipment. Nuisance and riparian laws prohibited contamination of surface and ground water, but the enforcement of these statutes was lax and court decisions favoring the complainant were hard to come by.35 Public health officials were most concerned with biological wastes, hence discharges of toxic wastes were implicitly sanctioned by early twentieth-century public policy.36 German hydrologists even encouraged recharging a depleted aquifer with industrial wastes, an act reflecting the indifferent attitude toward toxic contamination of major water supplies.37 Fear of driving industries away contributed to infrequent enforcement of nuisance stat utes as well. In 1915, the Illinois Rivers and Streams Commission, whose duties included monitoring the condition of the state's waterways, advo cated tolerance at the risk of losing jobs. Certain manufacturing wastes at the present state of the art of sewage purification are very difficult or impossible to treat with satisfactory re sults in entirely preventing stream pollution. In these cases it is a ques tion of allowing a certain degree of local stream pollution or of abandon ing the industry.38 Governmental patience with uninhibited pollution gave rise to a belliger ent attitude among industrialists and forced private citizens to contest the fouling of waterways. Industry sympathizers bristled at even poorly fi nanced and infrequent legal attacks: As in England, [the movement to halt water pollution] begat some ras cally offspring, smart neighbors who discovered that nuisance suits against chemical and metallurgical corporations made a strong appeal to any jury in the land, and unscrupulous local politicians who learned that threats of injunctions or municipal ordinances were heavy well-spiked clubs to swing at the managers of such corporations.39 The combination of ineffective laws, infrequent enforcement, and strong resistance on the part of industry left consumers of surface and ground water subject to contaminated public water supplies throughout the 1930s. Textbooks on business management overshadowed the subject of waste disposal with extensive discussions on the waste of inefficiency. Conse quently, managers developed a business-like attitude toward the efficient movement of raw materials through a plant and for the development of 35. James A. Tobey, "Legal Aspects of the Industrial Wastes Problem," Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 31 (1939), 1320-22. 36. M. O. Leighton, "Industrial Wastes and their Sanitary Significance," American Bu reau of Public Health: Papers and Reports 31 (1905), 29-40; also see Tarr, "Historical Perspectives." 37. C. F. Toulman, Ground Water (New York: McGraw Hill, 1937), 185. 38. Leroy Sherman, "Stream Pollution and Sewage Disposal with Reference to Public Policy and Legislation," Illinois Rivers and Lakes Commission, Bulletin 16 (December 1915), 6. 39. William Haynes, American Chemical Industry, vol. 3, (New York: Nostrand, 1945), 114. 16 THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN marketable by-products.40 This perspective is reflected in the plans of factory architects who paid little attention to where wastes would be collected or how to accommodate waste treatment facilities in plant de signs.41 The critical concern shared by managers and factory designers was to prevent wastes from hindering operations. Acceptable solutions were to haul wastes to a low spot on the factory grounds, which provided the beneficial side effect of reclaiming useless land, or releasing liquids into the nearest stream.42 Overall, however, industrial decisionmakers felt little pressure to provide treatment for their wastes. Elimination of waste was not a question of how to dispose of process residue safely, but one of how least to interfere with the manufacturing process. Industry has long claimed that the installation of waste treatment equip ment would be financially devastating,43 and a 1939 study estimating that it would cost American industry $900,000,000 to provide "practicable" treat ment of their wastes confirmed this view.44 Experimentation with waste technology increased dramatically during the 1930s. This sudden response to environmental problems caused by industrial effluent was sparked by federal programs supporting waste treatment. However, research was driven by the desire to find a return on the cost ofpollution control, not the urge to purify streams.45 The first option was to recover usable wastes,46 but when no profitable by-product could be found, researchers were prone to recommend diverting industrial sewage to a municipal treatment plant.47 40. The leading advocate of industrial efficiency was Frederick W. Taylor, The Principles ofScientific Management (New York: W. W. Norton, 1911). 41. Price, The Modern Factory, 285-86; and A. R. McGonegal, "Plumbing and Sanita tion of Industrial Buildings," The Architectural Forum 53 (1930), 431. 42. John Appleton, The Iron and Steel Industry of the Calumet District, University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, vol. 13, no. 2 (1925), 80; and Lewis F. Thomas, The Localization of Business Activities in Metropolitan St. Louis, Washington University Stud ies, New Series, Social and Philosophical Sciences, no. 1 (1928), 95. 43. Garner Swartz, "Report of the Committee of Industrial Wastes, " American Bureau of Public Health: Papers and Reports 29 (1903), 166. 44. U.S. Congress, Water Pollution in the United States, House Doc. 155, 76th Cong., 1st sess., 1939, 2. 45. C. L. Knowles, "Industrial Wastes from the Equipment Manufacturers' Viewpoint," Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 31 (1939), 1338-45. 46. Early examples of this genre reflect the desire to conserve natural resources during World War I. See William Berkeley, "Industrial Wastes: A Tax Paid to Ignorance," Indus trial Management 54 (1917), 312-22; and Rockwood Conover, "Salvaging and Utilizing Wastes and Scraps in Industry," Industrial Management 56 (1918), 449-51. During the thirties the emphasis shifted to wringing a profit from by-products; see C. M. Baker, "Wastes and Pollution vs. Recovery for Profit," Water Works and Sewage 80 (1933), 296-98; and Shepard T. Powell, "Profits from Trade Wastes," Chemical and Metallurgical Engineer ing 40 (1933), 359-60. 47. This general position is expressed for all industries in Glenn V. Brown, "Classification and Treatment of Industrial Effluents," Public Works 68 (1937), 40-42. Examples from specific industries include U. F. Turpin, "Sewage Plant Rebuilt to Treat Rayon Wastes," Engineering News-Record 109 (1932), 780-82; H. Bach, "The `Tank Filter for the Purifica tion of Sewage and Trade Wastes," Water Works and Sewage 84 (1937), 389-93; N. J. Ranney, "Treatment of Pickling Wastes," Iron Age 143 (1939), 24-27; and L. F. Harlow, "Waste Problems of a Chemical Company, " Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 31(1939), 1346-49. ' HAZARDOUS WASTE MANAGEMENT 17 Not only would this insure some form of waste treatment and improve the manufacturers' public image, but it would shift the legal responsibility for stream pollution to the municipality. Treatment and Disposal Practice The primary public health concern during the 1930s was with liquid wastes which endangered potable water supplies; experimentation with waste recovery focused on liquid effluents. Certain industries did discover usable by-products, but inadequate markets for those items delayed con struction of recovery units. An example is the iron and steel industry, which was a major nineteenth-century source of toxic wastes and one of the leaders in examining waste treatment technology. Numerous improve ments were made in the methods of waste disposal during the early 1900s, such as controlling the emissions from bee-hive coke ovens and blast furnaces and reducing coal tar and ammonia liquor pollution.48 Yet, phe nols and pickle liquors (solutions containing sulphuric acid) remained as major waste concerns of the steel industry even after 1940. Phenols caused disagreeable tastes in water supplies, especially those which were chlorinated. The U.S. Public Health Service estimated in 1925 that 60 to 75 percent of the 38,000,000 tons of still wastes were released into waterways49 and the majority of these waterways flowed through densely settled portions of the country. In the steel district of southeast Chicago, for example, a survey of stream pollution listed three steel mills as major sources of untreated phenol releases in 1925.50 By 1933 there were signs of phenol pollution control after each of the offend ers installed treatment facilities.51 One common method of treating phenolic wastes was to mix them with water and use the mixture as a quench liquor.52 Phenols which were not destroyed in the quenching process percolated into the soil or flowed into surface-water bodies. Recog nition that such practice was inadequate prompted a search for a more satisfactory method of disposal, but one that would keep costs low. Experi ments were conducted with destruction of phenolic wastes in municipal sewage treatment works and it was determined that trickling filter and activated sludge plants could adequately treat coke and steel mill wastes 48. William Hodge, "Waste Problems of the Iron and Steel Industries," Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 31 (1939), 1329. 49. R. D. Leitch, Stream Pollution by Wastes from By-Product Coke Ovens, U.S. De partment of Public Health Service, (Washington, D.C., 1925), 2. 50. H. R. Crouhurst, Report on an Investigation of the Pollution of Lake Michigan in the Vicinity of South Chicago and the Calumet and Indiana Harbors, 1924-25, Chicago Metro politan Sanitary District, (Chicago, Illinois, 1926), Table 7. 51. Arthur Gorman, "Pollution of Lake Michigan: Survey of Sources of Pollution," Civil Engineering 3 (1933), 519-22. 52. Leitch, Stream Pollution, 2, and Hodge, "Waste Problems," 1366. 18 THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN when mixed with domestic sewage.53 How widely these methods were used is uncertain. Benzene absorption and phenol recovery were devel oped by the late 1920s, but inadequate markets for by-products discour aged implementation.54 Pickle liquors created the other serious environmental controversy for steel mills which produced between 500,000,000 and 800,000,000 gallons of acid wastes annually.55 These acids were deadly to aquatic life, cor roded sewer pipes, and disrupted the biological activity of sewage treat ment plants. Consequently, cities denied treatment to acidic wastes and conservation groups sought to prevent their release into streams. As a result, industry engineers struggled to develop adequate treatment meth ods, but low-cost dumping remained the favored option. A 1939 survey of disposal methods reported that acid wastes were pumped into limestone caves, deep wells, abandoned mines, and exhausted oil and gas sands; they were collected in sand and gravel sumps near large bodies of water (allowing percolation into the water table) and sewered to streams.56 None of these methods included treatment, although several effective, albeit costly, options were available. A comparison of five treatment processes found dilution to be unacceptable to municipal treatment plant operators and costly in terms of the water consumed. Neutralization, the second option, created troublesome deposits of lime in the sewer pipes and lime absorption was too costly. Cesspools were ruled out because acids moving through the soil could damage buried pipes and contaminate ground wa ter. The survey found recovery of copperas the most satisfactory method, although there was insufficient demand for the product to make recovery profitable.57 Critics of recovery countered that steel makers should not try to diversify into the chemical business and that acids could be adequately neutralized with limestone.58 The facts that no clear solution emerged and that acid discharges continued suggest that little action was taken on any of the recommended treatments.59 Oil refineries generally relied on the least expensive means of waste treatment at the turn of the century. One industry spokesman revealed the unconcerned attitudes of early producers when he wrote, "The petro leum refining industry of forty years ago had no waste problem."60 By this he meant that refiners dumped acids, oil emulsions, and gasoline in 53. Leitch, Stream Pollution, 2; Willem Rudolfs, "A Survey of Recent Developments in the Treatment of Industrial Wastes," Sewage Works Journal 9 (1937), 998-1017; and Bach, "The`Tank Filter.' " 54. Hodge, "Waste Problems," 1366, 1376. 55. "Acid Disposal is a Big Problem," Steel 105 (1939), 60, 79. 56. Hodge, "Waste Problems," 1368. 57. Stuart E. Coburn, "Disposal of Acid-Iron Wastes from a Steel Mill," Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 20 (1928), 248-49. 58. Knowles, "Industrial Wastes, " 54-55. 59. C. E. Colten, Industrial Wastes in the Calumet Area, 1869-1970, 64. 60. J. Bennett Hill, "Waste Problems in the Petroleum Industry," Industrial and Engi neering Chemistry 31 (1939), 1361-63. HAZARDOUS WASTE MANAGEMENT 19 nearby waterbodies without any prior treatment and with no fear of litiga tion. After the creation of a water quality watchdog agency in 1927, Illi nois refiners sought to eliminate the obvious oil slicks floating down stream from their plants. Although trade journals advocated separators as means of reducing visible oil releases,61 some refineries turned to alter nate sinks for the disposal of oily waste waters. Examples from two refin ery districts illustrate the uneven progress of the 1920s and 1930s. The White Star Refinery in Wood River directed its effluent to a shallow lake on the nearby floodplain,62 while an adjacent refinery installed a master separator to collect its oily wastes before they entered the Mississippi River.63 Together, these actions protected the major watercourse in the area and satisfied the state agency.64 Chicago-area oil refineries were releasing more than five million gallons of wastes daily in 1926,65 and this effluent continued to contaminate Lake Michigan into the early 1930s.66 It was not until the 1960s that most refineries at the south end of Lake Michigan had installed separators to eliminate direct discharge of oils.67 The use of separators was fairly common throughout the industry by 1940, but the hope of developing profitable by-products hindered implementa tion of secondary waste treatment. Also, landfilling oily wastes simply tranferred the hazard from surface to ground water.68 Chemical industries used solid wastes to reclaim low ground and com monly neutralized acid and alkaline liquids.69 Such treatment methods were considered adequate to prevent human exposure to harmful wastes, but it is now known that leachate can escape from landfills and toxic sediments can accumulate in stream beds. Other treatment techniques followed by the chemical industry were deep-well injection of brines, gradual release of phenols during high river stages,70 and diversion of toxic substances to municipal treatment works.71 Evaporation lagoons and percolation ponds, also common treatment facilities, allowed chemical 61. Ibid., 1361-62. 62. Illinois Appeals Court, Fourth District, "Shelby Loan and Trust Company et al., v. White Star Refining Company," 271 Illinois Appeals 266 (May 1933), 266-69. 63. Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, Sanitary Water Board, Microfiche Rec ords 1923-1952, Wood River File, Springfield, Illinois. 64. "Abatement of Industrial Waste Pollution in Illinois," Public Works 67 (1936), 18. 65. Crouhurst, Report on an Investigation, 10. 66. Gorman, "Pollution of Lake Michigan," 520-21. 67. U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Report on the Quality of the Waters of the Grand Calumet River, Little Calumet River, Calumet River, Lake Michigan, WolfLake, and their Tributaries (Chicago, Illinois, February 1965), Table VI-3b. 68. Tarr, "Search for the Ultimate Sink." 69. E. B. Besselievre, "The Disposal of Industrial Chemical Waste," The Chemical Age 25 (1931), 516-18. 70. I. F. Harlow, "Waste Problems of a Chemical Company," Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 31 (1939), 1346-49. 71. F. W. Mohlman and A. J. Beck, "Disposal of Industrial Wastes," Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 21 (1929), 205-209. 20 THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN manufacturers to divert liquid wastes from surface waters to the ground.72 So although concern with hazardous wastes was voiced, action directed toward effective elimination or destruction of these wastes was minimal and even the most serious problems were not resolved. Conclusions Environmental agencies have not ignored pre-1940 hazardous waste sites. Out of practicality, political pressure, legislative constraints, and popular perception, they have compiled inventories that focus on the recent past. The emphasis on recent activity has caused the omission of many older and sometimes reworked industrial areas. Yet in the four decades preceding 1940, American manufacturers produced significant quantities of durable hazardous wastes and disposed of them in an indiffer ent manner. The proximity of these older disposal sites to urbanized areas makes their discovery crucial, and public policy should give this fact greater recognition. In analyzing the inherent historical shortcomings of the existing inven tory systems, this paper has touched on several areas where possible improvements could be made. It is imperative to include those industries in operation before 1940 and to consider their wastes as potential hazards. To do this, inventories must take into account both active and inactive businesses, and since much waste disposal took place on site, all manufac turers which handled hazardous materials should be considered possible sources and repositories for hazardous wastes. This would hold true for both pre- and post-1940 industries. The addition of defunct industries would increase the analytical poten tial of the data bases, but additional historical research is needed to make that analysis useful. More in-depth reporting on the industrial technolo gies creating hazardous wastes will help fine tune the search for possible waste sources. Further research on the social, political, and economic factors affecting the implementation of waste treatment facilities will pro vide a context for assessing the acceptance of waste management services. Finally, a detailed review of industrial waste treatment technology will offer a chronology of the services available. Together, these historical components will allow analysis of historical hazardous waste sites with a relatively reliable level of accuracy and thereby improve the utility of the overall data sets. 72. Numerous examples of waste impoundments can be found among the NPL sites included in U.S. EPA, Hazardous Waste Sites, 1984.