toxic waste
- This is a preview of the essay.
To view the full text you must login!
All of the developed countries in the world produce some kind of chemical waste. 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 our natural environment unless properly disposed of.
Chemical waste is defined as any waste that is hazardous to human health and to our natural environment. According to the Institute of Chemical Waste Management, about 15% of our garbage is classified as chemical, and only almost 85% of that is disposed of properly. The rest is either illegally dumped or accidentally mixed up with non-chemical garbage. 15% may not seem like a lot, but when you consider the millions of tons of chemical waste that we produce every year, that 15% is enormous. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that we produce one ton of chemical wastes for every single person living in the US every year. That means that the 15% represents about 4 million tons of chemical waste.
Chemical wastes which are dumped in improper sites can seep into underground water supplies and contaminate huge areas. If the land that has chemical waste that also has plant life can cause most of the plants and trees to die off...