Loading ...While working as a summer student laborer for a major chemical company . Another laborer and I were told to get onto the back of a company stake truck with hundred gallon drums of waste chemicals …esters ( the type of chemicals that give fruits their individual taste and odor ) by the smell of it . We left the plant ( which was on the banks of a river joining two of the Great Lakes) and went about a mile away into a wooded area owned by the company , beyond the local community . On that property was a fairly large pond which smelled so strongly it almost choked us , into which we dumped the barrels of chemical slop . The trouble was , the soil there was sand…ancient lake bed , so those chemicals slowly leached toward the community and beyond that to the waterway .
The plant is now shuttered , the community was evacuated and razed , and the local cancer rates ??? – probably astronomical .
The same summer there was a release of glycol to a ‘pad’ – a concrete flat square , maybe 20′ by 20′ , surrounded by a containment curb . That form of glycol (a component of antifreeze) is as black as tar , but with the consistency of water . The surface would ‘crinkle up’ when exposed to air , but a wave sent across it would turn smooth , Nasty stuff !
We were given scoop shovels to try to shovel it into a dumpster brought for that purpose . Ever try to shovel water ? It was about 10:30 am , and after watching us struggle for a few minutes the foreman of our foreman told us to break early for lunch and to return at 1 pm . We did , and on our return , the pad was empty . Apparently the pad drain was valved to release the contents into the river . There must have been dead fish for miles downstream .
Much of my career was in nuclear power . That sector is pristine in comparison to the chemical industry. But the waste , however miniscule , can be very long lived .