West Coast History of Science Society Meeting

University of California, San Francisco

April 11th - April 14th, 2002

---

The Limits of Science and the Construction of Human Disease: The "Love Canal" Episode and its Consequences*
 

Ernest B. Hook
Univeristy of California, Berkeley
 

Among many episodes arousing concern about health effects of toxic chemical waste sites in the United States, that involving residents near the "Love Canal" Niagara Falls New York in 1978-1980 had, it is likely, the most forceful and dramatic consequences nationwide. It involved the largest mass evacuation in the United States because of environmental chemical "pollution" hazard (and next to Chernobyl, apparently the largest mass evacuation for such reason anywhere in the world). It led directly to creation of the "Superfund". It dramatically reinforced awareness that the announcement of a potential public health problem could itself create another public health problem.  And it increased the sensitivity  for the need for "scientifically accepted" methods of evaluation of health effects, and raised concern and reevaluation of about precisely what that meant:

The main themes to be discussed include:

1) The failure to find any  "solid" evidence of health changes in residents living there;
2) Observation of suggestive but inconclusive evidence of an effect upon the frequency of birth defects and spontaneous abortion (i.e. "miscarriage") in (offspring) of residents near the site;
2) The frustrating search at the limits of available science for objective evidence for sufficient exposure which could have produced these effects, or of any such effects in experimental animals;
3) The use of an indirect marker to search for what could, arguably, be interpreted as confirmatory evidence of reproductive effects in those living there: chromosome "breakage" in their white blood cells;
4) The use of inappropriate methodology, most notably lack of evaluation of simultaneous controls in evaluation of effects in residents;
5) The observation of unusual chromosomal changes and apparent  increase in chromosome "breakage" in residents;
6) Announcement of an arguably, misinterpreted  interpretation  of the observations;
7) Subsequent such significant levels of anxiety in many individuals to result what was termed "illness";
8) Consequent mass "hysteria"; taking of hostages etc.; and eventually (government financed) evacuation.
9) The consequences for understanding of "scientific" approaches to evaluating effects of environmental pollutants.