Since the mid-1800s, Americans have added the fruits of technology and industry to their recipe for a better life. They found lately, however, that by-products of some of these achievements are often unsafe when dumped indiscriminately.
Solvents can contaminate drinking water.
Waste chemicals can mix and interact, producing a toxic stew far worse than any single ingredient. For over a century, people disposed of hazardous chemicals by dumping them on roadsides, in fields, in closed quarry excavations, or in rivers and streams. These haphazard disposal practices gradually led to serious contamination of our land and waterways, and to the creation of over 200 hazardous waste sites in Missouri. The federal law provided both response and funding mechanisms for the cleanup of hazardous substance disposal sites. Superfund sites generally were polluted before the law was established in 1980.