Chapter 6 of Protecting New Jersey’s Environment, called Environmental Welfare again opened my eyes to the horrible things that we have been exposed to in the environment. I think that one of the first things that I took note of in the chapter was how desensitized people were when they were talking about dioxin. I saw evidence of this on page 101 when says that a man welcomed Governor Kean into New Jersey by saying “get right into the dioxin with everyone else, Governor Kean. Just don’t breathe too deep” (Belton). This quote, as bad as this maybe, made me chuckle. It amazes me how desensitized we have become about the harmful toxins in our everyday lives. How numb do we have to be to an issue to make a joke to the governor about breathing in highly toxic chemicals! Even when people know the toxins are there, we still accept it and live out lives interacting with them. It really shocked me when I read page 103 and heard about when people in hazmat suits were walking around in the same areas as barefoot children who were playing in the water from a busted hydrant. It amazes me that more parents were not concerned about the chemicals that their children were being exposed to.
I also thought that it was interesting to read about how soil samples that were sent to Tom Burke in Sweden were so highly concentrated with dioxin that his lab became contaminated and it had to be shut down for weeks while they cleaned everything again. I think that it’s crazy that we have soil here in this state that is so highly contaminated with a substance that a lab had to be shut down for a month to clean up residue. And people around the area are coming into contact with it all the time.
It was also horrible to read about how the oceans were being used as a sight to dump waste into the ocean. The book mentioned how people viewed the ocean as a free dumping sight to put waste when they didn’t want to dispose of it properly. It goes along with the ocean contamination that was talked about in previous chapters and how it will effect us in the future when we eat sea creatures that have been exposed to the dumped waste. It makes me sad that these things are dumped in the water in an attempt to get them out of sight.
Chapter 7 of Protecting New Jersey’s Environment, called The Lure of Brownfield was a point were I could see a shift in the writing. Belton begins to talk about how the chemicals that were the results we see today where originally byproducts of a good thing. He talked about what brownfields were, which are places where industries used to be located and run. These places are now contaminated by the chemical byproducts of the industry that happened on the land. It also explained that more often then not these brownfield sites are easy to clean but it is more difficult because NJ has so many places like this. The book then talks about Camden, New Jersey as a place with a lot of these brownfields. It was shocking to hear about how the town once was bustling with industry and is now a shell of what it once was. What is left of Camden is filled with chemicals.
However, also in this I thought it was really interesting to learn about the Roebling family and how the company that was created really helped move us along in industrial terms. I think that we just need to keep in mind that these advances do come with some negatives. I think it is amazing what he did to help us make advance but it is unfortunate that it also caused us so much harm at the same time.