The human population has exploded over the last 500 years. The technologies and infrastructure that brought the world out of the Stone Age have advanced to the point that the average lifespan has increased by more than fifty years. This explosion of growth has contributed greatly to the environment in which all humans live. Due to the increase in population and the need for continued growth in infrastructure, there will be a higher increase in environmental disasters. When these disasters affect an entire population center, they sometimes cannot be contained, leading to areas such as superfund sites and brownfields. These environmental disasters could often be avoided if appropriate safeguards were put in place from the start. Preserving the human population requires three fundamental elements. Access to clean water, food and shelter supports current lives while creating new ones. However, when environmental disasters occur, these three elements can be taken out of the equation. The most iconic environmental disaster in American history is the Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York. The Canal d'Amour is considered a superfund site, that is to say an area contaminated by toxic and dangerous materials and which presents a danger to any population located nearby. The Love Canal is an area that was covered in chemical waste by the Hooker Chemical Company. The land on which the toxic waste was dumped was later sold to the Niagara Falls School Board in order to accommodate Niagara Falls' rapid population growth. This was then used as a development project to create housing. The Love Canal was used to dump more than 20,000 tons of chemicals. Seepage of this waste began to make its way into the basements of homes built atop the landfill. This se...... middle of paper ......Library line. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1994. The Web. April 27, 2014. Sullivan, Patricia A. “Summary.” National Center for Biotechnology Information. US National Library of Medicine, January 3, 2007. Web. April 27, 2014. .Sullivan, Patricia. “Zinc and Lead Poisoning in Wild Birds in the Tri-State Mining District (Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri).” Zinc and lead poisoning in wild birds in the Tri-State Mining District (Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri) - Springer. National Library of Medicine, December 1, 2004. Web. April 27, 2014. Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. Print.