Law - Toxic Waste

National laws and international treaties to control the manufacture, transportation, and disposal of toxic waste emerged primarily in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Also, a few lawsuits involving damages from early varieties of toxic waste were brought.

For example, as early as 1831, lawsuits involving disposal of highly toxic waste from coal gas manufacturing plants were successfully brought against gas manufacturers. However, until the late twentieth century, these kinds of actions were sporadic and made little difference in dealing with widespread pollution problems.

National laws and international treaties emerged in part as a response to major environmental disasters involving toxic chemicals, such as the 1984 Union Carbide accident in Bhopal, India, where thousands were killed. Such laws and treaties are also an acknowledgment of a growing problem.

The annual global volume of toxic and hazardous waste was estimated at 400 million metric tons at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as compared to only 4.5 million metric tons fifty years earlier. More than half this volume—over 226 million metric tons— was generated in the United States alone.

Worldwide accumulation of obsolete pesticides— one major category of toxic waste—is over 453,592 metric tons, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Of this amount, perhaps one-quarter is found in African nations.

Dumping industrial waste in developing nations is often seen as unjust and even racist in that developing nations are unprepared to deal with the hazards of the waste, and many people do not understand exactly what they are receiving. Because of this, and because of the damage already being inflicted in some nations, the international trade in toxic waste is high on the list of international environmental priorities.

Efforts to protect public health from toxic wastes have centered around (1) controlling trade of toxic waste from industrial to developing nations through the Basel Convention on the Control of Trans-Boundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal and (2) controlling generation of toxic wastes at the source through the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants.

These efforts have been hampered by a lack of funding, by a lack of participation by some important nations (especially the United States), and by discordance with regional trade agreements, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The most acute problems involve existing waste dumps and the growing illegal trade in toxic waste, which was estimated at $1-2 billion in 2002. Laws and treaties against this trade have not been easy to enforce.

The issue is made more complex by the fact that the international community and the United States have taken divergent paths in response to the problem. U.S. legislation includes a variety of laws dealing with toxic waste control and cleanup, and U.S. multilateral agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) promote transboundary movement of some types of toxic waste. Meanwhile, the United States has not ratified the Basel and Stockholm treaties, despite its position as the world's most significant generator of toxic waste.

Although some observers believe that U.S. law is not far removed from international treaty, the divergent paths reflect both conservative U.S. policies about environmental problems and a degree of U.S. isolation from international opinion.