You can kill Americans abruptly with bombs and bullets. A stealthier approach is to poison their environment.
Beginning in the latter decades of the 19th century, poisons increasingly accumulated in our air, water and soil as industries expanded. We celebrated our industrial might, but we had little knowledge and less concern regarding the wastes generated by the rapid growth of manufacturing and mining.
Dr. Clif CleavelandSome wastes were rapidly dispersed by countless smokestacks. Mercury contained in the smoke from burned coal silently entered aquatic food chains to threaten the health of subsequent generations. Rivers and streams were treated like sewers by chemical plants. Runoff from mining of coal and minerals contained toxins that entered interconnected streams.
Some pollution was more localized since certain manufacturers either buried toxic wastes in unstable containers or left them to rust in open, relatively uninhabited spaces. These became environmental time bombs.
My first contact with environmental toxins occurred during pediatric rotations in medical school. Children from lead-polluted slums of Baltimore filled a ward, their nervous systems often damaged beyond repair.