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Article: Tackling the oozing monster - hazardous waste. (includes related article on bioremediation)
- Article from:
- Current Events, a Weekly Reader publication
- Article date:
- September 1, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 Weekly Reader Corp. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Part of the grunge-rock Top 10? Hardly. They're slang terms for one of our biggest environmental problems--hazardous waste.
How big is the problem? Consider just one type of hazardous waste: radioactive and toxic wastes generated by America's nuclear weapons plants. Cleaning up this mess alone would require the largest public works project in U.S. history. The task would take decades. And the cost could run into the hundreds of billions of dollars!
The total scope of the hazardous waste cleanup problem involves nearly 50 years of toxic substances that have been in our soil and water. And even if we can clean up the old waste, how do we keep new ...