History
Beginning on August 13, 1987, a “30-mile garbage slick” composed primarily of medical and household wastes prompted expansive closures of numerous New Jersey and New York beaches. Investigations ongoing throughout the year indicated that the waste likely originated from “New York City’s marine transfer stations … and the Southwest Brooklyn Incinerator and Transfer Station in particular…” The then-assistant commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection stated his belief that the cause of pollution was intentional rather than accidental; “sealed plastic garbage bags, he said, were cut at the top, so their contents could disperse through the ocean.” Such a deliberate action may have arisen given the high cost (~$1500/ton) associated with the legal disposal of the waste, thus incentivizing private waste contractors to dump illegally to avoid high fees.
Ultimately the Medical Waste Tracking Act of 1988 (MWTA) arose from the aftermath of this situation. It was designed primarily to monitor the treatment of medical wastes through their creation, transportation and destruction, i.e. from “cradle-to-grave.” Congress approved the bill “to amend the Solid Waste Disposal Act to require the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to promulgate regulations on the management of infections waste.” In short, Congress enacted the MWTA as a pilot study to better determine how the life cycle of medical wastes played out under federal regulations.
Read more about this topic: Medical Waste Tracking Act
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)