The human population has exploded in the last 500 years. The technologies and infrastructure that brought the world out of the Stone Age have advanced to the point that average lifespans have increased by more than fifty years. This explosion of growth has contributed heavily to the environment in which all humans live. Due to the increasing amount of population and the need for continued growth of infrastructure, there will be a greater increase in environmental disasters. When these disasters strike an entire population center, they sometimes cannot be contained, which leads to the creation of areas such as superfinance sites and brownfields. These environmental disasters are often preventable if appropriate safeguards were put in place from the start. The sustenance of the human population requires three fundamental elements. Access to clean water, food and shelter sustains current life while creating new life. However, when environmental disasters strike, all three can be eliminated from the equation. The most iconic environmental disaster in US history is the Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York. The Love Canal is considered a superfund site, which is an area that has been contaminated with toxic and hazardous materials and poses a danger to any population in its vicinity. The Love Canal is an area covered in chemical waste from the Hooker Chemical company. The land on which the toxic waste was dumped was then sold to the Niagara Falls school board to manage Niagara Falls' strong population growth. This was then used as a development project to create houses. The Love Canal was used to dump over 20,000 tons of chemicals. Seepage of this waste has begun to make its way into the basements of homes built on top of the landfill. This is if... half of the sheet... Library line. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1994. Web. April 27, 2014. Sullivan, Patricia A. “Abstract.” National Center for Biotechnology Information. United States 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. .Worst, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. Print.