Kepone...
In the US, kepone was produced by Allied Signal Company and LifeSciences Product Company in Hopewell, Virginia. The improper handling and dumping of the substance into the nearby James River (U.S.) in the 1960s and 1970s drew national attention to its toxic effects on humans and wildlife. The product is similar to DDT and is a degradation product of Mirex. The history of Kepone incidents are reviewed in Who's Poisoning America?: Corporate Polluters and Their Victims in the Chemical Age (1982). In 2009, Kepone was included in the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants, which bans its production and use worldwide.
The James River was closed to fishing for thirteen years.
Volkswagen...
The EPA discovered Volkswagen had intentionally programmed turbocharged direct injection (TDI) diesel engines to activate certain emissions controls ONLY during laboratory emissions testing. The programming caused the vehicles' NOx output to MEET US standards during regulatory testing but emit up to 40 TIMES MORE NOx in real-world driving. Volkswagen deployed this programming in about eleven million cars worldwide, and 500,000 in the United States, during model years 2009 through 2015. The EPA fined Volkswagen US$2.8 billion criminal and US$1.5 billion in civil penalties, 6 executives have been charged.
Positive Train Control...
Since 1990 the technology and hardware has been available to prevent accidents. Positive train control (PTC) is a system of functional requirements for monitoring and controlling train movements as an attempt to provide increased safety. The American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association (AREMA) describes Positive Train Control as having these primary characteristics. President George W. Bush signed the 315-page Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 into law on October 16, 2008 Among its provisions, the law provides funding to help pay for the development of PTC technology, limits the number of hours freight rail crews can work each month, and requires the Department of Transportation to determine work hour limits for passenger train crews.
In October 2015 Congress passed a bill extending the compliance deadline by three years, to December 31, 2018 Meanwhile many passengers have been killed or injured in accidents that could have been prevented.
This list could go on for thousands of violations of environmental regulations that caused direct harm to humans and animals. There are reasons for the regulations we have and why we update them as new knowledge is acquired regarding human safety.
