Was contamination of southern California groundwater by chlorinated solvents foreseen?

The historical record does not support the argument that the cause of widespread groundwater contamination by chlorinated solvents in southern California was an inability to anticipate or detect the problem. The propensity of industrial wastes, including chlorinated solvents, to contaminate groundwater was understood by the 1940s in southern California. This understanding was not limited to a small group of specialists, but extended to regulators, industry, and the interested public. Industrial waste disposal was deregulated in 1949 as a result of lobbying by industry, despite a warning from the director of the State Health Department that such action would create "a backlog of water pollution over the State that will constitute a plague comparable to the air pollution in Los Angeles". Regulators warned specifically about the danger that groundwater pollution in the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys would result from improper disposals of industrial chemicals, and solvents were identified as major contaminants in the scientific literature. Analytical methods to detect chlorinated solvents in groundwater at the concentrations found near the DNAPL (dense non-aqueous phase liquids) source zones have been well known since at least 1950, and a method with a detection limit of 10 mug/L was published as early as 1953. (C) 2001 AEHS.