DUMPING NOUN (ENVIRONMENT)

The practice of disposing of radioactive or toxic waste by burying it in the ground, dropping or piping it into the oceans, or depositing it above ground in another country. Etymology: A specialized use of the verbal noun dumping, which literally means 'throwing down in a heap'. History and Usage: It was only in the late seventies that environmentalists began to expose the scale of dumping by all the industrialized nations over the previous decade and the environmental disasters that this could cause. Hazardous waste had been buried in landfill sites on which houses were later built, sent off to Third World countries desperate for revenue, and pumped into rivers and oceans. Dumping became a topical issue in the UK in the eighties first because of public resistance to plans to bury radioactive waste in British landfill sites and later when the UK fell foul of European Community directives on clean beaches because of the large quantities of raw sewage being pumped out to sea from British shores. Dumping increases the input of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus into the marine environment. Steve Elsworth A Dictionary of the Environment (1990), p. 243 Waste trichloroethene probably gets into the tap water because of careless dumping. Which? Aug. 1990, p. 433