During the past three decades, one of the most persistent international environmental issues has been the toxic waste trade between industrialized countries and less developed nations. From 1968 to 1988 alone, more than 3.6 million tons of toxic waste—solvents, acetone, cobalt, cadmium, chemical and pharmaceutical waste, and perhaps some low-level radioactive waste—were shipped to less developed nations. The saga of the freighter Khian Sea is a graphic example of this trade. In 1988 the ship departed from Philadelphia loaded with toxic incinerator ash. Four thousand tons of the waste, which contained dioxin and furans, two of the most toxic chemicals known to humans, were dumped on a beach in Haiti. No effort has ever been made to clean it up. Another ten thousand tons were later dumped illegally at sea.

That same year, another international toxic waste shipment led to a major diplomatic row...