ABSTRACT
When land contamination was first identified in the late 1970s, in a few of the industrialized nations, almost nothing was known of the hazards this could pose. The governments concerned, in the United States, The Netherlands, West Germany and the United Kingdom, thus had to react in a state of partial information. Other industrialized countries, which had not had the problem thrust upon them, found the partial evidence of environmental hazards unconvincing and chose not to treat land contamination as a problem of real concern. Some still persist in this view.
