Cool Hunting

Superfund365 is an innovative website that will, over the course of one year, profile 365 differrent man-made toxic catastrophes by featuring one superfund site per day. From Manhattan to Oahu there are many locales that are listed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and run the gamut from former military installations to factories that leached such niceties as radioactive materials or PCBs into groundwater. Superfund sites present a very real and nasty health threat and the 365 on this list continue to expose its neighbors to poisons left over from industrial operations that were swept under the carpet rather than properly decommissioned.

The site is skillfully assembled with some Flash animation and provides interesting tidbits such as the history of the superfund site, the racial makeup and economic background of immediate neighbors. In fact, this past Tuesday I learned of a former chemical factory in New Jersey that's now 85-acres of toxic marsh within 10 miles of the New York City metropolitan area.

The project was conceived by New York City-based digital media artist Brooke Singer who was featured on Cool Hunting for 800 Steps. On Friday, 15 September 2007, Singer will give a multimedia presentation on this project. More info here.