Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on comprehensive environmental response compensation and liability act: the environment and human health. In general, the Act created requirements and prohibitions regarding abandoned and closed hazardous waste sites, established a trust fund which was to provide for clean up in cases where the responsible parties could not be identified and provided for liability of persons who were responsible for the release of hazardous wastes at these sites. The response effort of CERCLA is guided by the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan commonly known as the National Contingency Plan (NCP). The NCP explains the steps to be followed by responsible parties in reporting and responding to cases in which hazardous materials have been released to the environment. It establishes the procedures, criteria methods to be used by EPA in determining priority releases for long-term response and evaluation. As amended by NCP and SARA, CERCLA provides authority the following kinds of response actions: first it created a program to report spills of hazardous materials, second it formed an emergency response program responsible for cleaning up releases of hazardous materials and finally it created a remedial program to permanently clean up uncontrolled releases from abandoned hazardous sites. Any hazardous substance released to the environment is to be reported to the National Response Center within twenty-four hours if its release exceeds its reportable quantity (RQ). The EPA then publishes a list of these hazardous releases and their reportable quantities. The investigations are then carried and the remedial actions are taken to clean up the sites.