I think people are somewhat more on board with hazardous chemical byproducts being produced and dumped "somewhere" rather than a town, maybe several towns, potentially all being poisoned to the point of needing evacuation because of an uncontrolled accident/spill/burn.

I worked on a cleanup at a site in Metamora, MI. Dude took haz waste for 20-30 years from all over but I'd guess most was generated in Detroit which was about a 1/2 hour away. Government changed the rules, he couldn't afford to comply, they sued to shut him down and he declared bankruptcy, walked away. We spent 8 months there just securing the site and understanding what he had buried. Think it eventually turned into a Superfund site but I was out of the field by the time that happened. Short story, areas with money don't want this in their backyard. They either end up in poor neighborhoods were nobody cares or out in the middle of nowhere.
...we're producing hazardous things we do not know how to deal with, and the earth's population is rising, and the harm caused by those products is increasing, it would make total sense to publicize each environmental accident or disaster or catastrophe and to get into the real reasons those toxic substances were there, and how to not re-create that.
That's not something I think will happen in this country. Nobody makes any money off that.
And that's the crux of the matter. Don't get me wrong, we get better all the time. Production facilities continue to improve safety procedures and how they respond to incidents. We have looked under the carpet and seen how dirty it is under there after years of non-regulation. It's getting a lot better but it's a big hill to climb.
Not many people realize just how long asbestos and lead companies knew that stuff was deadly before laws got passed banning it (oops, still totally legal to put asbestos in thousands of products today thanks to industry complaints and a screwed up judicial system!). PFAS will be the next one and I guarantee that we will eventually find out that companies have know for decades how bad PFAS are. DuPont has already split into many smaller companies and offloaded all their potential future liabilities from PFAS onto one of the companies so that when the lawsuits/fines really start coming, there will be no money to go after.
Funny you mention asbestos. It has it's place but education helps. Fun fact: theoretically, because an asbestos fiber is so light, once in the air it would never touch the ground again. Anyhow, PCB's were always my example when talking about this. Virtually every transformer in the US had PCB oil in it at one time or another. It was used in everything because it conducted heat so well. They would use old PCB oil for dust suppression on dirt roads in the past. Then all of a sudden we discover a link to cancer and BAM! after 50 years of production, PCB's are bad. Started one of the largest cleanups the world has ever known. Every time a transformer blew up, you had to check for PCB's. Companies made millions draining transformers or replacing them.
My point, there is always innovation occurring. Bigger, better, faster stuff to replace what we use today. Money drives all this stuff and cleaning up past mistakes doesn't make the company who generated it or used it any cash.