http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal (sfw!)
this may be well known to northeasterners or folks a little older than me, but i'd never heard of it.
Quote:
In the mid 1970s Love Canal became the subject of national and international attention after it was revealed in the press that the site had formerly been used to bury 21,000 tons of toxic waste by Hooker Chemical (now Occidental Petroleum Corporation).
typical corporate greed and bull****, right? not quite:
Quote:
The Niagara Falls City School District needed land to build new schools, and attempted to purchase the property from Hooker Chemical that had been used to bury toxic waste. The corporation refused to sell, citing safety concerns, and took members of the school board to the canal and drilled several bore holes to demonstrate that there were toxic chemicals below the surface. However, the board refused to capitulate.[1] Eventually, faced with the property being condemned and/or expropriated, Hooker Chemical agreed to sell on the condition that the board buy the entire property for one dollar. In the agreement signed on April 28, 1953, Hooker included a seventeen line caveat that explained the dangers of building on the site.
hey, what could go wrong? well...
Quote:
The matter went quiet for more than a year and was resurrected by reporter Michael Brown, who then investigated potential health effects by carrying forth an informal door-to-door survey in early 1978, finding birth defects and many anomalies such as enlarged feet, heads, hands, and legs. He advised the local residents to create a protest group, which was led by resident Karen Schroeder, whose daughter had many (about a dozen) birth defects. The New York State Health Department followed suit and found an abnormal incidence of miscarriages.
Quote:
Lois Gibbs, a local mother who called an election to head the Love Canal Homeowners' Association, began to further rally homeowners. Her son, Michael Gibbs, began attending school in September 1977. He developed epilepsy in December, suffered from asthma and a urinary tract infection, and had a low white blood cell count,[15][16] all associated with his exposure to the leaking chemical waste.
[...]
In the following years, Gibbs led an effort to investigate community concerns about the health of its residents; she and other residents made repeated complaints of strange odors and "substances" that surfaced in their yards. In Gibbs' neighborhood, there was a high rate of unexplained illnesses, miscarriages, and mental ******ation.[16] Furthermore, basements were often covered with a thick, black substance, and vegetation was also dying. In many yards, the only vegetation that grew were shrubby grasses.
beautiful upstate ny, folks!