Love Canal: and the Birth of the Environmental Health Movement

By Lois Marie Gibbs

Today, “Love Canal” is synonymous with the struggle for environmental health and justice. But in 1972, when Lois Gibbs moved there with her husband and new baby, it was simply a modest neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York. How did this community become the poster child for toxic disasters? How did Gibbs and her neighbors start a national movement that continues to this day? What do their efforts teach us about current environmental health threats and how to prevent them? Love Canal is Gibbs’ original account of the landmark case, now updated with insights gained over three decades.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Island Press
• Release date: Feb 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781610910309

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About Island Press

Since 1984, the nonprofit Island Press has been stimulating, shaping, and communicating the ideas that are essential for solving environmental problems worldwide. With more than 800 titles in print and some 40 new releases each year, we are the nation's leading publisher on environmental issues. We identify innovative thinkers and emerging trends in the environmental field. We work with world-renowned experts and authors to develop cross-disciplinary solutions to environmental challenges.

Island Press designs and implements coordinated book publication campaigns in order to communicate our critical messages in print, in person, and online using the latest technologies, programs, and the media. Our goal: to reach targeted audiences—scientists, policymakers, environmental advocates, the media, and concerned citizens—who can and will take action to protect the plants and animals that enrich our world, the ecosystems we need to survive, the water we drink, and the air we breathe.

Island Press gratefully acknowledges the support of its work by the Agua Fund, Inc., The Margaret A. Cargill Foundation, Betsy and Jesse Fink Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, The Forrest and Frances Lattner Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Curtis and Edith Munson Foundation, The Overbrook Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, The Summit Foundation, Trust for Architectural Easements, The Winslow Foundation, and other generous donors.

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Love Canal

and the Birth of the Environmental Health Movement

by Lois Marie Gibbs

Washington | Covelo | London

Publisher's Note: This 2011 edition of Love Canal was produced by replacing introductory and concluding material from the 1998 edition with new text. Chapters I through 5 remain unchanged. The running heads reflect the subtitle of the earlier edition, The Story Continues.

Copyright © 1982, 1998, 2011 Lois Marie Gibbs

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, 1718 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20009.

ISLAND PRESS is a trademark of the Center for Resource Economics.

     Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gibbs, Lois Marie.

Love Canal: and the birth of the environmental health movement / by Lois Marie Gibbs.

    p. cm.

Originally published: Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, c1998.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN-13: 978-1-59726-792-2 (pbk.: alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-59726-792-9 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Love Canal Chemical Waste Landfill (Niagara Falls, N.Y.) 2. Pollution—Environmental aspects—New York State)—Niagara Falls. I. Title.

TD181.N72N513 2010

363.738'40974798—dc22

                                                2010031237

Printed on recycled, acid-free paper

Manufactured in the United States of America

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

Keywords: environmental justice, public health, social movements, toxics, chemical exposure, dioxin, benzene, birth defects, carcinogen, New York State Department of Health

eISBN: 9781610910309

Dedication

To all who have suffered,

To all who have helped at Love Canal,

And to all who have worked

to build a new social justice movement

to protect the environment and the public health

Contents

Introduction: The Growth of a Powerful New Environmental Health Movement

Chapter 1: The Problem at Love Canal

Chapter 2: The Swale Theory

Chapter 3: The Killing Ground

Chapter 4: The Motel People

Chapter 5: Still Studying the Problem

Afterword

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Index

Introduction

The Growth of a Powerful New Environmental Health Movement

Today, Love Canal is uttered alongside Chernobyl, Bhopal, and now Deepwater Horizon as shorthand for one of the worst environmental health disasters in history. But when I first moved to the Love Canal neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, the only thing it symbolized was 1970s suburbia. With lots of trees and children playing outside, I thought it would be a peaceful, safe place to raise my family. Then, in 1978, articles began appearing in the Niagara Falls Gazette about toxic chemicals buried underneath the school where my son Michael attended kindergarten. Suddenly, I began to wonder if those chemicals had anything to do with Michael's seizures and low white blood cell count.

As it turns out, the chemicals buried in an abandoned canal in my neighborhood hurt many more children than Michael. When Hooker Chemical Corporation sold its old dump site to the Niagara Falls School District, it created an unmitigated health hazard, leading to unusually high numbers of miscarriages, cancers, and other health problems. Yet, that sale had another unintended consequence: it sparked the beginning of the environmental health movement in the United States.

As my neighbors and I learned more and more about the dangers posed by the buried chemicals, we began to demand action. First, we pushed our local officials, and when they wouldn't listen, the state and federal governments, to relocate the families living at Love Canal. News of our struggle spread across the country, creating a media firestorm that eventually led to the relocation of nine hundred families, passage of landmark environmental legislation, and national awareness of the hazards of toxic chemicals. Our community's fight against the government and a multibillion-dollar company demonstrated how ordinary citizens can force change if they organize.

In 1978, it was the realization that my own child was in danger that first pushed me to act. Today, it is a growing public awareness that we are all at risk that is strengthening the environmental health movement. Over the past three decades, we have come to understand that toxic chemicals are not only dangerous, they are all around us—not just sitting in waste sites. These chemicals can be found in everyday household products, from cleansers to sunscreens, and are seeping into our bodies. Just this past year, certain baby bottles, plastic toys, lunch boxes, and pacifiers were taken off the market because they leach dangerous chemicals like lead and phthalates. Consumers also became aware of, and concerned about, BFRs (brominated flame retardants) in children's pajamas, crib mattresses, furniture, computers, electronic games, cell phones, and other electronics. BFRs are intended to slow the burn rate of material, but they are also endocrine-disrupting chemicals that pose serious health hazards.

In fact, tests commissioned by the Environmental Working Group of cord blood from ten randomly selected newborns found as many as 232 chemicals, providing new evidence that American children are being exposed, beginning in the womb, to complex mixtures of dangerous substances. Scientists estimate that everyone alive today carries within her or his body at least 700 contaminants, most of which have not been well studied. This is true whether you live in a rural or an isolated area, in the middle of a large city, or near an industrialized area. Because many chemicals have the ability to attach to dust particles, catch air and water currents, and travel far from where they are produced or used, the globe is bathed in a chemical soup. Our bodies have no alternative but to absorb these chemicals and sometimes store them for long periods of time. Wherever we live, we all live in a chemically contaminated neighborhood.

PVC (polyvinyl chloride) or vinyl is one example of a common plastic that is triggering consumer concerns about health risks. A growing body of scientific evidence has found that toxic chemicals released throughout the PVC life cycle are entering our bodies. When PVC is produced, dioxin—a toxic chemical with no safe level of exposure—and other compounds are emitted. When PVC is used in a plastic bottle or in vinyl flooring, it leaches chemicals into the drink or air. When disposed, if PVC is burned, it creates dioxin, and if thrown into a landfill, it leaches chemicals into the groundwater. This plastic can contain lead, cadmium, organotins, and phthalates, which migrate out of the product, into our environment and bodies. Phthalates can cause birth defects; trigger asthma; affect reproduction, including reducing sperm counts and quality; and may cause autism in young children. They have been found in indoor air and dust, and in human urine, blood, and breast milk. In one study by Mary S. Wolff and colleagues that appeared in Environmental Health Perspectives, certain phthalates were found to be present in 100 percent of girls aged six to nine.

The environmental health movement grows as more and more people discover that everyday products release chemicals that trespass into our bodies and that those chemicals are linked to chronic diseases such as breast cancer, reproductive health problems, asthma, autism, and learning disabilities.

When fighting at Love Canal, I remember one mother telling a health department representative that even if the levels of chemicals were safe for her, they could not be safe for her child. She was dismissed back then as an emotional mother. But today she has been vindicated by new scientific research on environmental chemicals and children's exposure risks. Many studies have shown that children are not little adults. Their developing brains and bodies, metabolism, and behaviors make them uniquely vulnerable to toxic chemicals such as those released by PVC and other common products. We now understand that

• exposure begins in the womb through the mother's contact with toxic chemicals. Infants ingest chemicals through breast milk, formula, and contact with their environment.

• rapid brain development in fetuses, infants, and young children make them more susceptible to chemicals that may impair brain function and development.

• for their weight, children eat, drink, and breathe more than adults. Pound for pound, they take in a greater quantity of toxic contaminants. A small exposure translates into a big dose.

• children put things in their mouths and spend a lot of time on the floor and ground, so they may ingest chemicals from toys, containers, dirt, and dust on a regular basis.

As a result of this new understanding and consumer-based campaigns, people today are less willing than ever to bring chemicals into their homes. And industry is starting to respond. Companies like Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Target, Sears, Apple, and Dell are phasing out, or have already phased out, PVC in their products or packaging. In some cases, companies like Johnson and Johnson now use bio-based plastics in bottles, eating utensils, and toys that were once made from PVC. Even automobile manufacturers are removing PVC, mercury, and other toxic materials from their vehicles. Ford has used natural fibers in structural plastics, including wheat straw in storage bins, since 2009, and has used soy urethane blends in seats, headliners, and other interior parts. Ford estimates these measures cut the company's annual petroleum use in 2010 by 3 million pounds.

In addition to voluntary efforts by companies, there are signs that the federal government may be responding to the growing environmental health movement. In May 2010, the President's Cancer Panel (a bipartisan group of scientists) released a report that underscores the need to protect the public from toxic chemicals in the environment and in consumer products. The report said that the growing body of evidence linking environmental exposures to cancer has made the public increasingly aware of this unacceptable burden. People now understand that cancer resulting from environmental and occupational exposures could have been prevented through appropriate national action. Federal chemical laws are weak, funding for research and enforcement is inadequate, and regulatory responsibilities are split among too many agencies. The panel also acknowledged that children are particularly vulnerable because they are smaller and develop faster than adults. The report noted unexplained rising rates of some cancers in children, and it referred to recent studies that have found industrial chemicals in umbilical-cord blood. The panel also acknowledged that health officials lack critical knowledge about the impact of chemicals on fetuses and children.

The scientists recommended that a precautionary, prevention-oriented approach should replace current reactionary approaches to environmental contaminants in which human harm must be proven before action is taken to reduce or eliminate exposures. Optimally, a new management policy should shift the burden of proving safety to manufacturers prior to new chemical approval.

This report couldn't have come at a better time. There is an increasing cry for change from the public, and serious debate in Washington, to change an outdated law called the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA), passed in 1976. TSCA is supposed to ensure that marketed chemicals and products are safe. However, with more than 80,000 chemicals in commerce today, this is an impossible task. Only about 200 chemicals have been tested and even some that have been proven dangerous (like asbestos) are still used.

Public awareness that we are all affected by chemicals in everyday products has significantly strengthened the environmental health movement. At the same time, this movement is also growing in contaminated communities. While the entire population is threatened by toxics, citizens who live near production facilities and disposal sites face heightened risk from pollution. Love Canal sounded the first alarm about the environmental and health risks of land disposal of toxic wastes in 1978. The first alarm for production risks was in 1947 in Texas City, Texas, where an explosion of ammonium nitrate killed 576 people and injured thousands more. The April 2010 BP oil-rig fire and explosion in the Gulf of Mexico continues to make clear the risk associated with oil production.

Production and disposal sites, especially those that release significant pollution, are most often located in low-income areas or communities of color. Community leaders do not think this is an accident. They believe their neighborhoods were targeted, chosen deliberately by corporations to be sacrificed for profits and economic growth.

There is mounting evidence that the locations of industrial plants and dumps are, and for years have been, selected based on community demographics and the associated assumption that there is not enough community power to stop such a facility. Two clear examples are the report by Cerrell Associates, Inc. (Political Difficulties Facing Waste-to-Energy Conversion Plant Siting), completed for the State of California Solid Waste Division in 1984, and a 1991 report prepared by Epley Associates, a public relations firm hired by Chem Nuclear Systems, Inc., which was paid by the North Carolina Radioactive Waste Management Siting Authority to evaluate the political feasibility of siting a low-level radioactive waste dump site in six North Carolina counties. Both reports outline criteria for communities least likely to resist.

These criteria include identifying southern, midwestern, and rural communities that demonstrate openness to the promise of economic benefits, with residents who are generally older than middle age, of low income, and not involved in social issues, with a high school education or less. The Epley report employed terms such as shack to describe living conditions in these communities, and black population to describe the race of the residents.

When the Cerrell report was first brought to public attention by the Los Angeles Times in 1988, the public relations people in government agencies and industrial corporations said that it was a unique example that didn't represent the industry's norm in siting criteria. When the Epley report was leaked to the news media in 1991, however, it also used demographics as the primary criteria for industrial siting. A current example of the same approach can be found in St. James Parish, Louisiana, a primarily African-American, low-income, and already heavily polluted area now known as Cancer Alley. New proposals to build or expand petrochemical facilities are continuing.

What government agencies, their bosses in elected positions, and corporations all fail to understand is that although the targeted communities have little formal education or resources, they are willing to put their very lives on the line to stop the poisoning. For families in these communities, their homes represent a lifetime of investment, and their children are their life. For these reasons, community groups have waged determined, persistent public battles, and have won far more often than they have lost. The most famous example is Warren County, North Carolina. In September 1982, families in this mostly low-income, African-American community laid down in the middle of the street to stop trucks filled with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from being dumped in their neighborhood. Last year, a community in south Florida stopped a school from being built next to a Superfund site.

In community after community, people carried signs, held marches, created informational leaflets, attended political fundraisers, and undertook civil disobedience when necessary to protect their children, homes, and neighborhoods. If one were to ask any of the protesters if they could have pictured themselves carrying a sign before the issue surfaced, they would have answered, Absolutely not. Law-abiding, tax-paying citizens were forced to move from the anonymity of their homes out into the streets—difficult step for anyone, and a big leap for most.

The families in the Cerrell communities organized powerful grassroots groups. These new organizations significantly enlarged the environmental health movement; a movement that currently includes more than 11,000 grassroots community groups.

Advocates' most valuable assets are people power and common sense. Since resources are limited, residents often cannot hire scientists and legal expertise, but they do understand what they see around them. They know when something is wrong. They observe an increase in disease, dead vegetation, chemical smells, and odd tastes in their drinking water.

At the core of this movement is a concern for health combined with the desire for justice and human rights. People believe that no one has the right to make their families sick or their environment unsafe for any reason, certainly not just because they are farmers, working class, poor, or live in a community of color. It is also not fair that ordinary citizens must prove that they are sick because of chemical exposures while chemical corporations are presumed innocent of harming human health unless proven guilty. Why must we continue to be exposed to toxic chemicals while experts argue about how much exposure is safe?

Although the burden of proof is unfairly divided between industry and citizens, grassroots leaders have become sophisticated health investigators. In almost every instance, the hypotheses made by local people have later been confirmed by professionals. For example, it was the mothers of Woburn, Massachusetts, who first discovered a cluster of leukemia cases among neighborhood children in 1979. Health authorities from the state and federal agencies did their own investigations and concluded that there was no connection between the drinking water and disease. The Woburn parents persevered, however, making maps that showed the clustering of leukemia cases along pipelines to a contaminated drinking-water well. They took these maps to health officials, politicians, and anyone they thought would help them. Years later, the Centers for Disease Control confirmed the cluster and closed the well. While it was too late for many of the children who died, they did not die in vain. A book and the movie titled A Civil Action detailed this struggle. This story helped open the eyes of the public and helped the movement grow.

Today, the BP oil spill demonstrates how little has changed in the treatment of poor communities of color. Gulf residents' livelihoods and source of food are being destroyed. Meanwhile, the cleanup of marshes, swamps, and waterways in many communities is moving at a snail's pace.

Soon after the explosion, the local government and residents of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, begged BP and federal authorities to find a way to keep the oil out of their marshes. The community is built on fishing. The destruction of its environment would spell destruction for its people. BP said the oil would never reach the parish. In fact, it was the first place where oil reached land. Today, everything is dead for 24 miles. Plaquemines Parish president Billy Nungesser has promised to do everything in his power to push for compensation and cleanup.

Like Nungesser, the grassroots environmental movement has remained resolute, achieving much over the past three decades. Significant environmental laws have been passed in the United States, including Superfund (the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980)—a direct reaction to the Love Canal disaster. This landmark legislation provides a pool of money to clean up the worst contaminated waste sites in the country. Hundreds of communities have been cleaned up, rivers have been brought back to life, and where there were once unsightly dumps, businesses now contribute to local economies.

In 1986, the Superfund Amendment and Reauthorization Act (SARA) created a community grant program to provide up to $50,000 per Superfund site for citizens groups to hire technical expertise. Within SARA, the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, initiated by workers and aided by movement leaders, was enacted. This law gives everyone the right to know what chemicals are being stored, transported, and disposed of at facilities and plants in a community.

Hundreds of garbage incinerators have not been built because of citizen opposition and more than a thousand landfills have been closed, either because they could not meet new and stronger regulations or because citizens blocked their construction. Recycling has become a household norm. Before the grassroots movement's activities, recycling was thought to be something hippies did on campus. Now people look at you strangely if you throw a soda can in the trash.

Nationwide, the use of chemicals by corporations has been significantly reduced. This is a direct result of the movement's collaborative work to raise the cost of burying hazardous waste. To accomplish this, we pushed to close existing landfills, stop new landfills from being built, and increase transportation costs. Grassroots leaders joined together wherever proposals for new commercial facilities sprang up. Since the beginning of the campaign in February 1984, every new proposal has been beaten, except one located in Colorado. Most of the existing commercial landfills have been closed, leaving only a few commercial disposal facilities open nationwide. This means that most companies have to ship their waste long distances if they want to use this disposal alternative, causing transportation costs and associated accident insurance costs to skyrocket. Today, the commercial landfilling of toxic/hazardous waste has virtually been stopped. Waste reduction, reuse, and chemical substitution are now commonplace in the industry. There is no federal law that prohibits the burial of toxic or hazardous waste. It is the people who won't allow it to happen.

This same strategy was used by the grassroots movement on other issues. For example, in 1987, a campaign was launched to stop the use of Styrofoam packaging. McDonald's Corporation was targeted because it was a high-profile fast-food company that was vulnerable to public opinion. Grassroots leaders believed that if they could get enough consumers to urge McDonald's to stop using foam sandwich boxes, other fast-food restaurants would follow its lead, thus lowering the demand for Styrofoam. The campaign, launched in Vermont, involved children, schools, religious institutions, county governments, and those faced with the potential siting of an incinerator or landfill. This was a broad-based effort that greatly expanded the movement. Soon schoolchildren everywhere joined the campaign, and in restaurants across the country people were saying no to Styrofoam.

On November 1, 1990, McDonald's announced that it would no longer use Styrofoam sandwich packaging. But the campaign was not just about McDonald's—there were many other local victories. Entire counties banned the use of Styrofoam. Churches and state houses stopped using it. Children in elementary and high school, who organized around this issue, continue to work on environmental issues within their schools and communities. The movement's deep history shows us that if we work together locally and network nationally, we can affect change.

Environmental justice and human rights have been a constant focus as the movement has grown. In October 1991, a powerful event took place that propelled the issues of justice and human rights to the doorsteps of the president and congressional leaders. The First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit brought together many diverse cultures and communities for political and spiritual growth. A set of principles was agreed upon and newly formed coalitions began their collective work. Over the years, these webs of connections have grown and become stronger; so has the movement. Nothing frightens polluting corporations and politicians more than long-term goals, shared by many, uniting the active social justice movement in this country.

In February 1994, President Bill Clinton signed an Executive Order on Environmental Justice. Clinton issued the order in response to the powerful, organized efforts of groups like the Indigenous Environmental Network, Southwest Network for Economic and Environmental Justice, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, United Church of Christ, and others. The Environmental Justice Executive Order acknowledges the obvious: communities of color and low-income communities receive more than their fair share of polluting industries and waste sites. The order provides guidance for federal and state agencies to examine whether these communities or low-income areas are being deliberately targeted by polluting industries over alternative sites. It also suggests the need to review whether the cleanup process is different in communities of color or low-income communities than it is in other communities. Early in 2010, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced that she would make environmental justice a priority, increasing the budget and establishing a new team of people to focus on the issue.

At one time, people believed that Love Canal was an isolated event. However, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took a closer look, they found 30,000 other potential Love Canals. However, when the public at large heard that communities of color and low-income communities were being specifically targeted by polluting industries, they still felt safe. They thought that they personally did not have to worry.

This presumption of safety ended in September 1994, when the EPA released a draft report on the health effects of dioxin. According to many scientific researchers, dioxin causes cancer, depresses the immune system, causes reproductive and developmental problems such as early puberty in girls and undersized penises in boys, infertility, diabetes, skin disorders, and more. Dioxin also crosses the placenta, resulting in birth defects and developmental problems like learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder.

The EPA told us that, on average, the American people had accumulated enough dioxin in their bodies that any additional exposure could cause adverse health effects. Families exposed at Love Canal and other contaminated sites have passed well beyond the safety threshold, as have Vietnam veterans who were exposed to dioxin contained in the defoliant Agent Orange. The general public receives continual, low-level exposure to dioxin through our food supply. So, no one is safe. Every time parents give their child milk, cheese, beef, or fish, they are feeding them dioxin. The EPA estimates that 90 percent of the total dioxin to which the average person is exposed comes from diet.

Dioxin also comes from incinerators that burn household garbage, as well as from plants that burn medical and hazardous waste; from paper and pulp mills that use chlorine in bleaching; from plastics and pesticide manufacturing; and from cement kilns that burn hazardous waste or biowastes as fuel. When dioxin is released from a smokestack, it travels great distances and lands on grass and agricultural fields. Every time cattle eat grass or livestock feed, they ingest a little dioxin. That dioxin is stored in their fatty tissue and released in their milk. When we drink milk, eat other dairy products or beef, we ingest dioxin, which is then stored in our fatty tissues. Chicken, fish, and shellfish are similarly contaminated.