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SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
SPEAKER_05: Hey, and welcome to the podcast.I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too.And this is Stuff You Should Know, the I-can't-believe-this-happened-but-I-can-totally-believe-it edition.
SPEAKER_07: Oh, I thought it was the romantic cruise in the gondola edition.
SPEAKER_05: I know, you'd think so by the name of it, Love Canal.
SPEAKER_07: Love Canal sounds so wonderful.
SPEAKER_05: For sure, it does.But it's not.No, the Love Canal we're talking about today is not wonderful or nice at all.Even before it was filled with toxic waste, it was not so great to begin with.Spoiler alert. Yeah.Love Canal is filled with toxic waste.As we'll see, Love Canal was an incident in American history where America came to grips with the idea that all the toxic waste that had been burying for the last century, essentially.Yeah. was starting to intrude into the ground and that there was way more than just water pollution or air pollution.
There was such thing as ground pollution.And all of a sudden, all the toxic waste sites around the United States suddenly seemed like ticking time bombs, thanks to one that actually went off.
SPEAKER_07: That's right.And supplementary material are – did we do one on super funds?I know we did one on brownfield remediation.That's the closest I think we came.Okay.That was an old one, though.But, you know, if you're into that kind of thing – or maybe landfills, too.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, if you're a remediation fan, check it out.
SPEAKER_07: But for this one, we should go back in time, correct?Correct.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, let's go back all the way back to the 1890s.We're going to head on up north to Niagara Falls, New York.Not just the falls, but the city.There's a city called Niagara Falls.And it is where you would stay if you were honeymooning in Niagara Falls, which is something that people did for a very long time.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, we also did one on going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
SPEAKER_05: Totally did.If you're a fan of barrels, check it out.
SPEAKER_07: That feels like one of those that had to be like an early 15-minute episode.
SPEAKER_05: Oh, I really think it was like on par with more like five.
SPEAKER_07: Okay.It was a long, long time ago.Yeah.So 1890s, we are in Niagara.We look to our right and we see a gentleman named William T. Love.
SPEAKER_05: He says, hello.
SPEAKER_07: He says, hi there.He's very excited because he said, I've got an idea for you guys.Niagara Falls is doing pretty great here.It's powering a bunch of industrial mills around.But I have a vision that we can make this better.We can build a model city.If we just divert. Part of this Niagara River over there on Lewiston Ridge.And then he pointed that away, whichever way that was.And he said, we can double our hydroelectric output if we do that.
It's just four miles down river.And we can build this amazing neighborhood that has electricity and telephone lines and anything you would want.And like I said, we'll call it Model City.And all you got to do is let me build Love Canal.You don't have to name it that.
SPEAKER_05: Right.
SPEAKER_07: But it'll be seven miles long, 80 feet wide and 15 feet deep.And that's all we need to do.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.So he wanted to set up a new fall.He wanted to create a man-made or human-made waterfall to generate hydroelectric power, which would power this amazing town that he was building.I mean, because that was quite a draw.Electricity, telephones, gas lines, sewer lines in the 1890s.Like he would have gotten some takers.Pretty fancy. And he got some investors for sure.And also in what would become a longstanding tradition, the city of Niagara Falls gave this random person carte blanche to exercise eminent domain and take people's land, to carve a canal from the Niagara River to a different part to divert some of it, to just do some really serious stuff. And he got a lot of people interested.
But two things happened that killed the model city plan of William T. Love.First, the panic of 1893.It was a huge economic meltdown in the 1890s.Scared a lot of investors.They wanted sure things from that point on. And then the second thing was Nikola Tesla, he came up with the method of long-distance electrical transmission.The whole reason William T. Love wanted to build this hydroelectric plant is because you needed close-by electrical generation to power stuff.Tesla said, you don't need that anymore.So at that point, William T. Love just threw up his hands and moved to, I think, some rural part of Ontario.Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: He went north.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: Very interesting.Seems like he goes south after that.
SPEAKER_05: You would think so, but he didn't.He went north, and it was like, I can't remember.It was like the name of the town was Rats something.It was not a pleasant place to be.But he left behind a legacy of sorts, didn't he?
SPEAKER_07: He did.He left behind, you know, they got started on the dam, or I'm sorry, on the canal.I think dam when I think hydroelectricity.Look at me.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: Not seven miles, but one mile of this thing had been dug.And so it's there.It's, you know, I don't know if it was the full 80 feet wide and 15 feet deep and a mile long, but it was a huge dug up swath of earth.And so the city is like, all right, well, now we got this here.I guess, you know, kids are swimming in it in the summer and they're skating on it in the other 10 months out of the year. And in the 1930s, a company came along, the Hooker Electrochemical Company, which made industrial chemicals and plastics and pesticides and all kinds of stuff.And they said, I would like to buy that land because we would like to or we would like to buy that land because we would like to do what everyone else does when they have toxic waste.And that's bury it. and steel drums.And that's a, you've already dug the hole for us.
So you did a lot of the work up front and we'd like to buy it so we can stick our drums in there.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.William T. Love inadvertently dug out a trash pit.Yeah.That the hooker company was like, heck yeah.I looked up the dimensions.I think it was something like 3000 feet by 10 feet deep by I think 20 or something feet across.So it covered like 16 acres essentially and, And that's a lot.You can fit a lot of waste in a 10-foot deep pit.Yeah.
That's 16 acres total surface area.And they did.They ended up, so because they, the hooker company didn't make the products that kill us.They made the ingredients that people put into the products that kill us.
SPEAKER_06: Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_05: So like they actually created the dioxins and the PCBs and stuff that plastic manufacturers and pesticide makers used in their products.So the stuff they were throwing away as waste was as deadly as it gets, essentially, like just the most toxic of toxic waste.But at the time, people didn't realize that.They knew you didn't want to be around it or get it on your skin or breathe it in.But they did not realize the extent of toxicity of some of these things.
SPEAKER_07: No, not at all.And they ended up over a nine-year period bearing close to 22,000 tons of this stuff in the Love Canal.And like you said, every toxic compound and dioxin and carcinogen you can think of practically is in there.And like you were mentioning, it wasn't like it is today, obviously.First of all, the fact that you could do that at all. But the way they did it, you know, if a lid popped off after it was in there, they didn't send someone down there to seal that lid.If one of the drums got cracked or something, they didn't say, oh, well, let's get down there and get that drum out of here and repair it or put the waste in a new drum.They were just like, it's probably fine.They're hosing their hands and clothes off with the hoses of nearby neighbors.And all of a sudden, you know.
problems start happening kind of right away.You know, groundwater is rising.Some of these drums are rusting and stuff starts leaching pretty quickly.So they said, all right, we've filled this thing about as full as we can full it.Uh, not just them, but I think like all like local, uh, the city of Niagara was dumping stuff in there and like all kinds of people were dumping stuff.Right.
SPEAKER_05: The army dumped a bunch of stuff as well.It was not just hooker, but they were far and away the largest contributor to the toxic waves pit.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, for sure.So this thing gets full.They said, all right, we got a 16 acre landfill.Basically, we're going to cap it with some clay, shovel about a foot and a half of topsoil on it and call it a day.And here's what we'll do.City of Niagara.We would like to sell it back to you just for a dollar.
SPEAKER_05: The city of Niagara Falls, like Hooker is the biggest employer there, right?So this seemed like a real like a benefactor type situation.Like this company that was like caring for the community by employing all these people was also showing it cared for the community by basically donating a decent sized chunk of land for the town to build a new elementary school on. Oh, man.And that's what the town did with it.Yeah.It is in a certain ghoulish way for sure.
SPEAKER_07: It's a laugh of irony, not – Right.
SPEAKER_05: Exactly.So that's exactly what they did.The city of Niagara Falls paid $1 to Hooker Chemical Company. And it took possession of this swath of land that contained this toxic waste pit and gave it to the Board of Education and said, build a school.And you might think that that is madness and that's nuts and that probably the hooker company was trying to keep all this under wraps.And apparently that is not the case. Hooker, even in the deed, you can read the deed where they transferred ownership of land to the city.It says like, hey, there's waste down there and you don't want to touch it.But you guys are taking possession of this stuff and it's now your responsibility.So they weren't like trying to pass off something that they knew was like a ticking time bomb from everything I can tell.
Instead, they were like, we can't use this anymore.You guys should use it.Just don't build anything with a basement nearby.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.I mean, they did say we're not liable for anything like that was definitely in the agreement.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: But they also like they literally brought members of the school board out there and they dug holes, I think like eight holes in the ground and said, look, this stuff is four feet down.You can see these these barrels, no basements like don't do any underground piping.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: Don't subdivide it for homes like you should not do that stuff.But apparently the school board was broke. They did it anyway.So, you know, the blood is on the hands of the school board as well as the city and the Hooker Chemical Company.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, this is one of those things where like when you read the histories of it in retrospect, like there's clear heroes, there's clear villains, there's clear, you know, indifference that's just criminal.And all of that is true.It does exist, but it's definitely more nuanced than that.It's not nearly as clear cut as you might read in a single article about Love Canal.And that's part of it.Hooker takes a lot of the blame and part of it is definitely fairly and part of it is not at all fairly for sure.But the one group that seems to have really been Just basically the pits from any angle I can find is the city of Niagara Falls.The managers, the mayor, the city council, they just were not good.
They were not in any kind of position to take on what was about to happen in the neighborhood that was now called Love Canal that had built up around the school.
SPEAKER_07: I think that's a good spot for a break.
SPEAKER_05: Sure it is.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, it's kind of early, but I mean, that's as good as a Niagara Falls style cliffhanger as you can get, right?
SPEAKER_05: That's right.
SPEAKER_07: People are hanging off of Lewiston Ridge.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, their barrels are just dangling from their toes.
SPEAKER_07: All right.We'll be right back then and tell you what started happening pretty quickly after this.
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SPEAKER_07: All right.So we mentioned elementary school.What better to do on a chemical waste dump there in Springfield than to build the 99th Street School?This school, if you look at a map, is was built right in the center of where this landfill was.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, even just taking the toxic waste out of account, the stability of the ground, it's like scary just looking at like a hokey map of it.
SPEAKER_07: No, totally.I didn't even think about that.Like, foundationally, it probably wasn't that, you know, firm, you know?
SPEAKER_05: No.
SPEAKER_07: So they completed the school in 1955.Even though they said, hey, don't subdivide this for homes, they were like, are you kidding me?People want to live near the school.So the neighborhood that was known as Love Canal had about 800 houses and about 240 apartments.Wow. And right away, I think this was all completed, the school in 55.Yeah.And starting in like two or three years later, problems started happening.People were coming down with physical symptoms that were horrifying.Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think 1958, some kids were taken to the hospital for treatment of chemical burns.Yeah, that's just a few years of the school opening.The following year, a family called the Voorhees found that there was black sludge seeping through their basement walls.It's like a horror movie.Yeah.I mean, I think that's literally part of Amityville horror at the end.Isn't there like black sludge seeping through the walls?
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I mean, I think there's more than one movie that does the old black sludge trick.
SPEAKER_05: Well, this is where they got it, was from the Families of Love Canal in the late 50s.There's another thing I turned up.The kids in the area loved to play with fire rocks that they found.There was a kind of rock they found that if you threw it in another rock or threw it at a hard surface, sometimes it would explode, catch fire.One kid put some of these fire rocks in his pockets and ran home, and the friction caused the fire rocks to catch fire and burn the kid quite badly. And so, of course, people started investigating.They're like, that's chunks of white phosphorus and you should probably stop playing with that.It was like that.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.Yeah, totally.The fire chief sent, I believe, a report to the city manager of what he said were obnoxious odors.Of course, we can apply the sick errant scriptum because he meant noxious odors.
SPEAKER_05: Sure.He also said it was irritating to the lungs and we should probably do something about this.And that was 64.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.And then all of a sudden babies start being born that have disfigurements, that have disabilities, deafness.This one baby in the Schroeder family was born with a second row of teeth, among other things.Really alarming stuff.So flash forward, that's 1968.By the 1970s, People are just living there.It looks like a regular suburban, you know, northeastern suburban neighborhood.Some of the residents may have known about this that were in the know, but probably not many of them.There was a lot of series of winters in a row with like tons of rainfall, tons of snow, tons of lakes freezing.
And this all just melts into that groundwater system and carries the stuff even further through the groundwater system. And the canal itself became so saturated that, like, some of these barrels started, like, rising up through the surface of the earth.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.And all the ones that were already open and had been leaking over the years were now really spilling their contents.And that stuff was being pushed up and out of the relative safety of the canal, the pit, you know?Yeah.Like, now it wasn't even being held by the canal any longer.It was, like, in the ground.Yeah. This was in people's backyards.There was a ball field nearby that I saw that it swelled and contracted like a bowl of gelatin whenever heavy equipment drove across it because it was so saturated and just ready to pop.This was a baseball field.
A pool popped out of the ground and was floating on toxic chemicals.Like pools of toxic sludge were starting to appear in people's backyards because the ground was so saturated and there was some really toxic stuff in the ground.So you put those things together, all of a sudden people's backyards are toxic waste sites.And some, like you said, some had no idea that that was there by the 70s.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, absolutely.All manner of wildlife, of course, is dying.Trees are dying.Landscaping is dying back.People are losing their hair.Pets are losing their hair.All of a sudden, there's breathing problems.There's numbing.There's fatigue.There's blood in people's stools.
And eventually, in 1976, the Niagara Gazette publishes the very first article that says, hey, this nightmare that's happening all around us, by the way, has a reason behind it.And it's because the Love Canal and Hooker Chemical got together and it's a toxic waste dump, basically.And a lot of these residents are like for the very first time learning what's going on and probably going, oh, my God, you know, so much of my life makes sense now.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.Those 55 gallon drums that were popping out of the creek beds.That makes sense now.I understand it now.But I mean, it was so I think even the people who were used to had grown up throwing fire rocks at one another and were like used to the idea that there was some weird stuff around, maybe even knew there was a dump site nearby.Yeah.This was now in their backyard. thanks to the blizzard of 77 that dumped so much snow on that eventually trickled in and then saturated the ground, it brought it into the sunlight.And now there was just no denying it whatsoever.And then the Niagara Gazette, like you said, brought it further into the sunlight.
So it was such an obvious problem out of the gate that the city of Niagara hired the Calspan Corporation, They do all sorts of like freelance testing and stuff.And they investigated.They went to some of the basements that were emitting black sludge and checked the sump pumps.And they did some air testing and they checked the sewer lines.And as the data started to roll in while they were doing this testing, there was a really dramatic moment where all of the Calspan people got in their cars and sped away as fast as they could.
SPEAKER_07: In the movie, that's exactly what would happen.And then they just like they throw a file out the window and it slides to the feet of the mayor.And in that file is the data, which basically says this place is a disaster.The levels of toxic compounds is is truly horrifying.We're out of here.But nothing happened.They didn't disclose the report and the findings from that report.The city of Niagara didn't. So the drumbeat keeps happening from the Niagara Gazette over the course of 77, 78.They're still doing this, these reports.
No one is still doing anything because like you mentioned at the beginning, Hooker Chemical is still there.There's still a huge employer for that town and it's a huge expense to clean this stuff up.So they weren't eager to bring this like fully into the light and say, all right, we got to do something about it.
SPEAKER_05: No.So the city had a – I saw what was described as an incestuous relationship with Hooker Chemical.There was a time where Hooker was suspected of leaking waste elsewhere in the city.And so they hired Hooker Chemical to go take samples and analyze it to find out if they were.That kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_06: Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_05: In addition to not wanting to tick off Hooker, they were also really worried about tourism.Because like I said, this is a time where if you honeymooned and you were working class or middle class, there's a good chance you would travel to Niagara Falls and honeymoon there.So tourism was a big part of their economy.They didn't want to be like, come to Niagara Falls.We got the falls and a toxic waste dump too.Right. So people are like, we need to keep this quiet.That was the city's position.We need to keep this quiet.We need to deny.
We need to obfuscate.That was the whole thing that they tried to do.And it got, as word got out, people started kind of castigating the mayor and the city council.I saw that I couldn't find the actual video, but I saw reference to an episode of the Donahue show, Phil Donahue.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: And he had the mayor on, Michael O'Loughlin.And apparently Donahue compared him to the mayor from Jaws, who only cared about keeping the beaches open, which I thought was kind of apt.
SPEAKER_07: I can hear and visualize Donahue doing that with his righteous indignation.
SPEAKER_05: I can imagine Phil Hartman doing Phil Donahue doing that.
SPEAKER_07: Man, God, what a loss.I think about Phil Hartman about once a month, I feel like.
SPEAKER_05: Well, there you go.There's your monthly reminder.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah. So sad.We should do a show on him at some point.
SPEAKER_05: It's a good idea.
SPEAKER_07: That'd be kind of awesome.So they got a health commissioner, Dr. Francis Clifford, and he came along and he said, you're all hypochondriacs.This is just an odiferous nuisance, really.It's like you're just smoking a few cigarettes or something.It's really no big deal here.If you have a basement and you've got sludge and stuff, here's a window fan on us.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: And that should take care of it.You can thank us later. And all of this is happening and being buried.And we mentioned Promise of a Hero.And in steps a remarkable human being named Lois Gibbs who lived in the area, who had no further than a high school education, was a stay-at-home mom.But she knew what was – the writing was on her wall in black sludge. And she knew what was happening and went to the school board and was like, I don't want my son going to this school.I want to pull him out of school.And they said, no, no, no, no, no.We can't do that because the word will get out.
Everyone will freak and there won't be a school anymore. And she said, well, I am a I'm a mad mom and I'm not going to take it.So even though I have no history of activism or organizing or anything, I'm going to start.I'm going to get some other parents together.I'm going to start the Love Canal Parents Movement, which would become the Love Canal Homeowners Association.And we're going to wreak havoc on your head through the press.
SPEAKER_05: She said, close the beaches.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, exactly.Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: So, yeah, I think Lois Gibbs, I want to say, like, she's an example of what a person can do when they're – left without choices and being ignored by the people who are supposed to be helping them.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: But there's a lot of people who would have just probably given up.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: So she is remarkable in that sense for sure.Totally.So she headed the Love Canal Homeowners Association for a couple of years.This thing went on for – so the blizzard of 77 happened at the beginning of 1977.Things really started to just kind of creep out in 76 – This went on until 1980, and the Homeowners Association had to fight every day, tooth and nail, to get somebody to do something about this.And what they had to do first was to show that these complaints of congenital disorders, of what? weird cancers, rectal bleeding, apparently more than one person had rectal bleeding there, liver problems, kidney problems.This wasn't just like some random assemblage of defective people, as one of them put it.Like this was, they were being poisoned by the toxic materials that were flowing into their neighborhood from this overflowing toxic dump.
And the bureaucracy, the city government did everything it could to say, no, you're hypochondriacs.Just sit down and shut up.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, until they couldn't.And finally, because of the newspaper, because of Lois Gibbs and the Homeowners Association raised so much hay, they finally said, all right, the state steps in.The New York State Health Department launched an investigation in 1978.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, they stepped in and they said, City of Niagara, we got this and winked at them.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, exactly.So they did all kinds of testing to the soil, to the air, did health histories and blood tests and stuff of the residents.And, you know, the results were what you were kind of talking about, these birth defects, the liver problems.I think the 35 percent of women had miscarriages, which is, you know. higher than average.Uh, they say, you know, 10 to 20%, some say up to 25 to 30% of pregnancies into miscarriages, but, uh, nothing goes as high as 35.So that was a high number.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: And then finally in August of 78, the state health commissioner, Robert, uh, Waylon, uh, Robert Big Bob Whalen said a health emergency is being declared.If you are pregnant, if you have kids under two, you should leave the area.And this wasn't some, you know, super upper upper class affluent area.They couldn't just pack up and leave.So they were mad.They were like, what do you expect us to do when we live here?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, these were people who were tied to this area by their mortgages.I saw the average income was between $10,000 and $25,000, which at the time is like $47,000 to $118,000 today.So like pretty squarely middle class. But not the kind that can just be like, okay, I'm walking away from my mortgage.Here's my house bank.I'm just going to go start life elsewhere.They couldn't do that.They were stuck there with these houses that it was becoming increasingly clear no one would want. Which was a huge problem.They were facing a catch-22.
Nobody was going to help them unless they got national attention for this.But the more attention they got for it, the more they were sticking themselves in this place until they got the help they needed.Because no one was going to come along and buy your house after a very short time when word about Love Canal got out.
SPEAKER_07: That's right.But guess who did buy their house? Jimmy Carter.Uh, it finally does become national news.Uh, the national TV networks were all over it.Uh, they were doing reports from there with all these protests happening.Uh, Jimmy Carter steps in, he declares a federal state of emergency and said, here's $10 million.Uh, we can relocate.We're going to buy up your houses.If you live, uh, within the first, like, uh, the first zone, basically like that's closest to the canal, uh,
SPEAKER_05: Chuck, I'm sorry.I'm sorry.On behalf of everyone listening, you're really not going to do a Jimmy Carter impression offering to buy these people's houses?
SPEAKER_07: Oh, boy.I don't know if I've ever done Jimmy Carter.
SPEAKER_05: You have.
SPEAKER_07: If I did, I was doing it when I was a kid.
SPEAKER_05: You have.I've heard you.
SPEAKER_07: Have I?Oh, now I'm on the spot and I'm missing a tooth.
SPEAKER_05: Okay.All right. Maybe he can come in later.This will be the first time.No, it's not happening.
SPEAKER_07: It was the first time that federal emergency funds were used in the United States in their history or our history. For something other than a natural disaster.So it was a big, big deal that they stepped in then along with the help of New York State when Governor Kerry said, we're going to buy up 239 of these homes in the first couple of rings around this landfill.We're going to close that school and also maybe don't eat those veggies or the herbs you've been growing in your backyard.
SPEAKER_05: That was part of it.And also, don't spend unnecessary time in your basement.That was the other thing they said.So all the teenage boys were just like, oh, man.So that's pretty cool.The first two rings, so people whose backyards were on top of essentially the waste pit. And then the people like maybe across the street from them, like all the way around the Love Canal, the U.S.government was like, we're going to buy your houses.You can move now.You're fine.
We're going to pay you fair market value for them.And the 239 people were like, yeah, OK, or 239 families.But still, it was awful.I mean.
SPEAKER_07: Imagine being like, well, I got to leave my home now.Like, sure, someone's buying my house, but I didn't want to leave.I work here.
SPEAKER_05: That's definitely part of it, for sure.There had to be like a pretty decent sense of relief, though.At least that was happening.They weren't stuck anymore.But yeah, I'm sure they didn't want to leave their community or at least some of them.But the problem was this.You said that there was about 800 houses and a whole apartment building that was in this Love Canal neighborhood. And the people who were there were like, OK, you can't forget about us.We need help, too.Like in addition to like no one wanting to buy our houses because we're so close to the Love Canal dump, we're still suffering all sorts of health maladies as well.
And so the city goes back to their playbook and they're like, there's no way you guys are actually suffering health maladies.You're beyond the second ring of houses.You guys are fine.You're just hypochondriacs.And the whole thing started all over again.And I think luckily for all the people who lived in Love Canal that were left out of the 800, the fact that Lois Gibbs was among them was definitely a mark in their favor for sure because she was unstoppable.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, she lived in that second zone, so she was still there.
SPEAKER_05: So I say we take a break and then we come back and talk a little more about what Lois Gibbs did and who she got some help from.
SPEAKER_07: Hint, hint, she didn't quit.
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SPEAKER_05: So, Chuck, now we reach the point where Love Canals starts to really become national news because the federal government, the state government, the local government, they're like, yep, problem solved.We moved the people who needed to.We demolished their homes. It's all good, essentially.And this whole group that was left behind that still needed help were like, no, we're going to get louder than ever, essentially.And a division grew in the community where in Love Canal, they were viewed outside of the neighborhood and the rest of the city as basically loudmouths, rabble-rousers, people who were just out for like easy money from the federal government. And we're making up all these maladies at the expense of the tourism industry and ticking off hooker.They threatened the well-being of the rest of the town just by, you know, being loudmouths.And it was a really seems like it would have been a really terrible time to live in Niagara Falls.
SPEAKER_07: Oh, I'm sure.And Lois Gibbs is like, you know what?I just bought 100 bullhorns.
SPEAKER_05: That's right.
SPEAKER_07: And they went, no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_05: And she was like, and I'm saving up for the batteries.
SPEAKER_07: So the LHCA, headed by Lois Gibbs, brought in Dr. Beverly Pagan, a scientist with the Health Department of New York.They did their own door-to-door detailed questionnaire about people's health.They analyzed the data.They found a lot of the same problems, but what they really zeroed in on were the fact that if you lived in what they called a wet home, which was if you live near a creek or a swale or something, versus a dry home that wasn't near a creek, then you are much worse off.20% of the children born in wet homes had birth defects compared to 6.8% in dry homes.The asthma rate was three and a half times higher in wet homes.Suicide attempts were higher in wet zones. And this is when they were dismissed.I believe some of the authorities said it was useless housewife data.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: Which is a real bum in the eye of Lois Gibbs and the LHCA and Dr. Pagan.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.Just two things.So for reference, 20% of children born in that area in the wet homes that had congenital disorders died. compared to 6.8%, both of those were way above the national average for 1978 of 2.8%.So almost a lot.That was a lot more.I was going to do some math, and I was like, don't do the math, so I stopped.But the other thing I wanted to just call out was Dr. Pagan.She was doing this on her own time as a volunteer.She was volunteering her expertise as a cancer researcher,
to come up with the survey to figure out like the actual data to basically show that you didn't have to be living right on top of the dump to still be suffering health effects.And she very cleverly figured out that when they built the homes for the Love Canal neighborhood, they covered up all sorts of old creek beds, old swales that were now underground because But with the ground being saturated, they were providing their old historic functions of moving water through the neighborhood.So a plume of toxicity formed that wasn't necessarily at the dump site any longer.It was moving out into these areas that came to be known as wet homes. And so she showed, no, these people are really suffering as many effects as some of the people whose houses were on top of the dump and they still need help.And she risked her career doing that because she was a New York state health inspector.And she her organization had already basically closed the book on it.And she was saying, we need to open this back up because we were wrong.Like, it's worse than we thought.
SPEAKER_07: Right.So after two more years, they finally get the EPA down there.And this is, you know, two full years of continued protesting.EPA comes in.They visit Love Canal.They do their own blood test and chromosome test and things like that.And it showed that there was, you know, what everyone else had shown.Basically, it wasn't useless housewife data or hypochondria. And they got mad.They got so mad that they took a couple of EPA officials hostage.
They said they're not going to release them until we're relocated.Cooler heads prevailed.It only lasted about five hours.They didn't arrest anybody.But it was it was a big deal, brought a lot more attention to it.And in October of 1980, just a few days after this hostage thing, President Carter steps in again and says, all right. Here's another $20 million.New York is also going to throw in $20 million, and we're going to relocate everybody.700 remaining homes.Everyone but two families.
There's always a couple.
SPEAKER_05: There really is.
SPEAKER_07: That are like, nope, not leaving.They stayed there, but everyone else was relocated, and Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act.CERCLA, terrible, right?
SPEAKER_05: Not great.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, that was in 1980.They call it the Superfund Law.And that established a trust fund with the EPA to clean up waste sites in the future and establish a national priorities list, a Superfund list in 1983 that Love Canal was put squarely on.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and then a decade or so later was used to clean up David Hahn's mom's potting shed.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: So that Superfund law, it came out days after – no, months after the hostage standoff, right?Yeah. And I was like, OK, that's pretty quick that, you know, there's surely this thing had been kicking around Congress for a while.And now there was just an opportunity to push it through.Apparently, that's not true.That that law that created the Superfund was essentially created in response to Love Canal and the protests that the Love Canal Homeowners Association were staging.They created this Superfund like it. Like people didn't understand that toxic waste could pollute the ground before this.And now all of a sudden the federal government has a comprehensive response plan designed within months, essentially, that gives the EPA a right to basically tax petroleum makers and plastic makers and all that and put it into this trust fund to help clean up sites in the future. It is amazing.
It's, you know, federal government at its finest.It's not always great.I will be the, well, probably not the first to say it, but I will say it.But this is an example of it doing right.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, totally.So the remediation took a long time, took a couple of decades, cost about 350 million bucks.They flattened all those homes, of course.They did it.They sealed the landfill the correct way, which is with a three foot cap of clay. water impermeable plastic, more topsoil.They started diverting the groundwater to a facility that treats it.They treat about five million gallons of water a year and they have about 100 monitoring wells all over the site that collect data, you know, at all times to detect any chemical leakage that might be happening there. If you're wondering about Hooker Chemical, if they were on the hook for any of this, yes, they eventually were.They were sued by the EPA themselves in 79.
They settled in the 1990s and ended up between the federal government and New York state, repaying them about $227 million.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, which is good.
SPEAKER_07: Did not have to admit fault.
SPEAKER_05: No, no way.And you can make a kind of a case that they didn't need to admit fault, you know, if you read enough about it.
SPEAKER_07: I think that means that insulates them from more lawsuits.
SPEAKER_05: Sure.No, absolutely.I don't think it was just based on principles or anything like that. But that's kind of par for the course with Superfund stuff where the government says, OK, we're going to pay for cleanup.And then they go after the people who were responsible for the waste in the first place and then sue them.And then over the course of a decade or two, finally get some fraction of the amount of the cleanup costs.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, they fret the cost essentially.
SPEAKER_05: Essentially.Yeah.So Love Canal neighborhood is still around today.They call it Black Creek.And you said the houses in rings one and two were demolished.They were actually pushed into the pit or the waste was demolished. And then covered over.So the houses are down there, the parts of them.And they rehabbed and updated the houses that were left over.And after the EPA said, OK, we've cleaned this place up enough.
You guys can move back in.The neighborhood just got life breathed back into it again.And weirdly enough. Just like with as new people moved in in the Love Canal neighborhood starting in the 50s and 60s, not all of them were told that they were living on a toxic waste dump and that a lot of the information was lost for people.The same thing happened the second go around.There was a New York Times article that found like there's people living there that have no idea the history of this place and that there's still a toxic waste dump down there because that's something worth pointing out, Chuck. They didn't remove the toxic waste.They just covered it up better than it was covered up before.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.So there have been lawsuits.There have been people that still complain that move back into Black Creek of, you know, some of the same issues.There are, I think, 20 lawsuits with 700 plaintiffs kind of in recent years.And just last year in 2023, a state judge dismissed a couple of the really big high profile cases for lack of evidence, which, you know, doesn't bode well for for lawsuits to follow, obviously. As far as testing goes and whether or not there really is still a real problem there, it's sort of conflicting evidence, inconclusive, I guess.Mortality rate is slightly elevated, but within the normal range.Cancer rates are actually lower, 6% lower, but birth defects are twice as high as other communities nearby.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and that sounds really weird.Like, why would cancer rates be lower?Apparently, they're like, the sample size of this study is not huge, so we're not crazy about the results, essentially.But yeah, I guess it didn't turn out quite as bad as people had expected. Thought, which is good.But I mean, tell that to the families who had babies born with, you know, congenital disorders and or died, died young.You know, I mean, there's there was a lot of damage done to people living there unfairly.And that's ultimately the saddest legacy of it.There's a triumphant legacy to it.Yeah.
But there's that will never that will never put a clay cap over the tragedy that actually happened there, too.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.Well, I hope there's a statue of Lois Gibbs somewhere.
SPEAKER_05: I don't know that there is, but she went on to found the Center for Health Environment and Justice, which she got so many letters from her national high profile as a result of this that she went and was like, okay, I'm going to start an organization that helps small towns deal with this on their own with our help.I'm Lois Gibbs.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.She's like, I can make some real money off of this.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.She's so loaded.She wears floor-length mink coats and shows up in gold-plated rolls to all of these neighborhood meetings.
SPEAKER_07: No, not Milo Skips.I'm looking at pictures of her now out there shouting in front of a building.I love it.
SPEAKER_05: Yep. If you want to know more about Love Canal or Lois Gibbs or Beverly Pagan or anything like that, you can look all over the Internet.There's a bunch of great stuff to read.And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail.
SPEAKER_07: I actually got one more thing.So pre-Listener Mail.
SPEAKER_05: Oh, boy.Okay.Okay.
SPEAKER_07: It felt like the perfect episode to plug a friend's project.One of my oldest friends, Dave Barnhart, is a documentary filmmaker who takes on projects that need attention, like gun violence and things like that.And he did a documentary called Flint, the Poisoning of an American City, about Flint, Michigan, of course. And you should check it out.You go to flintpoisoning.com is the website for the documentary.And Dave is great.He's doing good work and he's a good guy.So check out the trailer and see where you can watch it.
SPEAKER_05: Great shout out, man.I'm glad you did that.And I think Flint deserves its own episode for sure.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, we should follow up on that.
SPEAKER_05: I already said that.Is it time for listener mail?
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.I just thwarted.
SPEAKER_05: Well, Jerry, hit us with the chime.
SPEAKER_07: Hey, guys.I want to let you know how much my family loves Stuff You Should Know.My boys, Evan and Alex, and my wife, Rachel, listen to you every chance we get.It's the first thing we do in the morning on the way to school.The kids want to see if there's a new episode.And they think you're the smartest people in the world.So imagine how they are impressed when I, their lowly dad, found a mistake. In your snake oil podcast.
SPEAKER_06: Nice.
SPEAKER_07: You guys mentioned that patent medicines are medicines protected by patents, which gives a manufacturer exclusive right without having to disclose what's in it.That's actually the opposite.Patents grant a limited right to exclude others from making patents. Using, offering for sale or selling the invention or importing it.But in exchange, you have to disclose the invention in a way that would enable one skilled in the art to make or use the invention.In other words, if a medicine is patented, you would have to say exactly what's in it and how you made it.Otherwise, you wouldn't get a patent.And you guys know this because you actually said that in your How IP Works episode.
SPEAKER_05: Right.
SPEAKER_07: And that is from David.And you know what, David?I looked into that more, and you're right.But I also found out that 90% of these patent medicines didn't even have patents.They were just called patent medicines.All right.So that's from David Greenfield.
SPEAKER_05: Thanks a lot, David.Much appreciated.If you want to get in touch with us like David did, you can.Just send an email to stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com.
SPEAKER_02: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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