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environmental impacts

  • In "Paradise Falls: The True Story of an Environmental Catastrophe," New York Times journalist Keith O’Brien uncovers how Lois Gibbs and Luella Kenny exposed the poisonous secrets buried in their neighborhood.
  • Lois Gibbs, Luella Kenny, and other mothers loved their neighborhood on the east side of Niagara Falls. It had an elementary school, a playground, and rows of affordable homes. But in the spring of 1977, pungent odors began to seep into these little houses, and it didn’t take long for worried mothers to identify the curious scent. It was the sickly sweet smell of chemicals.In "Paradise Falls: The True Story of an Environmental Catastrophe," New York Times journalist Keith O’Brien uncovers how Gibbs and Kenny exposed the poisonous secrets buried in their neighborhood. The school and playground had been built atop an old canal — Love Canal, it was called — that Hooker Chemical, the city’s largest employer, had quietly filled with twenty thousand tons of toxic waste in the 1940s and 1950s. This waste was now leaching to the surface, causing a public health crisis the likes of which America had never seen before and sparking new and specific fears. Luella Kenny believed the chemicals were making her son sick.
  • New York Congresswoman Nita Lowey Monday hosted a forum on environmental impacts on women’s health Monday. The forum was in Westchester County, and…