What Price Love Canal? An Unhappy Anniversary
by Dr. Michael Kirsch
In August 1978 New York State officials began something that has long haunted America. What they did led to the presidentially ordered, complete "emergency" relocation of the residents of Love Canal, a small community in Niagara Falls, New York. Worried by headlines concerning an industrial waste site in the area, the residents had clamored for government intervention. But in post-"evacuation" scientific inquiries, researchers did not find any evidence of an abnormal incidence of cancers or other maladies among the former residents. They did, however, find evidence of indirect psychological damage tracing to sensational media reports.
. . . In Love (Canal) and "All Shook Up"
But some journalists evidently do not consider that aspect of the Love Canal story newsworthy. In July 1998 The Washington Post featured a profile of former Love Canal activist Lois Gibbs titled "Lois Gibbs' Grass-Roots Garden: 20 Years After Love Canal, She's Helping Other Communities Fight Government's Toxic Indifference." It is a glowing account that focuses on Gibbs' valiant fight to protect her family and neighbors from the consequences of the Hooker Chemical Company's ostensible cynical and sinister attempt to dump its wastes on the cheap.
According to the Washington Post article, problems started when it was found that Ms. Gibbs's kindergarten-age son had epilepsy and a low white cell count. In another time and place she might not have ascribed her son's affliction to anything except bad luck or bad genes. But various outlets ran a series of articles that highlighted the presence of chemical waste beneath a Love Canal school and, in effect, made a connection for her. For example, headlines of articles published locally included "Vapors from Love Canal Pose Serious Threat" (May 25, 1978) and "Toxic Exposure at Love Canal Called Chronic" (May 25, 1978). The titles of related articles published in national periodicals were no less disturbing, for example: "Upstate Waste Site May Endanger Lives" (The New York Times, August 2, 1978) and "The Devil's Brew in Love Canal" (Fortune, November 19, 1979).
Ms. Gibbs told Congress on March 21, 1979: ". . . I believed there was a hazard immediately after reading . . ." a "series of articles that were being printed in a newspaper in the area."
Let It Be
The Hooker Chemical Company had sealed the wastes in question in clay nearly three decades before in an unfinished canal. An engineering firm found that the site's design conformed to modern government waste standards. Indeed, in 1980 an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official acknowledged that, to comply with 1980 government standards for waste disposal, the Hooker Chemical Company would only have had to adjust its paperwork. "Hooker would have no trouble complying with [today's] regulations," he said.
The company ceased using the unfinished canal in the 1950s and, under the threat of eminent domain, sold the land to the local school board for a dollar. The agreement was by no means covert. The Hooker Chemical Company had repeatedly warned the board against under- taking any construction that could disturb the waste, and the deed explicitly noted its presence. The board nevertheless approved the building of a school on the site, and developers had houses put up around it.
Who'll Stop the Rain?
Because of high precipitation in the area, some of the waste surfaced. State officials detected about 80 chemicals, some of which could—according to the degree of exposure—cause cancer. Ms. Gibbs and others connected these chemicals and local health problems and hatched a media campaign that contributed to the residents' relocation.
The press has evidently come to regard Ms. Gibbs as a hero. "The woman they call 'Mother of the Superfund' birthed more than legislation," The Washington Post stated. "Gibbs' spirited and very public campaign catapulted industrial waste hazards to national attention. Her grass-roots self-advocacy became a model for hundreds of mad-as-hell housewives who followed. Something in the bedrock of American civic life shifted."
But The Washington Post also acknowledged that, 20 years after the initial "evacuation," the allegation that the chemicals at the disposal site have had long-term health effects on former residents does not hold water. Indeed, there is no evidence that exposure to these chemicals had caused any of the oft-cited health problems of which Love Canal residents of the 1970s complained. Scientists convened by New York's governor in 1980 criticized a study whose conclusion was that such a relationship existed. The panel stated:
[The study] falls far short of the mark as an exercise of epidemiology. . . . [It] is based largely on anecdotal information provided by questionnaires submitted to a narrowly selected group of residents. There are no adequate control groups [and] the illnesses cited as caused by chemical pollution were not medically validated. . . . The panel finds the . . . report literally impossible to interpret. It cannot be taken seriously as a piece of sound epidemiological research, but it does have the impact of a polemic.
According to Michael Gough, Ph.D., Director of Science and Risk Studies at the Cato Institute, in Washington, DC, much of the fear at Love Canal stemmed from the discovery of the presence of dioxin—a substance whose name, thanks to uncritical reportage of environmentalist propaganda, conjures death and destruction. "Dioxin," Gough has written, "is such a strong word in the environmental lexicon that literally everyone 'knows' it causes cancer and birth defects and all kinds of other diseases." The EPA's Science Advisory Board, however, has concluded that the only human disease with a known connection to dioxin is chloracne—a skin disorder that Love Canal residents never had.
In 1980 Science magazine stated that, while adverse physical consequences had been rare, the series of events known as Love Canal had engendered a "deep and abiding mistrust" of authorities. Science also stated that within two years after the 1978 "evacuation" at least 40 percent of the married persons directly affected by it had separated or divorced. Typically, the wife would want to leave for the sake of the children and, for financial reasons, the husband would want to remain. "The result: the wife left with the children," the magazine stated.
So The Washington Post statement "Something in the bedrock of American civic life shifted" is correct. But the shift does not merit celebration.
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