Living on 20,000 tons of toxic waste

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]For years, the Love Canal Homeowners Association has cited evidence of significant health problems in the neighborhood. Birth defects and miscarriages, >> severe migraine headache, >> respiratory disease, >> already eight cases of cancer on a 15 house street. I thought I just had problems with my one daughter and we just found out in January our other one has rheumatoid arthritis. We have hearing problems with all the children.

[00:00:21]Uh the baby, he has a deformed foot. So, it's just it's just constantly still running to the hospitals and children's home. People were talking about how they were ill, but nobody exactly knew why they were so ill or why so many people were so ill.

[00:00:36]>> Now, a quarter of a century after it went in, chemical waste is coming out of the ground.

[00:00:41]>> People had no idea that they were living on top of 22,000 tons of toxic chemicals.

[00:00:46]>> Health experts found more than 80 dangerous chemicals oozing to the surface.

[00:00:51]>> All of a sudden, on a dime, everything blows up. More people are sick. There's, you know, black sludge coming into their homes. The >> family is afraid to even go in the basement because of high readings of an explosive chemical called touline.

[00:01:04]>> Love Canal was the first chemical disaster to unfold before Americans eyes.

[00:01:09]>> We are dying, literally dying from benzene. We're getting cancers from all these other compounds. Now you talk about nerve gas, there's just no way.

[00:01:17]>> It's much worse than I even imagined.

[00:01:20]Certainly much worse than what the government is saying.

[00:01:23]>> Can you tell me when I'm not going to lose any more children? because one is already dead. Please tell me those things.

[00:01:27]>> It really hit home for us that at this point we're on our own. We have to make this happen.