Imagine a community that you have driven past time and time again, that you have never really thought about, but have always known existed. A community close to home. Now imagine that this community has been a site of below-ground toxic wastes for decades, and you never knew it. This is the case of Endicott, New York, a Binghamton-area community. Although I've passed through Binghamton hundreds of times, maybe more, I've only just learned that Endicott is the site of a 350-acre toxic below-ground "plume" of chemicals, that may or may not be (most likely is) affecting the health of local residents.
How tragic! The plume is the result of negligence on the part of IBM in the early parts of the 1900s (regulations regarding the disposal of chemicals were put in place in '79). It was not until 2002, however, that the plume was discovered. Are high instances of cancer in Endicott directly related to the results of the chemicals found in the plume?
Read a very powerful article here, and also watch the video. It's very important.
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