American Experience, Poisoned Ground: The Tragedy at Love Canal

PBS Western Reserve (WNEO 45.1 / WEAO 49.1):

Tuesday, April 23, at 10 PM

Fusion (WNEO 45.2 / WEAO 49.2):

Saturday, April 27, at 2 PM  

Take a piercing look back at an environmental disaster and the women who spoke up and fought for accountability. “Poisoned Ground” is a two-hour film about the Love Canal disaster, one of the largest, most notorious and most impactful public health and environmental crises in American history.

The story unfolds like a mystery beginning in 1977, when residents in the small neighborhood on the east side of Niagara Falls, New York, first began noticing pungent odors in their homes. Soon dozens of families began to suffer abnormally high rates of cancer, asthma, kidney disease, miscarriage, birth defects, migraines and more. 

The battle for justice was led mostly by women, including mousy housewife turned powerful advocate Lois Gibbs, and biologist and cancer researcher Beverly Paigen, whose toxic waste studies were instrumental in getting homeowners resettled even though it was initially dismissed as “useless housewife data.” This work of citizen scientists created the basis for the landmark federal Superfund program that today oversees the remediation of more than 1,300 dangerous hazardous waste sites across the country.