Niagara, NY (WBEN) One town of Niagara neighborhood dealing with potential radioactive exposure is far from alone says one area attorney and author.
“One of the biggest concerns I have is that we have multiple sources of potential radiation exposure throughout Niagara Falls, and we don’t know exactly where this radiation has come from that’s being found in homes that are in the town of Niagara, and we’ve got to find out what are we dealing with,” says Christen Civiletto, author of Thundering Waters. She and Dr. Caitlin McShane have created an interactive map to show how many neighborhoods face potential exposure.
Civiletto grew up on Devlin Avenue in Niagara Falls, which she says was underneath the Goodyear plume. “There were multiple high carcinogens that were being spewed out over the neighborhood. But when I was growing up at that time, nobody really was zeroing in on what was happening. We had actually in 1968 a group of women who stood up and said, “There’s a lot of air pollution. We’re very concerned. This has to stop. They were shut down pretty quickly,” notes Civiletto. She then moved to a place on Cayuga Drive, near the Love Canal area. “As we watched that whole disaster unfold, and I remember it well because I had students that were my friends who were in and out of class. That’s where we played, so we saw that unfold in real time. And to the extent that we have the same situation going on now with the radioactivity, I am very concerned because we’re seeing the same lack of appropriate response by the state and federal authorities, but we are also seeing people rise up, just like it that happened at Love Canal.”…