Around 1936, the US government contracted with EMK Geiling, a doctor and researcher who headed the (new) pharmacology department at the University of Chicago, to look into a series of deaths that seemed to be associated with a sulfonamide drug.
Geiling had a graduate student, Frances Kathleen Oldham, who was there by accident. She’d applied for her position by mail, and Geiling thought she was a man (he didn’t know the difference between “Frances” and “Francis”). He realized his mistake when she showed up for her first day of work, but she already had the job. Geiling turned out to be pretty happy about it, though, because Oldham was very, very good at pharmaceutical research. She worked on the government contract, and discovered that it wasn’t just a “series of deaths”; it was 107. She found the cause too, it was the diethylene glycol used as a solvent to liquify the drug. On the strength of that study, Congress created the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that same year.
By 1960 she was one of the top pharmaceutical researchers in the country, and the FDA hired her to review a drug application for a tranquilizer that was going to be called “Kevadon.” The drug was in use in Europe, but Oldham insisted on a complete set of tests, and finally refused to approve it. “Kevadon” was going to be the tradename of the drug, but you might have heard of it by another name: “thalidomide.” It caused a wave of horrific birth defects where it was used in Europe. Oldham’s refusal to approve it meant that there was no similar outcome in the US, and on August 7, 1962, President Kennedy awarded her the President’s Award for Distinguished Civilian Service.
Oldham was born in Canada. Just on the US side of the border, outside the city of Niagara Falls, a developer had an idea for a model city built right on the banks of Lake Ontario. It was 1890, and it was going to have practically free hydroelectric power and easily available shipping. The power was going to come from the Niagara River, and the shipping was going to be provided by a shipping lane — a new canal — to be dug between the lake and the river.
Work was underway when the Panic of 1893 came along (it was an economic depression, and a bad one) when only the first mile of the canal had been dug. The project was slowly reconstituted as the economy improved, and work had restarted by 1907, but then another depression (the Panic of 1907; you have no idea how many depressions there have actually been) killed it entirely. They probably couldn’t have completed it anyway; in the interim Congress had passed a law protecting Niagara Falls by making it illegal to divert water from the Niagara River. Besides that, alternating current electricity had come along, making it possible to transmit electricity long distances. There was no longer any need to locate your new town next to a generating station just to get power.
Like almost any abandoned project, the empty canal just sat there for years. Then in the 1920s, the growing city of Niagara Falls discovered that the growing consumerism of its growing population needed some growth in the town dump, too. There was that big trench over near the lake with plenty of room to throw trash in…perfect! They started filling in the canal, just dumping whatever they didn’t want around.
If you’ve ever been to Niagara Falls (the city, not the waterfall), you know it’s an old industrial site. The city started growing fast during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, and ended up with a number of major industries; plastics, rubber, paper, oil refining, and more. One of the local plants was the Hooker Chemical Company. They were generating a lot of chemical waste, and got a permit from the city to pour the stuff into 55-gallon drums and dispose of it in the old canal dump site.
By about 1950, the old canal was completely full and the company — actually its lawyers — were starting to be a bit nervous about the liability posed by the particularly nasty stuff they knew was down there. They put a layer of topsoil over the whole thing, smoothed it out, and sold it back to the city, which was going to use it for a park. But a couple of years later they needed a new school, and there was that nice park just sitting there…
Somebody pointed out that the site had been a chemical dumping ground, and might not be the best place for a school. No problem, replied the city, we’ll relocate the planned school. And they did…they moved it eighty feet and built the school anyway. That led to a residential neighborhood as families with kids wanted to live near the school. It didn’t turn out well for anybody. The US had dodged the thalidomide disaster, but the dioxins leaking out of the buried drums started causing miscarriages, birth defects, and other medical problems.
Even though it was 60 years later, the area was still known by the name of that original 1890s project. The developer had named it after himself; his name was William Love and the area was still called Love Canal. On August 7, 1978, the site was declared a national disaster area, and Congress passed the Superfund Act. Love Canal was not just the first Superfund site, but the motivation for the whole system.
On a happier note, August 7 is also the anniversary of the first swim from the US to the Soviet Union. That’s not a typo. On August 7, 1987, Lynne Cox swam across the Bering Strait from the Aleutian Islands to the USSR. Well…actually she swam from the westernmost US Aleutian Island to the easternmost Russian one. But come on, it was still the Bering Strait. I’m sure nobody has dumped anything nasty down there…have they?
