I find it a bit sad that a story like this gets reported on by a Chicago newspaper and not a Texas one, but at least it's been picked up by the Chron.
MIDLOTHIAN - The neighbors introduced themselves hesitantly at first, not by name or street address but by their various ailments."I've got breast cancer," said one woman.
"Oh, my husband has a brain tumor," replied the woman sitting next to her.
"My son has Down syndrome," offered a man standing nearby.
"My daughter died last month from an abdominal tumor," a woman said softly. "She was only 19."
Similar introductions rippled through an auditorium in this southwest Dallas suburb one evening earlier this month as more than 500 residents, some in wheelchairs and others with portable oxygen tanks hanging from their shoulders, gathered to ask a question most had only dared whisper: Is something in Midlothian's air or water making them sick?
The evidence is largely anecdotal, and few epidemiological studies have been done. But many residents say they know too many neighbors with cancer, birth defects and lung ailments for it to be a coincidence.
You should have seen how long it took and how much effort it took to get them on the side of the Brio Superfund site neighborhood, the one next door to the site with all the health problems.
The only reasons they succeeded were 1) the attention generated by the Superfund site itself, 2) the real estate scandal involved in the sale of the properties, and 3) the determined work of Marie Flickinger, the owner and editor of the South Belt Leader newspaper.
Posted by: ttyler5 on June 27, 2005 7:18 AM