Meet the mother who turned a medical nightmare into a national movement: 'We're gonna fix this'

When Lois Gibbs and her husband moved to Niagara Falls, New York, in 1972, she thought she'd hit the house jackpot — she had no idea that the move would result in her becoming one of the mothers of the environmental movement.

National Geographic summarized the legacy of Gibbs' work, explaining that the neighborhood she lived in — known as Love Canal — sat atop a toxic waste dump, a legacy of the Hooker Chemical and Plastics Corporation, which buried over 20,000 tons of toxic chemicals there between 1942 and 1952.

By 1976, residents started seeing the effects of the more than 100 deadly compounds that were later confirmed at the site, the publication explained. Some homes started experiencing leaching of these chemicals into their basements, and Gibbs' own son started having seizures. Thinking he was being exposed on the playground at school, she requested that he be moved to another school. She was denied.

"I have an Irish temper. You can't sit there and tell me you're not going to move my child," she told National Geographic. "We're gonna fix this."

This started her on her route of activism, the publication explained, and she began surveying other parents. She soon found that the problem was more widespread than she'd imagined — some of the health effects she discovered among her neighbors included cancer, kidney problems, and lung issues.

Ultimately, Gibbs put in hundreds of hours on the telephone, canvassed from home to home, collected evidence, circulated petitions, led protests, and lobbied officials as part of her efforts. Eventually, in 1980, President Jimmy Carter declared a national emergency at the site and about 950 residents left the neighborhood.

While the damage was already done for the people living in the Love Canal neighborhood at the time — National Geographic pointed to studies showing that women who lived in the community during their reproductive years were twice as likely to give birth to a child with a congenital anomaly, for instance — her advocacy work did help to save countless others who may have moved into the area later, unknowingly exposing themselves to harmful chemicals. 

It also helped result in the creation of the Love Canal Superfund Site (and, in fact, the Superfund Program itself), which required the Environmental Protection Agency to complete a number of cleanup activities to address the contamination. The agency removed the site from its National Priorities List in 2004, and 260 formerly abandoned homes were rehabilitated and sold to new residents.

In addition to the human impacts, wildlife also suffered, making Gibbs' work all the more important. For instance, one study found that meadow voles living near the Love Canal had a shortened lifespan and organ damage.

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Though the work was tough, Gibbs, who later founded the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice, sees her work at the Love Canal as a victory. She told National Geographic, "[We] stood together and had a united goal. You can do that for any issue. If people would participate in democracy, we could change the world in ways that are not even imaginable right now."

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