NEWBURGH, N.Y. – When Newburgh’s city manager declared a state of emergency last year after tests found dangerous levels of perfluorooctanesulfonic acid in the city’s water supply, Nancy Colas scheduled blood tests for everyone in her family. “My 17-year-old, he pretty much grew up here, and he’s been drinking that water all his life,” she […]
WAYCROSS, Ga. – Janet McMahan has a message for southeast Georgia, and it is the one printed on her T-shirt: “No cure until you stop the cause, test your water, get a filter.” In 2014, McMahan became committed to improving water quality after she lost her 28-year-old son to a rare form of cancer she […]
ALBANY, N.Y. – Doctors twice notified Lori Clark’s family that they expected her to die. Clark, a project manager who lives in upstate New York, was placed in a chemically induced coma for 43 days after she was diagnosed with Legionnaires’ disease in 2011. She initially thought she had the flu and delayed seeing a […]
WAUKESHA, Wisc. – The city of Waukesha has a radium problem, and it’s looking to Lake Michigan for a solution. Although talks of drawing water from nearby Lake Michigan began in 2002, Waukesha has struggled with radium contamination since the late 1970s when the Environmental Protection Agency lowered the acceptable limit for radium in public […]
WALNUT COVE, N.C. – Andree Davis said she tries not to go out in public: She’s afraid of how people will react when they see her. The 67-year-old North Carolina resident has dark spots all over her body. Davis said when she absolutely has to leave her house, she always wears long sleeves and pants – […]
KEWAUNEE COUNTY, Wisc. – In 2014, a study by U.S. Department of Agriculture researcher Mark Borchardt indicated that 40 of 131 residential wells sampled in Kewaunee County were contaminated with bovine feces. Lynn Utesch, the founder of environmental advocacy group Kewaunee Cares, sees the presence of bovine feces in the water as coinciding with the […]