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Day 2: Nassau, NY

A Wonderful Place

For years, a local businessman trucked in toxic waste from nearby industrial giants into the idyllic town of Nassau, NY. Tankers dumped the chemicals into a hilltop landfill overlooking a pristine lake just outside the village. Initially, in the 1950s and 1960s, this activity went largely unnoticed. But according to local lore, that changed when teenage boys began developing sores on their skin after swimming in Nassau Lake. The boys were not the only ones affected. Cattle died, fish were poisoned, and uncontrolled fires blazed.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation estimated that 46,000 tons of chemicals – double what was found at the notorious Love Canal – were disposed of at the site. The lake is fed by streams and other water sources that were contaminated by the landfill. Among these chemicals was the industrial solvent, trichloroethylene or TCE. In 1968, the State of New York ordered the landfill operator to stop dumping and to clean the site. Later, a second toxic Superfund site was found contaminated with TCE and other chemicals in town. This one was found in a residential area right next door to the businessman’s own home.

Just as in Endicott, NY, health concerns began to emerge from local residents. Whispers of cancer, common and rare, cropped up in many households living near the lake. Most were drinking, cooking, and bathing in water from private wells that were subject to contamination from the polluted landfill. Unlike city or municipal water, these wells are not regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act and are infrequently tested.

Among those affected included his only daughter who was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer, called Ewing’s sarcoma, which has been reported in other TCE-contaminated sites. At age 14, his daughter developed back pain and found a tumor in her rib. Despite aggressive therapy, she died before graduating high school at age 17.

In addition to causing cancer, TCE is associated with a 500% increased risk of Parkinson’s disease. Melody Howarth and her family also used to live near the Nassau Lake, previously used for fishing, water skiing, and recreation by locals. In 2014, the artist, avid swimmer, and town historian noticed a tremor in her jaw and her right hand. She was 56. She is not alone. Almost everyone in the town of 5,000 ⁠⁠— from a local pastor to a long-time pharmacist ⁠— has heard of high rates of brain diseases in the community.

Clean-up efforts in Nassau have long begun. Water is pumped out of underground aquifers and toxins removed. Monitoring wells spring up from the ground all around the polluted sites. The feeling, according to one local resident, however, is that “millions of dollars have been spent on band aids.” The source of the contamination remains.

Asked what she would want people to know about Nassau, Howarth is quick to respond, saying that Nassau is “a wonderful community with loving families who have suffered needlessly.”

— Ray Dorsey, MD