After being diagnosed in 2015 with oligodendroglioma, a rare brain tumor, Nick Squires told The Patriot Ledger he noticed that an alarming number of other young adults who grew up in his neighborhood were fighting, and dying from, brain tumors.
The PATRIOT LEDGER article is damning
“I had anxiety about coming out and talking about this because I know it can cause panic,” said Squires, a married father of three children, including 4-month-old twin boys. “But there’s something very wrong here, and people have the right to know.”
The National Fireworks Co. began developing, testing and manufacturing civilian fireworks and military munitions at the site near the Hanson town line in 1907, and disposed of chemicals there until it closed in 1971.
The property was then purchased by American Potash and Co., which operated there for a few years before selling the land to the Atlantic Research Corp., a government contractor that produced explosives for the Army and the Navy, and also allowed other entities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to dump hazardous waste on its property.
In the mid-1980s, the federal Environmental Protection Agency found several dozen barrels of toxic waste around the property and indications that many had been dumped, according to several reports. Some of the toxins found include chloroform, Freon, arsenic, trichloroethene and vinyl chloride.
A variety of heavy metals, including mercury, were found in the soil and water around the former factory, setting off a decadeslong effort to clean up 140 acres between King and Winter streets. While the contamination was measured at twice the threshold for earning Superfund status – a federal program that prioritizes and funds the cleanup of hazardous sites – town officials asked the state to oversee the cleanup to avoid the federal process and stigma that came with it.
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