[CPEO-BIF] Arsenic-tainted Swann Park, Baltimore, Maryland

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

'Is it even safe to live here?'
People living near arsenic-tainted Swann Park wonder if their loved 
ones' poor health or deaths are tied to working at a once-nearby 
factory. And they wonder if they're next.


By Tom Pelton
Baltimore Sun (MD)
May 27, 2007

Harvey Leichling watched his 12-year-old son scramble after a baseball 
under a locked gate that barred the way into a city park and the ball 
fields on the other side.

"Hey," shouted Leichling, "get out of there!" He pointed to a sign on 
the park's chain link fence: "Closed to All Users by Authority of the 
Baltimore City Health Department."

Leichling and his family have lived beside Swann Park in South Baltimore 
for almost two decades, but lately he has regarded their oasis of green 
in a new way - not as a refuge from their industrial neighborhood but as 
a potential menace to himself and the people he loves, like his son, 
Cory. "We used to picnic down there in the park, play football, go 
fishing and eat crabs out of the river. We'd lay in the grass and watch 
the fireworks," said the 47-year-old airplane parts inspector. "Now what 
I want to know is, is it even safe enough to live here?"


...

For the entire article, see
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/bal-te.md.cancer27may27,0,5024560.story?coll=bal-college-football

--


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org


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