Gibbs, Lois

An American environmental activist, Lois Marie Gibbs was born in 1951. Gibbs organized her neighbors, the residents of Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York, after her discovery that her 7-year-old son's elementary school and much of her entire neighborhood was built on industrial toxic waste dumped there decades before. Hooker's Chemical Company's successor Occidental Petroleum had burned the banned pesticides lindane and benzene, and known toxics like chloroform, dioxin, trichlorethane, and tetrahlnetrane.

According to Ecology of Fame (2001), after her son became sick and was hospitalized for pneumonia, Gibbs, a young housewife and a high school graduate, educated herself about toxic waste issues and organized her (approximately 1,000) neighbors, creating the Love Canal Homeowner's Association and becoming its spokesperson.

She went from door to door with ...