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 a clipboard and a petition stating, “My name is Lois Gibbs. I am concerned about the 99th Street School. I want to know if you are concerned as well.” As the head of the Love Canal Homeowner's Association, she transformed herself into a powerful voice for treating “hazardous wastes” as something that cannot just be “thrown away” without costing a terrible price to be paid by the community and its environment.

President Jimmy Carter issued an order allowing for the paid evacuation of the about 900 families living at Love Canal in October 1980, starting the process known as Superfund to clean up our country's hazardous sites.

A cleanup of Love Canal was initiated, leading to national press coverage and making Lois Gibbs a household name. Gibbs's unwavering endeavors were instrumental in the reaction of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Comprehensive Environmental Response. Compensation via the Liability Act, or [Page 618]Superfund, has now become instrumental in locating and in cleaning up toxic waste sites throughout the United States.

Gibbs formed what was to be called the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice (CHEJ), formerly the Citizen's Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste, in 1980, where she currently serves as executive director. A grassroots environmental crisis center, the CHEJ provides resources, information, training, technical help, and support to the nation's community groups, aid that is needed to empower other communities to organize themselves to eliminate and reduce threats from toxic substances and various other environmental ills.

Having shown concern for the effects of toxic waste, Gibbs has also shown the significance of citizen activists who protect the health of the environment in their communities, as well as the environment as a whole.

In addition to having been awarded the Codrigan Environmental Prize (1990), and the John Garner Leadership Award from the Independent Sector (1999), she has also written several books. Her story was dramatized in the made-for-TV movie Lois Gibbs: The Love Canal Story, which aired in 1982, in which her character was portrayed by Marsha Mason.