The Center for Public Integrity

Two-and-a-half-year-old Amber Nickol McKeown had head lice. Her mother, Eileen, put the child in a warm bath and massaged Osco Lice Treatment Shampoo into her scalp. Problem solved.

But when Eileen lifted Amber from the tub, she noticed her daughter’s chest had turned red. She called her husband, James, upstairs, and the couple tried bathing Amber in cool water. The little girl’s condition deteriorated quickly. She labored to breathe. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and her skin peeled off in clumps, according to a lawsuit filed by the family.

Amber was rushed from her home in Lester, Pennsylvania, to Fitzgerald Mercy Hospital, where the staff found burns over 60 percent of her body. She was in respiratory distress, and her heart and lungs couldn’t supply her body with oxygen.

On November 4, 2000, within 72 hours of her bath, Amber was dead. After performing an autopsy, the Delaware County (Pennsylvania) medical examiner concluded that the child’s death had been triggered by exposure to a type of pesticide called a pyrethrin and its accompanying impurities, according to the family’s lawsuit.

Scattered across the country, from New Jersey to California, are 114 toxic waste sites where the federal government has determined that the threat to humans from dangerous and sometimes carcinogenic substances is "not under control."

More than 25 million people live within 10 miles of these sites, according to a review of U.S. Census data of the 2000 population and more than 100 schools are located within one mile, a Center for Public Integrity analysis of government records show.According to the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees cleanup of the sites, hazardous chemicals and toxins there are poisoning the soil, water or air — or all three.

Yet, the EPA has resisted releasing information about cleanup plans or the sites' danger to the public other than offering a list of the sites' locations and a brief description about how people might become exposed — information buried so deep in the EPA's Web site that it is difficult to find.

The sites are considered "not under control" by the EPA because the materials contaminating them could reach and harm people. Exposure to some of these toxins and hazardous chemicals has been linked to various forms of cancer, respiratory disease and heart disease and has stunted mental development in children.The 114 sites are among 1,623 dangerously toxic areas currently or formerly included or proposed for action by Superfund, a law passed in 1980 to identify and supervise the cleanup of America's most toxic and polluted areas.

Information that the EPA has been reluctant to release includes:

For the past eight years, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has assured residents of South Plainfield, N.J., that it is safe to swim in Bound Brook, even though the stream runs alongside a Superfund site — the EPA's designation for the country's worst toxic waste sites.

EPA officials say they weren't surprised that the electrical capacitors were found, and on a subsequent visit to the site they discovered dozens more.In late April of 2007, however, local activists found along its banks two electrical devices, originally built to be used in household appliances, which had been leaking high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls into the muck. PCBs, which were used until 1979 as an insulator in the devices, are a probable cause of cancer.

The Superfund site encompasses several buildings where the Cornell Dubilier electronics company manufactured electronic goods from 1936 to 1962. After the company left the site, several companies operated there until the EPA recently began to demolish the buildings, which the agency said were contaminated with PCB-laced dust.

"The fact that there are PCB capacitors located in and around the site is not shocking to us. That is why it's a Superfund site, and that is why we are cleaning it up," Patricia Carr, an EPA spokeswoman, told the Center for Public Integrity. "We may not have seen it earlier because of recent erosion or heavy rainfall that might have uncovered them, but we are going to continue the cleanup as planned."The EPA speculated that the capacitors most likely were exposed because of recent flooding and erosion.

The Cornell Dubilier site is one of 114 across the country where human exposure to contaminants is not under control, according to the EPA. The site has been on the National Priorities List — the EPA's list of the most hazardous sites in the country — since 1998, but observers say work at the site has been slowed by Superfund's financial problems.

What is a Superfund site?

A Superfund site is a toxic waste site that falls under the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program. After public awareness grew about heavily polluted areas like Love Canal, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (also known as Superfund law) in 1980. Under the law, companies and other parties found responsible for polluting sites are required to clean up the area or pay the costs for cleanup to the EPA.

What is the National Priorities List?

The National Priorities List (NPL) is the EPA’s list of toxic waste sites that the agency has determined present “a significant risk to human health or the environment,” and are eligible for cleanup under the Superfund program.

What is a Potentially Responsible Party?

A “potentially responsible party” or PRP, is a company, organization or individual that the EPA determines possibly played a role in the contamination of a Superfund site. This includes parties involved in generation of the waste, and parties involved in transporting it to the site. PRPs can also include past and present owners of the land or facility, and past and present facility operators. The EPA keeps a database of all PRPs called List 11. About three-fourths of all Superfund sites have at least one PRP listed in this database. There are about 180 sites that have only one company listed as the “potentially responsible party”. EPA’s listing of a PRP does not necessarily mean the entity has any environmental liability at the site. (Much of this study is based on the analysis of an internal list of PRPs created by the EPA.)

Who cleans up Superfund sites?

Either the federal government or a designated PRP cleans up these sites. PRP-led cleanups make up about 70 percent of all cleanups, according to the EPA. The government pays for all “fund-led” cleanups.