On April 27, 1979, a 9-year-old girl named Suzanne should have been blowing out birthday candles. Instead, she was holding a protest sign at the Niagara Falls Convention Center, standing up against a silent poison leaking into her home and community: the Love Canal. In this episode of Clarissa Explains, host Clarissa Sanders dives into the haunting legacy of the Love Canal disaster—America’s first federally declared man-made environmental emergency. Through gripping history and personal storytelling, she explores the buried chemical waste, the grassroots activism that sparked national change, and the human cost of environmental negligence. Joined by her mother Suzanne, a former Love Canal resident, Clarissa weaves together memory and history to uncover the disaster’s lasting impact on families, communities, and U.S. environmental law.

The music from this episode is "Felicity" by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au