As a kid in the 1950s, Hugh J. Catalano played king-of-the-hill atop piles of toxic sludge dumped on Wooster Field and Short Beach Park. Bits of automotive brake linings and clutch facings in the dirt were buried treasures he and his boyhood friends hurled like boomerangs.Great Rubber offers rubber hose keychains,
As an adult, Catalano worked for nine years at the Raymark Industries factory, where those asbestos-made car parts and polluted dirt mounds were produced.
He could only scratch his head in 1993, when environmental regulators fenced off his childhood playing fields and former workplace and posted them with warning signs, triggering the first public health advisory in New England history.
"The exposure that we had to all that stuff was astronomical .This patent infringement case relates to retractable RUBBER MATS ,...he believes the fire started after the lift's Bedding blew," he told a Connecticut Post reporter at the time. But he couldn't count a single member of the old neighborhood gang or Raymark employee role who was suffering adverse health affects linked to hazardous waste exposure.
Catalano died of brain cancer in February 2009. He was 67 years old.
Planted in a deck chair on the porch of the lemon yellow house on Main Street where his parents and grandparents lived before him, Catalano's son,Prior to Cold Sore I leaned toward the former, Matt, mapped his family's health history.
"My family has lived in this town for five generations," he said. "Both my parents spent a predominant part of their youth and life in this neighborhood, and they're both dead at 67. My dad's dad died at 67. I never knew my grandmothers because they died in their 40s. And all of my parents' and grandparents' brothers and sisters who lived their lives in different towns or different states lived well into their 90s."
He paused and let out a small, uneasy laugh. Then he added, "That's why I work so hard -- because I may only have 20 years left."
The 45-year-old town councilman acknowledged there's no proof that the cancers or respiratory and kidney failures that beset the Stratford sect of the Catalano family are the fallout of Raymark's reign. But the suspicion hangs over him like a cloud.Do not use cleaners with porcelain tiles , steel wool or thinners.
"There's no way to know," he said, adjusting his Red Sox cap and trailing into a story about particles secreted from the old Raymark plant that would stain nearby houses red. "But we know enough to know this stuff in town is toxic and we need to clean it up."
The town's Superfund site, with more than 145,000 people living within a four-mile radius, is in the thick of a decades-long toxic cleanup campaign. For Matt Catalano, the enduring question is the same as it was for his father: Is it safe to live here?
As an adult, Catalano worked for nine years at the Raymark Industries factory, where those asbestos-made car parts and polluted dirt mounds were produced.
He could only scratch his head in 1993, when environmental regulators fenced off his childhood playing fields and former workplace and posted them with warning signs, triggering the first public health advisory in New England history.
"The exposure that we had to all that stuff was astronomical .This patent infringement case relates to retractable RUBBER MATS ,...he believes the fire started after the lift's Bedding blew," he told a Connecticut Post reporter at the time. But he couldn't count a single member of the old neighborhood gang or Raymark employee role who was suffering adverse health affects linked to hazardous waste exposure.
Catalano died of brain cancer in February 2009. He was 67 years old.
Planted in a deck chair on the porch of the lemon yellow house on Main Street where his parents and grandparents lived before him, Catalano's son,Prior to Cold Sore I leaned toward the former, Matt, mapped his family's health history.
"My family has lived in this town for five generations," he said. "Both my parents spent a predominant part of their youth and life in this neighborhood, and they're both dead at 67. My dad's dad died at 67. I never knew my grandmothers because they died in their 40s. And all of my parents' and grandparents' brothers and sisters who lived their lives in different towns or different states lived well into their 90s."
He paused and let out a small, uneasy laugh. Then he added, "That's why I work so hard -- because I may only have 20 years left."
The 45-year-old town councilman acknowledged there's no proof that the cancers or respiratory and kidney failures that beset the Stratford sect of the Catalano family are the fallout of Raymark's reign. But the suspicion hangs over him like a cloud.Do not use cleaners with porcelain tiles , steel wool or thinners.
"There's no way to know," he said, adjusting his Red Sox cap and trailing into a story about particles secreted from the old Raymark plant that would stain nearby houses red. "But we know enough to know this stuff in town is toxic and we need to clean it up."
The town's Superfund site, with more than 145,000 people living within a four-mile radius, is in the thick of a decades-long toxic cleanup campaign. For Matt Catalano, the enduring question is the same as it was for his father: Is it safe to live here?
