Gross Jar

In 1980, the neighborhood of Love Canal in Niagara Falls was evacuated after the EPA figured out that chemicals seeping up from an old, buried toxic waste dump were causing the residents’ kids to be born as disease-prone mutants. We took the Gross Jar on a little field trip to sample some of the toxin-enriched soil from under the fence at the cleanup site (the surrounding blocks were declared “safe” in 2004, despite looking like the suburban post-apocalypse). Along the way we hit up Three Mile Island (site of America’s biggest meltdown so far) and the Falls (natch).