How an L.A. Suburb Became One of the Most Toxic Towns

In July 2007, Gail Shephard quit her job as an orthopedic technician. Her weakened muscles had made it too difficult for her to wash her hair or even pull up her pants in the morning. Now, Shephard, 55, takes two pain medications and Mirapex, a pill to treat Parkinson's disease, each day.

"I don't do anything," Shephard said. "I sit in the same chair. I dread getting up in the morning, it's so painful. I can't walk and I hold onto the walls to go the bathroom and back. And that is my entire day."

But Shephard doesn't have Parkinson's disease and doctors don't quite know how to diagnose her. She knows, however, that her ailments began shortly after February 2006, when she transferred to the new Kaiser Permanente facility built on the site of a former NASA plant, which comprised 160 acres of land in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, Calif.

Shephard would come to find that she wasn't alone in her unexplained health problems. Several other former employees of the Kaiser Downey Medical Center and Downey Studios -- a film-production center also located at the site -- claim that they too became ill as a result of exposure to toxic contaminants left over from seven decades of military and aerospace research and manufacturing at the old NASA Downey Industrial Plant. The ailments have become so common that workers there coined a nickname: "Downey flu."

As for Shephard, the move to Downey aggravated her tendon and joint pain. Soon after, her feet and ankles ached: "My foot was so sensitive I couldn't put a blanket on it or let water touch it. I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know what."

That was only the beginning. Shephard had difficulty breathing, and experienced back spasms, dizzy spells and migraine headaches. Before long, she was urinating blood. Now, she has central nervous system damage and most of her body has turned numb.

Those who suffer from "Downey flu" claim that the city of Downey and Industrial Realty Group, which operate what's now called Downey Landing, failed to properly remediate the property or notify workers of mold, fungi and other toxic residue. The U.S. Department of Labor has identified 260 chemicals found at the NASA site, including arsenic, lead, uranium, plutonium, trichloroethylene and chromium.

For environmental health advocates, Downey illustrates the potential harm in redeveloping old industrial sites, and the loophole that allows for development to occur before hazardous substances are completely removed. Under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, better known as Superfund or CERCLA, former U.S. military and industrial sites can be purchased by developers who promise to clean up the land. But some sickened workers question the wisdom of allowing the privatization of remediation efforts, which removes the responsibility from the government and places it into the hands of developers eager to start capitalizing on their investment.

In the Superfund program's nearly 30-year history, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified tens of thousands of hazardous waste sites. Upon some of these now sit office buildings, shopping malls, houses and schools, often without the knowledge of the people who live and work there. One such place -- Downey Landing -- boasts the film studio, Kaiser facility, Columbia Memorial Space Science Learning Center, a shopping center and a public park.

"They never told us [Downey] was a Boeing-NASA site," said Shephard, from her home in Norwalk. "Or that it was a brownfield."

Downey Flu's Impact

For 18 years, Shephard worked at Kaiser Permanente, starting out as a surgical clinical assistant before training to become an orthopedic technician. She originally worked at the Kaiser in Bellflower, Calif., before a new facility was constructed in nearby Downey.