Draft:Michael Harold Brown

Michael H. Brown

Michael Harold Brown is a Catholic author/journalist/speaker/and website owner in the United States. He has published 29 non-fiction books and a novel. As a secular journalist, Mr. Brown exposed the Love Canal toxic waste crisis in his hometown of Niagara Falls, for which he was nominated three Pulitzer prizes. The Love Canal created many controversies, and executives of the Hooker Chemical Company, which has since changed its name, took to national airwaves and massive mailings in an attempt to discredit him. His work appeared in publications such as The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, Reader's Digest, Science Digest, Discover, New York, Saturday Review, Rolling Stone, and others. He spoke for ten years on the college lecture circuit on toxic contamination, spurring the creation of many local activist groups in the 1980s and appearing on many television and radio shows. A cover story in the Atlantic won him that year's Sidney Hillman Award. He considered the contamination of nature neither a liberal or conservative issue, but a human and spiritual one.

EARLY LIFE

Brown was born March 5, 1952, in Niagara Falls, and attended Fordham University in the Bronx, New York, where he worked on the school newspaper, ''The Ram', and in 1975 graduated with a major in journalism.

CAREER

Upon graduation he was hired as a general assignment reporter for the Press & Sun-Bulletin Sun-Bulletin, where, on April 7, 1975, he published the longest article in that newspaper's 153-year history, focusing on a teacher named Phil Jordan who was forced from the school (in Spencer, New York) because of his "psychic" demonstrations, including the apparently paranormal ability to clairvoyantly find objects and cause psychokinetic (mind-over-matter) effects [2].

Brown left the newspaper in the summer of 1975 and began work on a book about psychokinesis. The book, PK: A Report on Psychokinesis, was published by Steinerbooks in New York in 1976. His first radio show, a five-hour all-night appearance with then-legendary New York broadcaster "Long John" Nebel and his wife, Candy Jones, on WMCA in Manhattan. Brown went back to newspaper work at the Niagara Gazette. One of his first assignments was covering the Great Blizzard of 1977. At first a reporter covering the small towns of Lewiston and Porter, he became intrigued by an issue of which he had never heard: toxic chemical waste disposal. This arose due to the existence in those towns of a company called Chem-Trol (later SCA) that was bringing in the most toxic compounds from around the nation and burying them in "secure landfills" at a wooded area near Lake Ontario, upsetting largely rural residents who feared they would leak, including a councilwoman named Joan Gipp whom Brown credits with sparking the toxic-waste awareness in Western New York.

LOVE CANAL

Brown wrote extensively about Chem-Trol and its potential threat to the waterways throughout 1977, He also wrote of a federal nuclear site, the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works, where highly radioactive wastes from the production of uranium yellowcake for the Manhattan Project was stored in a cement silo and emitting radon gas suspected of sickening those nearby. (The silo was eventually removed and radioactive substances relocated or secured there, after Brown joined forces with New York Times' reporter Donald G. McNeil, who also wrote about it. McNeil has since become well-known for his prescient coverage of Covid-19.

In 1977, Brown was assigned to cover a meeting in Buffalo between the city, the Niagara County Health Department, and an engineering firm, Cal-Span of Buffalo, concerning effluents from that dump, which was once used (1947-1953) by the Hooker Chemical Company (then "Hooker Chemicals and Plastics"). Rainwater was carrying chemicals from the canal and was leaking. Asked by Brown if it was a health threat, the engineer replied that no one yet knew. Asked if there was a chance it could harm people, the engineer told Brown that "someone's going to have to dig in there and take a good look. If they don't, your child or children's children are going to run into problems." Brown immediately began looking at the Love Canal situation closely [3] and in weekly columns urging the city's action [4] [5] on Love Canal.

Assured by the county health department and its commissioner, Dr. Francis Clifford, that Love Canal was not a health risk [6], Brown nevertheless began making regular phone calls inquiring as to the status of remedial action and was often met with stonewalling. At the time, the Hooker Company was the largest employer in the area, with three thousand of employees and thousands elsewhere, in more than a dozen countries. It was closely tied to local politicians and now owned by Occidental Petroleum, headquartered in Houston, Texas, and Los Angeles, California.

During the spring of 1978, Brown began wondering if the chemicals tracked in sump pumps might already be causing health effects after learning that benzene -- at the time the only definitively proven chemical carcinogen -- had been tracked in the air of several homes [7]. Brown set about meeting with Love Canal residents, especially a couple named Timothy and Karen Schroeder, and Karen's parents, the Voorhees, who lived at the southern end of 99th Street, where he was to learn that chemicals that had been forced out of their confinement (in large part due to the blizzard in 1977) were swamping several backyards during heavy rain or snow melt and even had pushed a swimming pool out of the ground and oozed as black sludge through the drain of another across the way on 97th Street, where Brown discovered that a woman who lived there, Rosalee Janese, had unusually severe skin problems and other ailments -- symptoms that Brown soon found were identical to those caused by tetra dioxin, known by some as the most poisonous chemical ever synthesized and the cause of a myriad of illnesses, including a serious skin disorder, "chloracne", that involved more than just the skin. The Schroeders had a daughter named Sheri who had more than a dozen birth defects, including a cleft palate, irregular heart beat, hole in her heart, serious learning disabilities, and double row of bottom teeth[8].

In May, Brown came across a memo from the Environmental Protection Agency office in Rochester stating that tests already conducted by the state suggested "a serious threat to health and welfare." [9] Though no one knew, at the time (aside from Hooker) what precisely was in the canal, the effluents went beyond solvents like benzene and trichlorethylene and included dozens of highly toxic chlorinated hydrocarbons used for pesticides, herbicides, and plastics, including C-56 (a building block for the now-banned pesticide Mirex) and TCP, or 2,4,6-trichlorophenol, which Brown learned virtually always carried, as an unwanted byproduct, tetra-chloro-dibenzo-para-dioxin, TCDD or "dioxin" for short. The burial of trichlorophenol at Love Canal was proven later in 1978 when a source from a remedial chemical company called Brown to inform him and Hooker confirmed it. Soon, dioxin itself was detected. The resultant news stunned officials and the nation. In June, a former city bulldozer operator had called Brown to tell him he had once seen the U.S. Army bury several metal drums there, raising the possibility of radioactivity or chemical-warfare agents, though this was never confirmed, nor did Brown pick up radioactivity at Love Canal on a Geiger counter. He suggested to the Schroeders that they form a citizens' group and petition the city, which they did. Besides the window fans, all that had been done was erection of a snow fence to keep people off the dump's deteriorating surface. Brown met great resistance from two other doctors, Dr. Mitchell Zavon, who was employed by Hooker, and a local dermatologist who blasted the reporter for suggesting that Janese had chloracne (which the doctor was not familiar with, having diagnosed her as having lupus). A state senator called Brown and all but demanded he halt his reporting on the situation, lest he "panic" people.

During May of 1978, Mr. Brown had informed the New York State Health Department of his door-to-door survey, which the managing editor chose not to print in full detail because it was not an official study. Still, the indications of possible birth defects and other ailments made their way into the Gazette's coverage. After receiving Michael's phone call, the state health department immediately announced it would be conducting an official medical investigation, which may have been in the discussion stage already [9]. On July 14 Brown learned that a preliminary survey by the state of Love Canal indicated possible birth defects [11]. In the more formal study, state epidemiologist Dr. Nicolas Vianni very quickly determined through survey questionnaires and blood tests that there indeed seemed to be an abnormal prevalence of miscarriages and birth defects alongside Love Canal, along with unusual liver enzyme levels. This soon caused the state health commissioner, Dr. Joseph Whalen, to declare an unprecedented health emergency, the first such emergency in American history. Brown collected sump-pump samples from a neighborhood a mile from the worst-hit section and had them analyzed, along with logging state air sample results.[12]

The declaration was made on August 2, 1978 [13], and led to massive national publicity, including on The New York Times front page and all three news networks (NBC, CBS, and ABC). Angry residents filled the streets, demanding evacuation, which soon was to come for 237 households. President Jimmy Carter also declared an emergency. The Times had the reporter, Donald G. McNeil, in Niagara Falls. He had been briefed on the situation by Brown, shown the situation, and handed a box of documents and notes Mr. Brown had gathered. Shortly before the declaration, Brown also had received a visit from a woman, Lois Gibbs, who lived several blocks from the canal but was very concerned about what she was reading. He gave her copies of Gazette articles about Love Canal and the Cal-Span report. Along with two other residents, she soon formed a formal homeowners association and working full-time and tirelessly, helped keep the matter before the local media, especially Buffalo television stations, with public demonstrations after the August 2 declaration. The results of the samples from other sump pumps to the north of the Schroeders were given to Brown by a private chemical company that wanted anonymity on August 4 and showed the dump was three times the size officials said and a threat to many hundreds more.

Brown soon learned that the potential health threat went beyond the first two "rings" of home at Love Canal, with indications of other illnesses far away from the Schroeders along old swales and creek beds that were suspected of carrying toxicants [14] [15]. Further testing by Brown, and then the state, as well as air samples, buttressed this possibility, and the evacuation zones at Love Canal were expanded, soon including hundreds of more homes in 1978. Memos he obtained from state sources showed contamination (in old creek beds,) as far as 101st Street. It was in November that the existence of dioxin in the canal -- in seepage -- was discovered when on December 9 he received a confidential (but later revealed) call from Dr. David Axelrod, chief of the state Health Department's laboratory and soon-to-be health commissioner. Hooker was increasingly upset with Brown, whom they had first called to a meeting the day before the watershed August 2 declaration in an effort to downplay the problem. Mr. Brown had serious clashes with Hooker's executive vice president as well as the corporation's public relations executive. Including smaller news items and articles, Brown wrote about a hundred articles on Love Canal.

Brown's investigation continued through 1978 and early 1979. In 1978, it had expanded to other, potentially even more dangerous dumps, including a Hooker dump called the 101 Street landfill [16]; a third called the "S-Area" on Hooker's property [17]; and a fourth called the Hyde Park landfill (or "Bloody Run," after the name of a creek that flowed from it). Brown learned in a call from two scuba divers hired by the city to do periodic checks of its water-plant intake pipes in the Niagara River, just above the famous falls, that there was a chemical odor to sludge they found in the pipe. Brown was to discover that it came from the "S-Area" dump, which was immediately adjacent to the water plant (which supplied the entire city) and was larger than Love Canal, with the same chemicals. The water plant eventually had to be relocated. He also found tremendous contamination in Gill Creek just above the cataracts. An analysis showed it to have the highest level of PCBs ever detected in an open environment. This time the culprit was DuPont, which quickly set about dredging the channel.[18]

Brown's investigation of Hooker's Hyde Park landfill, which was several times the volume of Love Canal, again with the same compounds, began with a call from a concerned citizen, Fred Armagost, along Bloody Run Creek. Brown had the sediment tested there too, surveyed the area in a small airplane, and began intensive reportage when the tests he had sent for analysis turned up highly toxic chemicals. Brown discovered that Mirex was leaking from the landfill into the great freshwater body of water, Lake Ontario. For years, fishing of certain species had been banned or restricted in that great lake due to Mirex contamination, though no one knew where it originated. Then-congressman Al Gore visited the creek, which was upstream from the city of Toronto. Soon the state moved in with testing that once more detected dioxin. This dump was the largest environmental threat in Niagara Falls and perhaps the nation. Hooker was sued by both the state and U.S. attorneys general for its dumps and had to pay many hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars (in today's value) in remedial measures and private lawsuits.

Brown wrote about these investigations -- and expanded his investigation nationwide -- in a book released at the end of 1979 called 'Laying Waste: The Poisoning of America by Toxic Chemicals' [19], which was published by the Pantheon division of Random House and drew publicity around the nation and exposed more dumps. The Hooker Company threatened Random House over the book, hiring famed libel attorney Louis Nizer. Brown, 27, had left the Niagara Gazette under tense circumstances to pursue the book after writing a major article for The New York Times Magazine, entitled "Love Canal, USA," that was published on January 21, 1979 [20]. It was the first major story surveying the toxic-dump situation nationwide.

Mr. Brown moved to Manhattan just before release of the book, which received a full-page review in the prestigious New York Times Book Review, among many dozens of other newspapers. Michael appeared on hundreds of radio and TV shows, including national ones such as Today, Nightline, and McNeil-Lehrer. The book was excerpted or adapted in the Atlantic Monthly (cover story) [21], The New York Times Magazine (three times [22][23]), Reader's Digest [22] [23], New York [24], Family Weekly [25],  and other publications. The issue of toxic chemical wastes had been established.

The situation was not without intrigues. At various points Michael saw suspicious cars following him during return trips to Niagara Falls, and so concerned was Pocket Books, which published the paperback of Laying Waste, that at one point it wanted to hire a security guard for Brown's hotel room during publicity appearances in the oil-hotbed of Houston (an offer he declined). Pantheon took out a special ad in 'The New York Times' when a dump in New Jersey owned by a Mafia associate, and cited in 'Laying Waste' as ready to explode, did just that, its smoke threatening lower Manhattan soon after the book's release. His book was endorsed by Jessica Mitford, Congressman John LaFalce, Senator Patrick Moynihan, Ralph Nader, Senator Bill Bradley, Paul Erlich, and others. He also reported on the connections of organized crime to toxic waste for Reader's Digest [25] and on a dump exposed by a local priest in Woburn, Massachusetts, for Rolling Stone [26]. Legendary columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote a column about him. He was cited in 1984 in People Magazine's "people of the first decade" [1].

PUBLISHING CAREER

Mr. Brown's next book focused on a Mafia story: that of a former hoodlum who testified against 74 hardcore hitmen and robbers in the Newark area and was now in hiding under the Witness Protection Program in Maryland. Mr. Brown spent many weeks at the hideout interviewing the former gangster and his family. He also interviewed criminals (including reputed hitmen) who allegedly had pursued the hoodlum. The book, Marked To Die [27], published by Simon & Schuster, included information from wiretaps, court records, dozens of FBI, state police, county confidential detectives, judges, witnesses, and others. After this came another book on environmental health threats, The Toxic Cloud [28], which was featured on national shows, including a radio show hosted improbably by Howard Cosell, and a book commissioned by Greenpeace International (despite Brown's conservative leanings). For a short time was a contributing editor to Science Digest, writing a lengthy investigative article on the Mississippi River and its environmental problems (traveling by car from Lake Itasca to the Louisiana delta [30]), an article upon which the Today Show based a three-part series narrated by Jane Pauley, and an article on the use by fast-food chains of beef tallow to cook chicken and fish [31]. This was discovered by using the technique he had deployed at Love Canal and having fish and chicken from McDonald's, Burger King, and other analyzed by a scientist at Harvard Medical School. The article led to another outcry around the nation when it made newswires and inspired a 'New York Times' editorial [32]. The major chains (including McDonald's) shortly after changed the frying techniques to ones using vegetable oil. Executives at McDonald's and other companies sent Brown letters explaining their changes. He also wrote a science book for HarperCollins, The Search for Eve [33], on the attempt by geneticists to backtrack the history of anatomically modern humans using mitochondrial DNA.

SPIRITUAL AWAKENING

In 1991 he pursued Catholic writing full time and appearing on shows such as Joan Rivers, Sally Jesse Raphael, Mother Angelica, TBN, and "Ancient Prophecies." He wrote his first Catholic book on a Ukrainian martyr-mystic named Josyp Terelya, and a second, on apparitions of the Virgin Mary since 1830, called 'The Final Hour', a Catholic bestseller. 'The Final Hour' was followed by many books on the afterlife, spiritual warfare, devotion, healing, prophecy, and other spiritual topics. He also penned a supernatural Christian novel, The Seven. He has visited more than thirty alleged apparition sites in various parts of the world. Brown and wife Lisa began operation of a major Christian-Catholic news/commentary/and aggregate website, Spirit Daily.com and has written thousands of Catholic-themed articles for his website.

PERSONAL LIFE

On October 30, 1993, Brown married Lisa Bassani, 33, in Albany, New York, where she was employed as a legislative assistant and researcher for New York State Senator Roy Goodman of Manhattan. They have three children, Elizabeth, Joseph, and Mary Rose. He and wife Lisa now live near St. Augustine, Florida.

PUBLICATIONS

• PK: A Report on Psychokinesis (Steinberbooks, 1977)
• Laying Waste: The Poisoning of America By Toxic Chemicals (Pantheon, 1979)
• Marked To Die (Simon & Schuster, 1984)
• The Toxic Cloud (HarperCollins, 1989)
• The Greenpeace Story (Dorling Kindersley, 1989)
• The Search For Eve  (HarperCollins, 1990)
• Witness (Faith Publishing, 1991)
• The Final Hour (Faith Publishing, 1992)
• Prayer of the Warrior (Faith Publishing, 1993)
• The Bridge To Heaven (Marian Communications, 1993)
• The Trumpet of Gabriel (Faith Publishing, 1994)
• Secrets of the Eucharist (Faith Publishing, 1996)
• The Day Will Come (Servant Publication, 1996)
• After Life (Faith Publishing, 1997)
• The Last Secret (Servant Publication, 1998)
• Seven Days With Mary (Faith Publication, 1998)
• Sent To Earth (Queenship, 2000)
• The Best of Spirit Daily (Queenship, 2002)
• The God of Miracles (Queenship, 2005)
• Tower of Light (Spirit Daily Publishing, 2007)
• The Other Side (Spirit Daily Publishing, 2008)
• The Seven (Spirit Daily Publishing, 2009)
• The Spirits Around Us (Spirit Daily Publishing, 2010)
• A Life of Blessings (Spirit Daily Publishing, 2012)
• Fear of Fire (Spirit Daily Publishing, 2013)
• What You Take To Heaven (Spirit Daily Publishing, 2014)
• The God of Healing (Spirit Daily Publishing, 2015)
• Where the Cross Stands (Spirit Daily Publishing, 2017)
• Lying Wonders, Strangest Things(Spirit Daily Publishing, 2019)
• The New York Prophecy (Spirit Daily Publishing, 2023)

FOOTNOTES

1. The Best of People: The First Decade, Ballantine Books, 1984 2. He Turns Tables On Physics, Binghamton Sun-Bulletin, April 7, 1975 3. Laying Waste: The Poisoning of America By Toxic Chemicals (Pantheon, 1979) 4. "Red Tape Stalls Dump Solution," The Niagara Gazette, by Mike Brown, February 5, 1978 5. "Dump Neighbors Wondering," The Niagara Gazette, by Mike Brown, June 25, 1978 6. "State To Study Love Canal Health 'Ills,'" by Mike Brown, the Niagara Gazette, May 21, 1978 7. "Toxic Exposure at Love Canal Called Chronic," by Mike Brown, May 25, 1978 8.  Laying Waste: The Poisoning of America By Toxic Chemicals (Pantheon, 1979) 9. Laying Waste: The Poisoning of America By Toxic Chemicals (Pantheon, 1979) 10. "State To Study Love Canal Health 'Ills,'" by Mike Brown, the Niagara Gazette, May 21, 1978 11. "Love Canal research hints at birth defects," by Mike Brown, the Niagara Gazette, July 15, 1978 12. "Love Canal residents' evacuation mulled," by Mike Brown, the Niagara Gazette, May 20, 1978 13. "Upstate Waste Site May Endanger Lives," by Donald G. McNeil, The New York Times, August 2, 1978 14.  "Canal Chemicals Fan Out," by Mike Brown, the Niagara Gazette, August 9, 1978 15.  "State, private studies at odds on canal drain illness pockets," by Mike Brown, the Niagara Gazette, October 4, 1978 16. "Worry over toxins extends to Buffalo Avenue residents," by Mike Brown, the Niagara Gazette, August 18, 1978 17. "Chemicals surround Falls water plant," by Mike Brown, the Niagara Gazette, October 5, 1978 18.  "High PCB levels found in Gill Creek," by Mike Brown, the Niagara Gazette, September 8, 1978 19.  Laying Waste: The Poisoning of America By Toxic Chemicals (Pantheon, 1979) 20.  "Love Canal, USA," by Michael H. Brown, The New York Times Magazine, January 21, 1978 21.   "Love Canal and What It Says About the Poisoning of America," by Michael H. Brown, the Atlantic Monthly, December 1979 22. "New Jersey Cleans Up Its Pollution Act," by Michael H. Brown, The New York Times Magazine, November 23, 1980 23.  "Is Hemlock Being Slowly Poisoned?" by Michael H. Brown, The New York Times Magazine, July 15, 1979 24.  "Stop the Poisoning of America," by Michael H. Brown, Reader's Digest, May 1979 25. Toxic Waste: Organized Crime Moves In, by Michael H. Brown, July 1984 24.  "The Price of Life," by Michael H. Brown, New York Magazine, March 10, 1980 25.  "Those Killer Chemical Wastes Are Poisoning America," Family Weekly, January 11, 1981 26.  "Killer Towns: Special Report: What the government can't say about death in America," by Michael H. Brown, Rolling Stone, November 26, 1981 27. Marked To Die (Simon & Schuster, 1984) 28. The Toxic Cloud (HarperCollins, 1989) 29. "Getting Serious About the Occult," by Michael H. Brown, The Atlantic Monthly, October 1978 30.  "The National Swill: Poisoning the Mississippi," by Michael H. Brown, Science Digest, June 1986 31.  "Here's the Beef: Fast Foods Are Hazardous To Your Health," by Michael H. Brown, Science Digest, April, 1986 32.  "What's the Beef?" editorial, The New York Times, April 4, 1986 33.  The Search For Eve  (HarperCollins, 1990) 34. Prayer of the Warrior (Faith Publishing, 1993) 35. Witness, Josyp Terelya with Michael H. Brown (Faith Publishing, 1991) 36. The Final Hour (Faith Publishing, 1992)

[see also: Love Canal Revisited, Michael H. Brown, Amicus Journal, Summer 1988 He Told the Stories Behind the Fence, the Niagara Gazette, by Don Glynn, July 26, 1998 A Wasted National Resource: Millions of Barrels of Engine Oil, by Michael H. Brown, The New York Times, May 4, 1980 A Toxic Ghost Town, by Michael H. Brown, The Atlantic Monthly, July 1989 Contaminating the Countryside, by Kai Erikson, The New York Times Book Review, May 18, 1980 A Shocker, The New York Times, April 25, 1980, page C-24 State Health Formula Weighs Value of Life Against Project Costs, by Peter Kihss, The New York Times, March 3, 1989, B3 Toxic Wind: Coming Soon to the Air Near You, by Michael H. Brown, Discover Magazine, November 1987 Dumping the Responsibility for Toxic Sites, by Michael H. Brown, Newsday, May 28, 1980]

EXTERNAL LINKS:

WWW.SPIRITDAILY.COM

Michael Brown's books