BY DAN ROSS @1danross
TWO YEARS ago, after Erin Card moved within 2 miles of the Radford Army Ammunition Plant in southwest Virginia, she began noticing threads of smoke that occasionally rose above the heavily wooded site. She started asking about it and was stunned by what she learned: Toxic explosives were being burned in the open air. “It just seems crazy to me,” says Card.
There is no proof the fumes have harmed Card’s family, which has lived in the area for more than a decade, yet her husband had cancer (he’s now in remission), and their eldest boy, 5-year-old Rex, had a cyst by his thyroid removed. “Sometimes,” Card says, “I feel sick to my stomach with worry.”