If you don’t recognize the name, Erin Brockovich, her acclaim might have preceded your birth. In 1993, she used her pit-bull determination to help residents of Hinkley, California win a massive arbitration against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company. The company was found liable for dumping chromium-6—a carcinogen used to suppress rust formation at the Hinkley gas compressor station—into an unlined pond in the 1950s and 1960s. The chemical seeped into the town’s groundwater. The company hid the problem and misled the community on the effects of that specific type of chromium and its link to local health problems.

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