Folks in Grove City got a chance to learn more about the dangers in landfill waste and how it could impact their health.

The Citizen's Environmental Association of the Slippery Rock Area (CEASRA) hosted a public informational meeting about radiation, fracking waste and forever chemicals in landfill leachate. 

Dr. John Stolz, director of the Center for Environmental Research at Duquesne University, spoke to a group of residents about how toxic waste like oil and gas collected at municipal landfills could produce something hazardous.

"My research group has been studying this for several years now and we found that those landfills that take oil and gas waste have higher levels of radioactive materials like Radium 226 and 228," Stolz said  "As well as high salts and heavy metals."

These materials, known as leachate when broken down at a landfill, could potentially leak out of said landfill and spill into streams and soil.

This includes toxic heavy metals, halogenated compounds, pesticides and more, according to the National Institutes of Health.

The U.S. EPA says these leachates could cause a greater risk in cancer.

Held at Alliance Church at 7 p.m., Stolz discussed what this leachate could do to a human, as well as ongoing litigation attempting to stop an expansion of a a landfill owned by Tri-County Landfill Inc. in Liberty and Pine Township in Mercer County.

While litigation in this matter is ongoing, Stolz says it's important to keep shining a spotlight on the health issues caused by toxic waste in landfills.

"I don't think they know that this is happening," Stolz said. "This is going to our municipal sanitary landfills that were never designed to take that kind of material."

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