Her first clue that something was wrong came as she ran her hands through her baby boy’s hair. “My child was losing his hair in clumps,” Meagan Beckermann recalls. A doctor traced the problem to alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that can be triggered by environmental factors.

A frantic search for a likely source ended when neighbors advised Beckermann to follow her nose. That’s when she learned that the charms of her St. Louis suburb of Bridgeton — with its green parks and quality schools — masked two massive landfills, one filled with radioactive waste, about a mile from her home. No one had mentioned them when she’d bought her house, she says

Source: As underground fire burns near radioactive waste, EPA says don’t worry – U.S. – Stripes