"BRIDGETON, Mo. -- Dawn Chapman can put up with the noxious smell caused by smoldering trash in a landfill near her suburban St. Louis home. But if the burning creeps close to buried nuclear waste, she's ready to get out."

"It's a problem that worries many people in this densely populated area near Lambert Airport, where the trash burns just 1,200 feet from another landfill that holds radioactive waste dating back to the Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic bomb in the 1940s.

'We're talking about just walking away from our home, honestly,' said Chapman, a mother of three young special-needs children. She's not comfortable selling the house, even if she could.

'I'm a moral person. I can't just sell it to another family. If I feel like it's unsafe for my children, how could I do that to somebody else?' she asked."

Jim Salter reports for the Associated Press May 29, 2013. [2]