Many US public parks sit surprisingly close to hazardous waste sites and facilities that release toxic chemicals

While parks, playgrounds and hiking trails are generally thought of as "healthy" spaces, researchers from the University of Michigan have found that many of them overlap with old toxic waste sites or sit dangerously close to facilities that actively release hazardous chemicals. Their new study, published in Scientific Reports, looks at the proximity of 151,366 U.S. public parks to facilities in the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) and Superfund sites (SFS).