SUN JOURNAL • November 27, 2022
Marie Therese “Terry” Martin, a Rumford native, has written her memoir, “And Poison Fell from the Sky: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Survival in Maine’s Cancer Valley,” about growing up in the 1950s in the western Maine river valley. Martin writes about how later in her life she and her husband Dr. Edward Martin came to realize the serious cancer-causing health implications for the people of the area, likely caused by the toxic chemicals emitted by the paper mill in Rumford. “Although [Edmund Muskie] crafted two of the most important environmental laws of the century, those laws were never enforced in the paper mill towns. Federal politics and too much money prevented any substantial change. The existing situation was good for state economics, town finances and papermill profits, but it came at a huge cost for those diagnosed with mill town cancers,“ Martin writes.