Michael Hickey fights foam contamination

Celebrity lawyer Erin Brockovich has been making waves across the Tasman lately, accusing authorities of woeful inaction over firefighting foam contamination of community water supplies. But the real homespun environmental hero when it comes to the chemical fallout is American Michael Hickey. The father of one, an insurance underwriter in his late 30s, watched his father die of kidney cancer, in Hoosick Falls, upstate New York in 2013. That led him to a Google search, which led to his own water testing at a local McDonalds, and, eventually, to him helping force down the safety thresholds for foam across the US.