About the Author

Ephraim Tinkham, the Captain of Engine Company No. 9, became interested in toxic substances as a specialty while a volunteer fireman in the 1960s. Engine Company No. 9 was established in 1970 prior to the first Earth Day activities in Boston. Research on chemical fallout in general and the impact of chlorofluorocarbons on the ozone layer in particular, in combination with the anti-SST Earth Day sit-in at Logan Airport, resulted in Congressional legislation banning the SST in the United States in the late fall of 1970. Forty years of research and publications on anthropogenic radioactivity and chemical fallout followed the Logan Airport Earth Day sit-in.