With climate change a leading issue in Georgia's two closely watched Senate runoff elections on Jan. 5, the effects of a warming planet directly threaten LCP Chemical and 15 other Superfund sites in the state. They could be potentially affected by intensified hurricanes, flooding, sea level rise or wildfires.

An investigation into the impact of climate change on 945 vulnerable Superfund sites nationally by InsideClimate News, NBC News and The Texas Observer found that LCP Chemical and another Georgia site, Armstrong World Industries, in Macon, are among 74 sites where the EPA admits that potentially harmful toxins remain uncontrolled and could damage human health.

The investigation found that 16 Superfund sites in Georgia threatened by climate change were subject to increased flooding. Eleven were also prone to damage from intensifying wildfires, while LCP Chemical and two other coastal sites in Brunswick, Hercules Landfill and Brunswick Wood Preserving, were threatened by intensifying hurricanes.

Semona Holmes, a county social worker, is careful to ask at her local Brunswick seafood stores where the catch of the day was fished. If the answer is from local waters, she doesn't buy.

"There is too much risk eating fish caught here," she said. "We know how much the water has been contaminated so we don't want to take any chances that we are eating anything that could hurt us."

Yet Holmes said she frets that people who fish the waters for their own catch are putting themselves and their families in jeopardy.

"It's unfortunate you have people is a position that they have to fish to provide for their families," she said. "I see people fishing and crabbing because they  have to. It makes me want to stop and say you shouldn't fish here because it's dangerous."

Read the full article about superfund sites in Georgia by David Hasemyer at InsideClimate News.