Cass Sunstein has cited the history of Love Canal in upstate New York, which became world-famous in the late 1970s owing to widely publicized public concerns about abandoned waste that was supposedly causing medical problems in the area. In response to these concerns, the U.S. federal government set in motion "an aggressive program for cleaning up abandoned hazardous waste sites, without examining the probability that illness would actually occur," and legislation was passed that did not reflect serious study of the actual degree of danger. Furthermore, when controlled studies were publicized showing little evidence that the waste represented a menace to public health, the anxiety of local residents did not diminish.