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TAINTED AIR, WATER MAY BE CANCER-RATE FACTORS
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Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE and KIRK MOORE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
TOMS RIVER -- After six years of study, researchers were unable to link Dover Township's higher-than-normal rates of childhood cancer to any single environmental cause, according to an epidemiological study released yesterday.
But scientists did find that exposure to contaminated drinking water, and to air emissions from the former Ciba-Geigy Corp. plant, were associated with elevated levels of leukemia in girls.
The report, released yesterday by the state Department of Health and Senior Services and the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, was the centerpiece of the nearly six-year-old investigation into the possible causes of elevated levels of childhood leukemia, brain and central nervous system cancers in Dover.
The report's findings were greeted with mostly positive reviews by families of children with cancer, with several family members saying the association between leukemia cases, contaminated air and polluted water vindicates their belief that past environmental problems contributed to a high incidence of cancer in Dover.
'A victory' declared
"I've been called the eternal optimist throughout this thing because everyone said they would never find anything," said Linda L. Gillick, who for nearly six years has chaired the monthly meetings of the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster. "I said, with what you have here, they have to find something. I was right."
Gillick said she believes it is "a victory," that researchers were able to find an association between environmental contamination and elevated cancer levels, since most previous studies have not been able to make any type of connection.
Researchers were able to find no explanation for the higher-than-normal rates of brain or central nervous system cancers. Female children born to women who were exposed to large amounts of water from United Water Toms River's Parkway well field while pregnant were at greater risk of developing leukemia, as were female children whose mothers were exposed to elevated levels of air emissions from the former Ciba-Geigy Corp. plant.
Scientists stressed that the public is no longer in danger from the pollutants mentioned in the report, because the contamination sources have either been cleaned up or cut off by ongoing treatment processes.
"The people who are hearing this should know it's safe to drink their water in Toms River," said acting state health Commissioner George T. DiFerdinando.
"It's very unusual to even find an association," DiFerdinando said. "It's very difficult to turn an association into a cause. We do not have that last piece today."
Researchers repeatedly stressed, however, that the limited number of cases included in the study makes it impossible to draw any concrete conclusions from the results.
"Chance remains a possible explanation for some of all of these findings," said Jerald A. Fagliano, a program manager with the state health department and the study's lead investigator, "due to the inherently small size of the study."
Computer models used
One of the most arduous and expensive aspects of the investigation was its "water modeling" of Dover Township, using computers to reconstruct water supply sources and use from the 1960s through the 1990s.
Those models played in big part in the findings that link the parkway well field to female leukemia cases. It's a breakthrough in the methodology of studying pollution-linked public health problems, said Juan J. Reyes, director of regional operations for the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
"In only a few cases have we associated an exposure with an increase in risk," Reyes said. "The water distribution modeling has caught attention not just national-ly, but internationally. . .it's changing the landscape of how these models are used."
Researchers could not establish any link between environmental exposures and brain and central nervous system cancers in the study group, Fagliano said.
But for the years 1982 to 1996, "we did find an association be-tween pre-natal exposure to the parkway well field water and leu-kemia in females," Fagliano said.
A plume of groundwater pollution from the Reich Farm Superfund site leached into the Parkway well field around 1982, research-ers estimate. Volatile organic contaminants, including trichlo-roethylene, a human carcinogen, were found in the well field in the late '80s.
Girls who developed leukemia in the years between 1982 to 1996 were five times more likely than children in the control group to have been exposed to high levels of water from the parkway wells, Fagliano said.
That difference shot up to 15 times more likely in a narrower time frame of 1984 to 1996, he added. The leukemia patients to-taled 22 children, 13 of them girls, officials said.
"It's important to point out that we did not see post-natal associa-tions for leukemia, males, or ner-vous system cancers," Fagliano added.
Leukemia in very young girls aged up to 4 years was 19 times more likely to be associated with air emissions from the Ciba-Geigy plant, based on where their homes were located in relation to emissions and wind patterns mapped by investigators, Fagliano said.
Very few children in the study group lived in homes with private wells in areas of Dover with ground water pollution. There was some association of leukemia with polluted private wells, but only one case was verified.
Other possible factors, like leaks from the Ciba-Geigy ocean outfall pipeline through Dover or the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey, had no association with the cancers, Fagliano said.
The study investigators conduct-ed in-depth interviews with fami-lies of 40 cancer patients diag-nosed from 1979 to 1996 and 159 families of "control" children who didn't have cancer, matched by gender and year of birth with the cancer patients.
A review of birth records focused on 48 children diagnosed from 1979 to 1986, and 480 matched control birth records.
Investigators looked at potential factors like parents' exposure to chemical or radiological materials in their workplaces, chemicals in the household, smoking and tap water use.
Polluters' viewpoint
Representatives of Union Carbide Corp. and Ciba Speciality Chemi-cals Corp. said the small number of cases in the study makes the report less than conclusive.
Ciba spokeswoman Donna Jaku-bowski noted that researchers said the association between ex-posure to emissions from the plant's former dye-manufacturing operations and elevated levels of leukemia in girls could be caused by chance or some other factor that is not yet known.
"Based on what we've heard to-day, Ciba continues to believe our site has not impacted public health," Jakubowski said.
Jane Teta, an epidemiologist for Union Carbide Corp., noted that one association drawn by re-searchers between exposure to polluted parkway well field water and elevated levels of leukemia in girls was based on only four leu-kemia cases.
"There was nothing in males, which makes it odd," Teta said.
United Water Toms River spokesman Richard Henning said the company does not believe the study "truly concludes that there is any association between our water and the childhood cancer."
"We are fully supportive of fur-ther testing and will continue to cooperate with all parties that want to continue looking at this issue," Henning said.
But Jan Schlictmann, a lawyer whose eight-year court fight on behalf of leukemia victims in Wo-burn, Mass., inspired the book and movie, "A Civil Action," hailed yesterday's findings as a major step forward for environmental science.
"This is an earthquake. . .This has big implications for law, public health and environmental health policy," Schlictmann said.
Schlictmann's case against com-panies that spilled solvents into Woburn's ground water met with checkered results, but it did bring about a federal epidemiological study that pointed to an elevated risk of cancer from those pollut-ants.
"It shows how far-reaching this is, even more than Woburn," said Linda Gillick's son, Michael, 22, who was diagnosed with neuro-blastoma as an infant. Michael Gillick said the study "proves that contamination caused cancer, which is what we've been pushing for."
State health officials said they plan to return to Dover in late January or early February for an-other public meeting to discuss the study's findings. The study released yesterday is a draft ver-sion, and public comment will be taken for 60 days.
Published on December 19, 2001
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