Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
TOMS RIVER -- A teen-age girl is the seventh Dover Township child to be diagnosed with cancer in 1998, the chairwoman of the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer said last night.
Linda L. Gillick said she did not want to identify the type of cancer the girl had. But she said it is not brain or central nervous system cancer or leukemia, the three types being targeted in an ongoing state and federal study of elevated childhood cancers here.
The girl's cancer is in the bone, Gillick said, although it is not bone cancer.
The ongoing study looks at children with cancer diagnosed from 1979 to 1996.
Two childhood cancer cases were diagnosed in Dover Township in 1997 and four in 1996. Hospitals and doctors have until June to report cases of cancer diagnosed in 1998 to the state's cancer registry.
Also last night, Tom Mignone of the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry reported that progress is being made in the ongoing effort to create a computer model of Dover Township's water system.
Mignone said the model is being adjusted to reflect data collected in the township during March and August 1998. Scientists expect to have the historical model up and running by late May or early June, when it will be used to assist researchers who are analyzing data from an epidemiological study of children with cancer.
The model of the township's water distribution will be used by scientists to determine if families of children who developed cancer ingested more polluted water than families of children who did not develop the disease.
In response to a question posed by Craig A. Wilger, Union Carbide Corp.'s project manager for the Reich Farm Superfund site, Mignone said researchers have decided not to inject a harmless substance, such as fluoride, into the existing water system to track the way the substance moves through the water.
In December, an expert review panel suggested such a test, called a "tracer test," be done to see if the computer model can accurately mimic the movement of substances through the public water system.
Mignone said researchers plan to use a naturally occurring compound to trace movement, instead of adding a substance to the water.
In another matter, Wilger said Carbide officials will attend a meeting in Trenton tomorrow to discuss water modeling related to the installation of an "interceptor" well at United Water Toms River's parkway well field.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency ordered the company to drill such a well at the well field, located off Dugan Lane, to intercept a plume of ground-water contamination from Reich Farm, located one mile north.
Wilger said Carbide hopes to have the interceptor well in place by June.
Source: Asbury Park Press
Published:March 09, 1999
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