Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
U.S. SENS. Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert G. Torricelli yesterday asked the Senate Appropriations Committee to set aside $2.3 million in federal funds to continue the ongoing study into elevated levels of some childhood cancers in Dover Township.
In a letter to committee chair Sen. Christopher S. Bond, R-Mo., the two senators, both D-N.J., asked that the money be included in the fiscal year 2000 budget of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. The federal agency and the state Department of Health and Senior Services are studying the possible causes of elevated levels of childhood cancers in Dover.
The funds would be used for a number of ongoing studies, including support to help complete an epidemiological study of families of children with cancer that is being conducted by the state, and work on a model of Dover's water-distribution system. That model will attempt to determine if families of children who developed cancer ingested more contaminated water than families whose children did not develop the disease.
Lautenberg and Torricelli said the money would also be used to help fund a multistate study that will explore connections between exposure to environmental contamination and brain cancer in children. The study will focus on New Jersey, New York, Florida and Pennsylvania brain cancer cases.
The funds will also be used to support ongoing research into the toxicity of styrene acrylonitrile trimer, a chemical compound related to plastics production that has been found in three United Water Toms River wells.
"All these activities will be important for tracking down the cause of the tragedy at Toms River and Dover Township," Lautenberg and Torricelli wrote.
In October 1997, Congress approved the Michael Gillick Children Cancer Research Act, named after a 20-year-old Dover Township resident who has battled neuroblastoma since infancy.
The bill, which totaled $5 million in appropriations, set aside $2 million for 1998; another $2 million for fiscal year 1999; followed by $1 million in fiscal year 2000, which begins Oct. 1.
Linda L. Gillick, who chairs the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster, yesterday stressed the importance of continued funding for the ongoing study, which is entering its third year.
"It is absolutely necessary for the funding to be there and to continue to be there to get answers to what is happening, and continues to happen here," said Gillick, who is Michael Gillick's mother.
Source: Asbury Park Press
Published: March 26, 1999
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