Published in the Asbury Park Press
By KIRK MOORE
STAFF WRITER
TOMS RIVER -- Three new cases of childhood cancers have been confirmed in Dover Township this year -- plus a fourth case that was recently diagnosed in a child who moved out of Dover about six months ago, say state health officials and Linda L. Gillick, chairwoman of the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster.
"No one should draw any conclusions from these numbers . . . which is not to diminish the importance to the child (with cancer), their family, or the community," said James S. Blumenstock, senior assistant commissioner with the state Department of Health and Senior Services.
"If we have found the cause of the cancers here, it does not mean we have the magic key for cutting off the diagnoses," Gillick cautioned the audience at the monthly meeting of the citizens committee last night.
Like other childhood cancer cases in Dover, the new cases diagnosed among three residents are two children with leukemia and one with brain cancer, Blumenstock said.
The fourth case, a brain cancer patient, was diagnosed after moving to an undisclosed state in the South, and thus technically can't be counted in the New Jersey cancer registry.
An ongoing epidemiological study by federal and state health workers has generated a draft interim report, now undergoing review by the state health department. Researchers have interviewed 40 families of children with brain, central nervous system cancer and leukemia while living in Dover from 1979 to 1996.
The effort seeks to explain why the incidence of certain cancers in Dover is higher than elsewhere, and researchers are comparing the personal histories and risk factors of those families with 159 "control group" families whose children did not develop cancers.
The interim report will be released Dec. 13, Blumenstock said.
Statistically, the number of 1999 cancer cases is consistent with the rate for a population of Dover's size, estimated at 80,000 to 90,000, Blumenstock said. There's no way to discern a trend one way or another in those tallies, he stressed.
"The answer is, you can't look at that in discrete years and make a decision," he said.
In 1996, there were four childhood cancers counted; in 1997, two; six in 1998, he said.
"Is that acceptable to the parent of that child? No," Gillick said.
The numbers are presented "because the people in this town want to know when these diagnoses are made," Gillick said.
"It's important that we find the problem and fix it, whether it's environmental" or other factors, she said.
To that end, the committee heard a report from geologist John J. Trela, technical director for consultants Dan Raviv Associates Inc., a Millburn-based firm that is investigating groundwater pollution around the old Dover municipal landfill.
The landfill is suspected as a source of chemical water contamination. Like nearby Reich Farm, the landfill may have received drummed waste from the Union Carbide Corp., although in much smaller amounts than the Reich property, according to a trucker who once worked for the chemical company.
From 16 test wells drilled around the landfill, and comparisons with other well-drilling records, consultants deduced that very porous water-bearing sands under the landfill are underlain by a thick layer of clay, starting about 80 feet below the surface, Trela said.
The clay layer may isolate the upper water layer, called the Cohansey aquifer, from the deeper Kirkwood aquifer, Trela said.
In water samples from the upper Cohansey taken by consultants and the state Department of Environmental Protection last June, the highest contamination levels showed up in wells at the northeast corner of the buried landfill mound, Trela said. Preliminary sample results from there showed benzene -- a cancer-causing volatile organic chemical -- at levels from 7 to 8.4 parts per billion.
They also showed styrene acrylonitrile trimer, a chemical compound associated with plastics production, at levels of 4.25 to 7.4 parts per billion. The trimer has also shown up in wells associated with an underground pollution plume from the Reich Farm site.
Benzene and trimer were found at lower levels in wells near the Dover public works garage south of the landfill, and in wells at the eastern edge of the property.
The levels are very low -- "I tell people that one second in 32 years is a part per billion," Trela said -- but several in the audience noted it has been more than 20 years since the illegal disposal of Union Carbide waste allegedly happened.
"If you were doing this (testing) in 1979, you'd get a whole different set of numbers, would you not?" rhetorically asked Herbert J. Germann Jr., a Democratic Township Committee candidate who is a critic of how the landfill has been managed.
Trela said he suspects the highest levels of benzene and trimer appear on the east side of the landfill mound because ground water moves east to west, and those wells are closest to the old pit. Benzene is not detectable in a well 600 feet east, he said.
Trimer traces have been found in some wells used by United Water Toms River, leading to the installation of carbon filters to process raw water from those wells.
Last night, Blumenstock said state and federal officials have also agreed to step up testing of wells where trimer has not appeared yet.
Those wells have been tested every three months, but now they will be tested monthly, because "we've heard loud and clear the community's concerns," he said.
Source: Asbury Park Press
Published: September 21, 1999
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