Published in the Asbury Park Press
By KIRK MOORE
STAFF WRITER
Toxic exposures may date to 1960s
TOMS RIVER -- People who lived here in 1965-66 may have been exposed to traces of aniline-based dyes and nitrobenzene from the Ciba-Geigy Corp. that seeped into three wells used by the local water company, according to investigators examining the childhood cancer cluster in Dover Township.
Another pathway for toxins from the Ciba-Geigy property was water pumped out of contaminated ground water by private wells at homes in the Cardinal Drive neighborhood next to the plant property.
Today, the former chemical manufacturing complex "represents no apparent public health hazard under present conditions," now that those wells have been capped and a federal Superfund cleanup of tainted ground water is under way, according to the public health assessment released by state health officials yesterday.
"There's been a lot of work to interrupt exposures at this site," and today benzene and other pollutants are being removed from ground water in a pump-and-treat operation that handles 2.7 million gallons of water daily, said Jerold A. Fagliano, program manager of environmental health with the state Department of Health and Senior Services.
The end of all manufacturing work at the plant in 1996 put a halt to air emissions, and there's no danger from tainted soil at the secured factory property, the report concluded. Investigators also looked for remaining contamination from 1980s spills along the 10-mile Ciba-Geigy waste water outfall pipeline, but found no patterns to suggest the leaks were an "exposure pathway" for chemicals, Fagliano said.
The health assessment did not look closely at surface water exposure to swimmers, canoeists and boaters on the Toms River, which from 1952 to 1966 was polluted by Ciba-Geigy waste water and later by polluted ground water oozing from the company's landfills.
"Public comment will probably make us address that," Fagliano said, "but there's not a lot of information available" about recreational water exposure.
The Ciba-Geigy report got its first public examination last night at the monthly meeting of the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster here.
"It's pretty sad that we have to wait until the end of the 1990s to find out" about the 1965-66 well contamination, remarked Linda Gillick, the committee chairwoman.
Other residents suggested investigators look more closely at how pollutants might have gotten into fish and crabs, or whether residual pollution survives along the route of the Ciba-Geigy ocean outfall line through eastern Dover.
Earlier assessments examined the potential health impact of the Dover municipal landfill, public water supply and the Reich Farm Superfund site. An overarching epidemiological report now probably won't be ready until June 2001, said James S. Blumenstock, senior assistant state health commissioner.
The state's partners at the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry need more time to complete complex computer programs that will model the community's water supply over the years, hr said.
That modeling may reconstruct some of the little-known 1965-66 contamination of the Toms River Water Co. wells on Holly Street, near today's Water Street interchange with the Garden State Parkway.
Ciba-Geigy files compiled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency include memos from the chemical company and letters to the water company that refer to complaints about discolored water and odors, health workers said.
At the time, engineers suspected the great drought of 1965-66 and lower water levels had caused polluted water from the nearby Toms River to be drawn into groundwater flows and then through three water company wells that were 60 feet to 70 feet deep, Fagliano said.
"So that may have been a transient event" accentuated by drought conditions, he said.
Ciba-Geigy began discharging waste water to the river in 1952, and it's possible two of the Holly Street wells could have been affected before 1965, depending on seasonal interactions of the river and ground water, the assessment report notes. "The township was not so developed then and most of the population was concentrated in the Toms River area," Fagliano said.
In 1967 the company built its ocean outfall line as part of a deal to stave off complaints and legal actions over its river dumping.
The other major exposure to Ciba-Geigy toxins came from private wells in the Cardinal Drive area and north side of Oak Ridge Parkway, which were found in the mid-1980s to be contaminated by one of two underground pollution flows coming off the Ciba-Geigy property, Fagliano said. Ocean County health officials ordered those wells plugged, he added.
It's possible that private wells were used earlier for drinking water because it was not mandatory to hook up to Toms River Water Co. mains when the neighborhood was developed in the 1960s, the report notes.
The Ciba-Geigy report will be available from the Ocean County Health Department and at the county library main branch on Washington Street in downtown Toms River. It can also be read on the state health department Web site at www.state.nj.us/health.
Published: February 29, 2000
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