Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
TOMS RIVER -- A historical model of Dover Township's water system is finished, providing for completion -- possibly late this year -- of an epidemiological study that compares families of children with cancer with families of children without the disease.
Jerold A. Fagliano, an epidemiologist with the state Department of Health and Senior Services, last night laid out a tentative schedule of reports the department and the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry plan to release this year.
Chief among the reports for release is the epidemiological study itself, which will use data from the water modeling that was finished last week by Morris L. Maslia, a research hydrologist at the federal agency.
"A lot has to go right for us to meet this date," Fagliano said, referring to the planned release in December of a draft version of the epidemiological study.
Fagliano spoke at the monthly meeting of Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster at the Dover Township Municipal Building.
The study of elevated levels of some childhood cancers in Dover is in its fifth year.
The model of Dover's water system for the years 1962 to 1996 will be used by researchers to discover if families of children with cancer ingested more contaminated drinking water than families whose children did not develop the disease.
Dover's history of ground water contamination has led researchers to focus on water as a possible reason for the elevated levels of childhood cancer in town, although scientists are also looking at factors like air pollution, parents' occupation, diet and family medical history as potential cancer risk factors.
With the water modeling done, researchers will begin their analysis of the data, producing exposure assessments for different families, Fagliano said.
Ongoing analysis is already being done on other risk factors, including how close families lived to hazardous waste sites, parental occupation and air pollution sources, Fagliano said. Once the report is completed, it will undergo internal review by the federal agency and state health officials, and then be reviewed by two peer review panels of outside experts.
Changes will be made to the report based on the peer reviewers' comments, and then the draft report will be released for public comment in December, Fagliano said.
In the next few months, researchers also plan to release several other reports, including final public health assessments for the Reich Farm and Ciba-Geigy Corp. Superfund sites and the Dover Township municipal landfill.
Those three reports are scheduled for release in March, along with a progress report detailing researchers' work on the cancer cluster investigation to date, and a final public health assessment on the township's public drinking water supply.
In May, final reports on water sampling of Dover's private wells, as well as analyses of monitoring well sampling at Reich Farm, Ciba and the landfill, will be released, Fagliano said. The data in those reports has already been distributed to the public, but the May releases will present the information in a final form, he said.
Published on January 30, 2001
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