Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
State's 'cluster' study continues
TOMS RIVER -- Six new cases of childhood cancer were diagnosed in Dover Township in the year 2000, a state health official has told the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster.
James S. Blumenstock, senior assistant state health commissioner, said that all six children were between the ages of 10 and 20 at the time of diagnosis. He did not know whether they were the types of cancers being tracked in Dover because of their frequency.
Linda L. Gillick, committee chairwoman and executive director of Ocean of Love, a support group for families of stricken children, said in November that she believed at least one of the six cases was leukemia and one other was a brain tumor.
Federal and state health officials are attempting to discover why incidences of leukemia, brain and central nervous system cancers are elevated here.
Researchers have interviewed 40 families whose children contracted one of those illnesses while living in Dover from 1979 to 1996. They also have interviewed 159 control group families whose children are healthy, and are attempting to find differences between the two groups.
Because interest is so great, health officials have been releasing information on new cancer cases as it becomes available each year.
They have stressed, however, that there is no way to discern a trend in the annual tallies. Trends can only be determined by looking at cancer diagnoses over a lengthy period of time, health officials have said.
Five cases of childhood cancer were diagnosed in Dover in 1999; seven in 1998; two in 1997 and four in 1996.
It is possible that not all such cases from 2000 have been reported to the state by medical personnel yet, Gillick said.
Published on January 31, 2001
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