Published in the Ocean County Observer
By MARGARET F. BONAFIDE
Staff Writer
TOMS RIVER -- Linda Gillick is concerned about laboratories that are being indicted for falsifying results.
Gillick, chairwoman of Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster in Toms River, has been instrumental in weaving multiple state and federal environmental agencies into an unprecedented cooperative network to help solve the mystery of why there is an elevated rate of childhood cancers in Toms River.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced last week that three former employees were indicted from Saybolt Inc., a company which dealt primarily with reformulated gasoline, for falsifying lab results.
Brick resident William N. Koeck, 47, vice president and general manager of Saybolt's East Coast operations from 1976 through 1997, was indicted in federal court.
Nabil Mohatadi, 54, of South Plainfield who managed the company's Kenilworth lab, also was indicted along with David Loane, 32, of Tennessee.
Saybolt entered a corporate guilty plea in U.S. District Court in Boston.
"There is a very remote possibility" that samples taken from the Toms River area could have been sent to another laboratory, Intertek, where 13 employees were indicted in September for falsifying results, said Gerald P. Nicholls, director of the Department of Environmental Protection Division of Environmental Safety, Health and Analytical Programs.
The Department of Justice investigated Intertek, which did Superfund environmental testing, and found the lab falsified testing data to hide improperly calibrated instruments that did not meet quality control standards.
"The EPA made us aware of the problem about a year ago and told us to look at our records because Intertek had done sight remediation," Nicholls said. "There is no documentation they did anything for us. I really don't believe it could have occurred, but you can't check every single result. We have millions of results and it is impossible to check every single one."
Testing for the Toms River Cancer Cluster has 185 volumes of data, each one a 3-inch binder, he added.
The Reich Farm Superfund site and testing for the Dover Township Municipal Landfill were not sent to Intertek lab. Those results went to Lancaster Laboratories in Pennsylvania, Rutgers University or the environmental department itself, Nicholls said.
"To the best of our knowledge, no work was ever done by Intertek," Nicholls said of Intertek, which did do environmental testing on Superfund sites.
Toms River Superfund site Ciba-Geigy, which became Ciba Specialty Chemicals Corp., is in the process of cleaning up its site that will cost the company about $83,000 and will take at least eight years once work begins after the design phase.
Officials at Ciba said the company did not use Intertek or its parent company Caleb Brett, which also had employees indicted for falsifying results, said Donna Jakubowski, spokeswoman for Ciba.
More locally, the state Department of Health pulled certification of Lake Associates in Tuckerton in April. Robert Ingenito, director of sanitary inspection for the Ocean County Health Department said he could not comment on Lake Associates in Tuckerton but said the county was instructed not to use it.
Nina Habib Spencer, spokeswoman for the federal environmental agency said there are measures in place, such as split samples going to two different labs, that help the agency keep a high level of confidence in the results it received for the Toms River Cancer Cluster, which involves three contaminated sites: Reich Farm, the Dover Township Municipal Landfill and Ciba-Geigy.
"The samples are split for this very reason, to prevent the possibility of the false data being considered," Habib Spencer said.
"Lab standards under EPA are very stringent," she said. "The laws under the EPA carry criminal penalties and are not just monetary fines."
Published on August 5, 2001
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