Published in the Asbury Park Press
By JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
TOMS RIVER -- Linda L. Gillick expects answers. Kim Pascarella hopes for some closure. Joseph Kotran hopes for some concrete conclusions.
All three Dover Township residents are parents of children stricken with cancer, and all three have been intimately involved in the 5 o-year state and federal investigation into elevated levels of some childhood cancers in Dover.
On Tuesday, the centerpiece of the lengthy investigation, an epidemiological study, is slated to be released -- in draft form -- to the public at a special meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. at Toms River High School East.
The case-control study compares the experiences of 40 families of children diagnosed with leukemia, brain and central nervous system cancers with 159 "control" families whose children did not develop the disease.
The children with cancer developed the disease while living in Dover from 1979 to 1996.
For the families of children with cancer, who will receive the results in a private meeting tomorrow, the study's release holds out hope that researchers have been able to find a link between Dover's long history of ground-water contamination and the cancers that have attacked their children.
"I expect an answer," said Gillick, whose 22-year-old son, Michael, was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a cancer of the central nervous system, when he was an infant.
"We have the cases, we have the contamination, and we've put millions and millions of dollars, and thousands and thousands of hours, into this, and we should be able to come up with something, not just for the people of Dover Township, but for other communities, to learn from what we have learned here," Gillick said.
About $10 million in state and federal funds has been spent on the cancer-cluster investigation, state health officials said.
Gillick and other parents point out that public health assessments released earlier in the childhood cancer investigation have labeled Dover's two Superfund sites -- the former Ciba-Geigy Corp., off Route 37, and Reich Farm, off Route 9 -- as past public health hazards because chemicals from the sites seeped into drinking water supplies.
The township's old municipal landfill was also termed a past public health hazard because chemicals believed to be connected to the landfill leached into some private drinking water wells.
The past public health threats no longer pose a threat to the public, according to the state and federal officials.
State health officials have stressed that public health assessments do not try to determine the cause of disease, but they do try to determine if a site poses, or has posed, a health threat.
Looking for a link
Researchers have said it is the epidemiological study that has explored any possible links between environmental contamination and childhood cancers. Many of the families, and a significant segment of the community, have long believed that exposure to polluted drinking water may have led to higher-than-normal childhood cancer levels.
Will the epidemiological study vindicate their beliefs?
"I don't know that there is going to be a direct link (between contamination and childhood cancers)," said Kotran, whose 5-year-old daughter, Lauren, is in remission after battling neuroblastoma. "But at least I hope they show some hint in that direction."
Pascarella, also a member of the citizens advisory committee, who lost his 14-month-old daughter, Gabrielle, to neurological cancer in 1990, is not as optimistic.
"I hope they have all the answers, but at this point I don't think that is likely," Pascarella said. "I just hope this could bring some closure."
Closure is something that many of those involved in the investigation say they are seeking, after six years of study. Initially some business owners and real estate agents feared real estate values would be hurt by negative news coverage that, in one case, labeled Dover as "Cancer Town."
Over the past few years, as real estate values soared and newcomers continued to move here, swelling the township's population from 76,000 in 1990 to 90,000, many of those concerns seem to have faded away.
"It's wonderful that maybe we're finally going to know what their conclusions are at the state and federal level," said Mayor Ray Fox, who was also a member of the Township Committee in 1996, when news of elevated childhood cancer levels here drew national media attention to Dover. "If it was definitely related to the water, I think we certainly need to know. . . . This certainly labeled us in a very negative way over the years, across the country, not just in our own area."
Committeeman Clarence E. "Bud" Aldrich III was mayor in 1996, when he and other committee members absorbed a rash of criticism for not doing enough to address the community's environmental concerns. He said he doubts the epidemiological study will be able to draw direct links between past instances of environmental contamination and recent childhood cancers.
"The one thing the state of New Jersey and the federal government have said all along is, don't be surprised if the results are not what you could call final results," said Aldrich, who is slated to be mayor again next year. ". . . As far as being able to prove what happened in the past, I've got to believe that will be a very, very difficult job."
High-tech study
Juan J. Reyes, director of regional operations for the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, said the results from the Dover epidemiological study will advance epidemiological science, just as previous studies have done.
"It's a sequential process," Reyes said. "We keep adding to this knowledge until we feel certain of the links between certain environmental exposures and disease. That's the way we linked smoking with lung cancer. It wasn't one study, it was many studies. But eventually we found out what the links were."
Tomm Sprick, a spokesman for Union Carbide Corp., pointed out that previous studies of cancer clusters have been unable to show direct links between cancer cases and environmental pollution.
Carbide officials have been involved in the investigation since the beginning, because the company has taken responsibility for the cleanup of Reich Farm, where an independent trucker dumped several thousand drums of chemical waste from Carbide's Bound Brook plant in the early 1970s.
"We don't know what the study is going to show, either positively or negatively," Sprick said. "Hopefully it will at least bring some measure of closure to the families by at least eliminating some of the factors they may have been thinking about. Out of all the cancer cluster studies that have been done in the United States, there has never been an environmental link shown. That may not help the families who are seeking answers, and rightly so."
Carbide, along with Ciba Specialty Chemicals, Ciba-Geigy's successor company, has long denied responsibility for any illnesses in the community.
"We're all anxious to hear what the results are," said Donna Jakubowski, a spokeswoman for Ciba. "Based on the exhaustive studies we've done on the site, we do not feel that it has had a health impact on the community."
Perhaps no company has absorbed more criticism during the investigation than United Water Toms River, Dover's public water purveyor. The company, which purchased the former Toms River Water Co. in 1994, was roundly bashed by the citizens committee and township officials for failing to communicate properly with the public during the investigation.
The company took eight wells offline in late 1996 after a previously unknown chemical compound, styrene acrylonitrile trimer, was found in two wells, and later discovered in a third. Two of those wells have never gone back into service; instead their water is treated and pumped onto the ground, although the toxicity of the trimer is not yet known.
Ongoing toxicity testing on the compound, which is related to plastics production, is not expected to be completed for another six to eight years. United also took another well offline in 1996 after elevated levels of naturally occurring radiation were discovered in the well water.
United spokesman Richard Henning said he feels his company has built a reputation for cooperating with state and federal officials, as well as the township and the citizens group, over the course of the investigation, "and really trying to understand and come to grips with what has been a very difficult situation for everyone.
"Through it all the community has survived and survived well, and it will continue to do so," Henning said. "Its water supply has been the most thoroughly tested in the world. We've blazed some new trails here."
Indeed, researchers and members of the citizens committee have continually stressed that the extensive testing of its water supply, air and soil has made Dover Township one of the safest places that anyone could live.
Gillick said what the investigation has taught her and other activists is that people must remain vigilant to make sure government does the right thing when it comes to exposing and cleaning up environmental contamination.
"People move into Toms River now knowing that it has, environmentally, been thoroughly tested," Gillick said. "Its water is the most closely watched. It's had wells taken off that had contamination. We are watching. We are a community that is not accepting that our government is watching for us. We have become the watchdogs that have said: 'We have had enough. We are not going to take it anymore.' "
Published on December 16, 2001
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