Published in the Asbury Park Press
By LILO H. STAINTON and JEAN MIKLE
STAFF WRITERS
TRENTON -- Gov.-elect Jim McGreevey blasted the state health department yesterday for failing to respond more rapidly to concerns about a Dover Township childhood cancer cluster residents suspected stemmed from local pollution.
TANYA BREEN/Staff PhotographerGov.-elect McGreevey talks about the year ahead yesterday. With him is Anthony Coscia, who heads his state budget review.
"The Department of Health for many years resisted the contention that there was any relationship between certain disproportionately high incidence of cancer and local environmental concerns," McGreevey said of a study released Tuesday that linked high leukemia rates around Toms River to air and water toxins once emitted by local industries.
Linda L. Gillick, who has chaired Dover's Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster for nearly six years, said she agrees that state health officials were not as responsive as they should have been when affected families first raised concerns.
"The state had been contacted numerous times about the problem here," Gillick said. "Was the state as responsive as they should have been? No."
McGreevey said the state Department of Health and Senior Services only reacted when pressed by the local community, as opposed to being aggressively out front and responding to a legitimate concern.
Sources close to the McGreevey transition team also confirmed that Dr. Clifton Lacy, a ardiologist who is chief of staff at New Brunswick's Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, is McGreevey's choice to lead the health department next year. Lacy, who heads McGreevey's bioterrorism task force, could not be reached for comment.
In an editorial board meeting with Gannett New Jersey newspapers, McGreevey faulted state agencies in general for being too slow to accept "hard science" over spin, singling out the health department's handling of the Dover Township study. Although a state report in March 1996 showed rates of childhood brain and central nervous system cancers to be three times higher than normal in the area, years of further study by state and federal authorities followed and researchers did not admit any ties to environmental factors until this year.
Gillick, who in 1988 founded Ocean of Love, a support group for families of children with cancer, said she and other activists had raised alarm about elevated levels of childhood cancer in Dover for years.
It was not until March 1996 that officials agreed to begin an investigation into the higher-than-normal childhood cancer levels, after news broke that a state health report showed the overall rate of childhood brain and central nervous system cancers in Dover was three times higher than expected.
Gillick said the state failed to tell township residents about the report -- completed in 1995 -- until it was leaked to a newspaper, causing a public outcry.
Kim Pascarella, a Citizens Action Committee member, said he could not comment in detail about the issue because he wasn't aware of McGreevey's remarks.
However, he said, "If it means that the health department should have been on top of it more in the '80s, when this appeared to pose a problem, I'd agree with him. But the state has been proactive since this came to light and they've done certain things to protect the community. We all wish those things would have been done back in the '80s when it would made some difference."
Although health department officials could not be reached late yesterday for a response, a statement from that office issued Tuesday aims to calm public fears about pollution. "As a result of measures taken prior to and earlier in our investigation . . . all known exposures from previous releases have been addressed," said the department's acting deputy commissioner, James Blumenstock. "The public can take comfort in this fact."
Designed to examine the connection between pollution from three local sources and the high leukemia rates, the study looked at air emissions from the former Ciba-Geigy chemical plant, contamination at the Reich Farm Superfund site and water drawn from wells along the Garden State Parkway. While scientists found an association between these toxins and the high cancer rates, they said the data did not pinpoint a direct cause-and-effect relationship.
Published on December 20, 2001
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