These two sisters live a thousand miles apart, but share the same frightening problem -- dozens of area kids are being diagnosed with cancer.  Is exposure to poisonous chemicals to blame?  Could the same thing happen to your town??

 
In the summer of 1997, Mary Kathryn Berner, thirty-nine of Jensen Beach, Florida, was startled to read a newspaper report on a rapidly growing number of children in her county who were suffering from brain tumors and nervous-system cancers.  The same thing was happening in the New Jersey town where her sister, Meg Kotran, lived.  In fact, one year earlier, Meg’s baby daughter, Lauren, had been diagnosed with neroblastoma, a relatively rare type of malignancy.  That cancer was now striking children in St. Lucie County.  “It seemed to eerie to be true,” says Mary Kathryn, an assistant vice of a mortgage title company and mother of an eight-year-old.

She sent the newspaper clips to Meg.  “My heart went out to those parents in Florida,” says Meg, thirty-seven, a sixth-grade teacher and mother of four in Toms River, New Jersey.  “I knew exactly what they were going through.”

Between 1979 and 1996, ninety-four children have been diagnosed with cancer in Dover Township, which includes Toms River.  In St. Lucie County, twenty-nine cases of brain and nervous-system cancers have been documented since 1981.  Both areas are now targets of public-health studies.

Researchers hope these investigations will shed light on a disturbing national trend.  Between 1973 and 1996, the incidence f the two most common childhood cancers rose significantly.  Brain cancer and other nervous-system cancers increased 25 percent, and acute lymphocytic leukemia was up 22 percent.

Why are children in the U.S. getting cancer at such alarming rates?  Some experts believe that toxic chemicals must play a role.  While the chemicals in pesticides, food additives, and pharmaceuticals are routinely tested, only 7 percent of the 2,800 most commonly produced chemicals used in household products have ever been tested to determine their effects on human health.  (After prodding by the government, manufacturers have agreed to provide the information by 2004.)

Scientists believe the rapidly dividing cells of fetuses and young children may be especially vulnerable to carcinogens.  “We have been in effect, conducting a vast toxicological experiment, and children are serving as laboratory subjects.” Says Philip Landrigan, M.D., chair of the department of community and preventive medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in New York City, and a former special adviser to the Office of Children’s Health Protection of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

TAKING ACTION
Parents in Florida and New Jersey are demanding answers.  In St. Lucie County, the government’s public-health study was prompted by the efforts of one mother:  Juliann Freitas, thirty-two, whose four year old son, Jimmy, died of a brain tumor in February 1997.  “One doctor mentioned that they were seeing a lot of kids with brain cancer from out area, and he wondered whether heavy exposure to pesticides had something to do with it,” recalls Juliann, who later started a foundation and a support group for parents.

To draw attention to her town’s plight, Juliann held a press conference that June.  The tactic worked:  Later that month, state health officials launched a public-health investigation.  After analyzing the cases of brain and nervous-system cancers, diagnosed among children in St. Lucie County from 1981 through 1997, the state concluded that the rates were about one and a half times higher than what would be expected – which could be due to chance, according to Sharon Heber, M.P.H., an epidemiologist for the Florida Department of Health.  “But we’re proceeding with the study because about half of these cases were diagnosed in 1996 and 1997, which is a trend that concerns us,” she says.

The state is also exploring the possibility that pesticide exposure plays a role in the children’s illnesses.  Several recent scientific studies have indicated that home use of pesticides and herbicides increases cancer risks for children (see “How to Protected Your Children,” page 116).  In St. Lucie County, as in most areas in Florida, the chemicals are used heavily year-round.  In addition, families typically have their homes sprayed monthly to control insects.  Tests show no link between use of these chemicals and the cancer cases, but an epidemiological study has just begun.

In Dover Township/Toms River, the investigation is much more advanced.  Not only are pediatric cancers in the New Jersey town 34 percent higher than they should be, but the federal and state investigation launched there is one of the most comprehensive environmental public-health studies every undertaken.

It all began in 1985, when a ground of mothers who met at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, in New York City – where their children were undergoing treatment – were alarmed to discover that they all lived in the Toms River area.  One mother, Linda Gillick whose son, Michael, was diagnosed with neuroblastoma as a baby, started a support group for the stricken families.

In 1995, a nurse at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was worried by the number of pediatric cancer patients she was seeing from the Toms River area.  She called the EPA.  The New Jersey health department was then asked to analyze pediatric cancer rates for one section of the town.  The results showed that from 1979 through 1991, the number of cases of brain cancer and cancer of the central nervous system am9ng kids under the age of five was more than seven times higher than expected in Toms River.

The families were never told of the results, hey had to read about them in the paper seven months later.  State and county health officials said they had no plans to do an epidemiological study because it would cost too much and there were too few cases of cancer.

A month those who protested against the government’s inaction at a public meeting was Michael Gillick, who, at seventeen, suffered from painful internal and facial tumors that left him blind in one eye.  Michael pleaded with health officials to begin an investigation.  “No one should have to live with this disease.” He told them.  That meeting convinced the state and federal agencies to begin the study.  Almost immediately, researchers began testing the private and public wells that provided water to Dover Township.

They quickly focused on an independent waste hauler named Nicholas Fernicola.  In March 1971, Union Carbide Corporation had hired Fernicola to dispose of waste described as possibly “flammable, corrosive and/or a poisonous nature.”  At first Fernicola trucked the fifty-five-gallon waste containers to the Dover Township Municipal Landfill near Toms River, according to Union Carbide documents and a report by the EPA.  But several months later, he found a new dumping ground at a former chicken farm in the area.  Without informing Union Carbide, he deposited 4,300 drums of toxic liquid there, sometimes pouring the contents into the soil.

The chicken farm was one mile north of the wellfield that was one of the sources of drinking water for Toms River.  In December 1971, when Union Carbide found out what Fernicola was doing, they removed the drums.  However, the chemicals leached through the soil into the groundwater.

In 1974, organic chemicals were found in some of the town’s private wells.  One contaminant – styrene – found in one of those wells probably came from the material dumped at the chicken farm, according to Craig Wilger, a project manager for Union Carbide.  By 1987, the contamination had apparently reached the public wells, eventually prompting the water company to shut down several of them temporarily.  A year later, a device was installed to remove contaminants.

But in 1996, when officials investigating the Toms River cancer cluster tested the municipal-water samples, they discovered a compound that was later tentatively identified as styrene-acrylonitrile (SAN) trimer, a by-product of Union Carbide’s former plastic-manufacturing process.  Some preliminary tests of the substance indicate that it is “potentially mutagenic.” Meaning it may damage DNA.  No conclusions can be drawn about its effects on human health until testing in animals is completed.  For now, Wilger says, “It would not be appropriate to speculate that the SAN trimer is the cause of the cancers in Toms Rivers.

A SPECIAL INVESTIGATION
Today, at the headquarters of the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, in Atlanta, scientists are using blueprints of the Dover Township/Toms River municipal water-distribution system to construct a computer model that will show which areas may have received tainted water.  The state of New Jersey is also sampling layers of dust from homeowners’ attics to determine which areas of town may have been subjected to toxic air pollutants from local industrial operations.  Within the next two years, researchers should be able to tell if the neighborhoods that received the greatest contamination match the locations of the cancer cases.

Investigations of suspected cancer clusters are complex because scientists must take into account all possible sources of environmental contamination.  In Dover Township/Toms River, other sources being considered include a now-closed chemical plant owned by Ciba Specialty Chemicals.  In 1982, the EPA declared the plant a Superfund toxic-waste site.  It has since been cleaned up, and Donna Jakubowski, a spokesperson for Ciba, insists the plant is no longer a problem.  “In 1994, the EPA determined that since no one is drinking the contaminated groundwater, the site does not pose an immediate threat to the surrounding community or the environment.” She says.

In the meantime, more than sixty families in Dover Township/Toms River – including the Kotrans – have retained attorneys to represent them.  One member of the team is Jan Schlichmann, the lawyer whose nine-year court battle to prove that industrial chemicals caused a pediatric cancer cluster in Woburn, Massachusetts, was the subject of the best selling book and move, A Civil Action.

“If the facts demonstrate that the [Dover Township/Toms River] cancer cluster is related to contamination for which corporations are responsible, we would seek a resolution that is fair to the families.” Says Schlichmann, who won an $8 million settlement for the Woburn families.

“THE FEAR NEVER GOES AWAY”
Today, in Dover Township/Toms Rivers and St. Lucie County, the others of children with cancer have developed an astonishing resilience.  Julliann Freitas had another baby, Manuel James, last year.  “Even through we don’t know for sure that pesticides caused Jimmy’s cancer, we got a fresh start in a new home and we use nontoxic products to limit our baby’s over all chemical exposure.” Julliann says.

Meg Kotran also because pregnant again shortly after Lauren completed chemotherapy treatments for the tumor that paralyzed her legs.  Megan was born over a year ago, just as her big sister, Lauren, now three, was using braces to walk properly.  “The outlook for Lauren is good, though the fear never goes away.” Says Meg.

Yet, she says she hasn’t considered moving from Toms River.  “How do you escape something that could be a national problem?” she asks.  “Here with all the studies, at least we stand a better chances of knowing the enemy.”

The crisis has also given Mary Kathryn Berner a new perspective.  “I have a greater awareness of the environment’s effect on our health.” she says.  “I can’t help but worry about my own daughter, and I appreciate as never before how blessed we are that she’s healthy.  Now I know how quickly that can be taken away – no matter how careful we are as parents.”
 

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