Toms River cancer cluster still a mystery despite 20 years of studies...

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Toms River cancer cluster still a mystery despite 20 years of studies By MaryAnn Spoto | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com Email the author | Follow on Twitter on February 06, 2015 at 7:00 AM, updated February 06, 2015 at 12:59 PM

TOMS RIVER — When scientists recently told a group of Toms River residents that a substance found in their drinking water nearly 20 years ago doesn't cause cancer, there was a collective sense of deja vu. And anger. Two decades after that unknown substance got a name, and more than four decades after their drinking water supply was contaminated with industrial waste, a group of Toms River residents say they still don't know what caused cancer in their children. "The answer would be 'no,'" Linda Gillick said about whether the families are any closer to learning what caused diseases in their children. "The definitive answer would be 'no.'" Gillick, whose 36-year-old son Michael was diagnosed shortly after his birth with neuroblastoma, is the chairwoman of the Citizen's Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster and leading the fight for answers. But finding scientific proof of that has been elusive. Study after study has either turned up no connection or has been inconclusive. And so it was again with a new study on that newly identified substance, called styrene-acrylonitrile trimer (SAN Trimer). The two-year study, released to the public this week, concluded SAN Trimer did not cause cancer in rats. SAN Trimer wasn't identified until 1997 - 26 years after the public learned independent waste hauler Nicholas Fernicola had secretly dumped waste from Union Carbide in Bound Brook onto a 3-acre parcel of Reich Farm, a site off Route 9, that he leased in 1971. Parents of stricken children are convinced that that clandestine disposal, along with dumping by chemical giant Ciba-Geigy Corp., which once called Toms River its home, caused an abnormally high number of childhood cancer cases in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet the latest study said SAN Trimer didn't cause cancer in rats and the report stopped short of saying the substance caused abnormalities affecting the nervous system of the rats. It only noted the abnormalities in the rats fed SAN Trimer. That angered some parents, who said they couldn't see how the scientists couldn't make a connection between those abnormalities and the neuroblastoma - cancer of the sympathetic nervous system - their children had. Gillick and several other residents gathered at a special meeting of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday night to question those findings and express their frustration. Reich Farm has been on the EPA's Superfund list for cleanup since 1983.

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Toms River cancer cluster still a mystery despite 20 years of studies...

http://www.nj.com/ocean/index.ssf/2015/02/after_decades_of_stud...

Joe Kotran, whose daughter had neuroblastoma, said he's frustrated with the answers he's gotten over the years from government officials. "I do get the sense that you're making light of certain things and I don't appreciate it," Kotran told EPA and NTP officials. "We've gone through so much stuff here, which is baloney. And it's hard for us to trust this stuff." Mark Cukerr, an attorney who represented several of the cancer cluster families in civil lawsuits, questioned how the scientists could have easily dismissed evidence that the number of childhood leukemia cases decreased after two wells supplying drinking water were closed in the late 1990s. Several residents said that the National Toxicology Program, which conducted the study, wasted its time and money. They said SAN Trimer wasn't studied in its proper form and it may not even be the culprit. Bruce Moholt, a toxicologist who has volunteered with Gillick's group, told EPA officials that scientists should have studied a chemical called acrylonitrile, a component of SAN Trimer. Acrylonitrile, a known carcinogen, would have dissolved more easily than SAN Trimer into the ground and the drinking water, he said. "My own feeling is that...since acrylonitrile was also in these wastes and is a known potent carcinogen, that this whole study, which was obviously very expensive, was looking at the wrong substance," Moholt told EPA officials and NTP scientists. Jon Gorin, a project manager for the EPA, agreed acrylonitrile is a known carcinogen but said it was never found in the more than 1,000 samples of groundwater collected from the farm. He said the chemical was detected in one sample that was believed to be tainted. Moholt countered, saying that by the time the contamination was found and the testing started, all the acrylonitrile would have passed through the ground and the wells to an undetectable level. Manta Behl and Susan Elmore, NTP scientists, said researchers went above and beyond their standard study procedures to try to determine whether SAN Trimer causes cancer. For instance, instead of slicing the 400 test rats' brains into three sections, scientists sliced them into 12, they said. And instead of limiting their observations to the rats' spinal columns, scientists also looked at their peripheral nerves, such as the sciatic nerve, they said. Behl said scientists focused only on SAN Trimer because that's what then U.S. Rep. Jim Saxton had asked the NTP to study. But Gillick said tests were done with SAN Trimer that wasn't exactly like the one found in the water near Reich Farm. That, she said, makes the study worthless. And, she said studying SAN Trimer alone - without all the other chemicals found in the water at the time - was not a true replication of what residents were drinking at the time. She said her group would continue to push the state and the federal government to conduct studies that will give them answers they can trust. "We are citizens who are bucking industry and government. And guess what?" Gillick said. "We are not backing down."

MaryAnn Spoto may be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @MaryAnnSpoto. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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Toms River cancer cluster still a mystery despite 20 years of studies...

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