RACHEL's Hazardous Waste News #80

=======================Electronic Edition========================

RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #80
—June 6, 1988—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
==========
The Back issues and Index are available
here.
The official RACHEL archive is here.
It’s updated constantly.
To subscribe, send E-mail to rachel-weekly-
request@world.std.com

with the single word SUBSCRIBE in the message. It’s free.
===Previous issue==========================================Next issue===

DRINKING WATER AND LEUKEMIA.

A study of 27 New Jersey towns, released by the NJ Department of
Health last December, concludes that, in towns with toxic
chemicals in their water supplies, there were excessive rates of
leukemia during the period 1979-1984. Leukemia is cancer of the
blood-forming cells.

The study looked at 27 towns in northern New Jersey, five of
which have badly contaminated water supplies, 7 of which have
moderately contaminated water, and 15 of which have clean water.
The study found clear evidence that four of the five towns with
the worst water also have excessive rates of leukemia (41 cases
expected, 53 cases found), especially among women. The excessive
leukemias do not seem to strike any particular age group.

The study avoids the conclusion that contaminated drinking water
caused the leukemias. The authors point out that other
explanations are possible. For example, the women who got
leukemia may have worked for companies that used chemicals
carelessly, exposing their employees and spilling chemicals on
the ground, allowing contamination of local water supplies. In
this scenario, the occupational exposures, not the drinking of
polluted water, might have caused the disease.

Despite the study’s reluctance to say bad water caused the
leukemias, when a reporter asked State Health Commissioner Molly
Coye, “Is the water in these towns safe to drink?,” the
Commissioner replied, “Obviously, it’s not safe to drink for a
lifetime or we wouldn’t have consent orders for remediation.”

The New Jersey study is the first of its kind because it covers
many towns, with a total population of nearly 700,000 (about 10%
of the state’s population). One previous study, by researchers
at Harvard University, had shown a link between contaminated
water and leukemias among children in a single town–Woburn, Mass.

The findings of the New Jersey Health Department study are useful
because they establish one more link between drinking water and
disease, but even more important lessons can be learned from the
New Jersey situation.

The four most-contaminated towns are Hawthorne, Garfield, Lodi,
and Wellington. We’ll focus on Hawthorne, a town of 20,000
people, many of whom live in spacious homes beneath overarching
oak trees.

In the early 1950s, the Inmont Chemical Company announced it
would build a large plant in Hawthorne, employing hundreds of
people and paying many thousands of dollars in local taxes.
During the next decade, three more chemical companies followed
Inmont to Hawthorne. “We thought the town fathers had found a
perfect way to preserve our town,” recalls Robert McKinley, 78, a
50-year resident of Hawthorne. “Now we’re paying for our
ignorance.”

The local Board of Commissioners is dominated by businessmen,
including several executives of local chemical companies. The
mayor for the past 40 years has been Republican Robert Bay, now
retired from his position as an executive with the Essex Chemical
Company in Clifton.

Mayor Bay defends the chemical companies, saying they are often
accused of things they didn’t do. Others are not so generous,
especially those on the south end of town. For years they
remember awaking to smells “like rotten fish” and watching the
paint flake off their cars.

Marjorie Fieldhouse stands on her porch, next to a rocking horse
she’s saving for her grandchildren, and recalls phoning the mayor
about an odor problem. “He told me not to worry about it, that he
wouldn’t let anything happen,” she says. Then she adds, “I
should have made a stink.”

Vincent and Mary Hartung moved to Hawthorne in 1973 and raised
their large family, six sons and two daughters, in a rambling
house at the end of a cul-de-sac, with stands of trees running up
the hill beyond. Marlene Hartung was a strong, blonde, athletic
young woman. She was a cheerleader in high school and later she
retained an interest in sports and health. She liked to drink
water. “She was a water freak,” says her brother Glen, “always
telling us how good it was for us.” “Yeah, she was always telling
me to drink water, not beer,” her father says. But in May, 1984,
Marlene fell ill. Her doctor told her she had the flu, until lab
tests two weeks later revealed acute lymphocytic leukemia.

Marlene was a fighter. She said leukemia would never get her.
Twice she had bone marrow transplants, her brothers providing
fresh bone marrow through painful medical procedures.
Chemotherapy followed–multiple large injections of experimental
drugs–leaving Marlene nauseous, fatigued, irritable. She lost
all her hair. Trips to hospitals in New York, then to Seattle,
nearly drove the Hartung family into bankruptcy, but the people
of Hawthorne pitched in. Friends held car washes and raffles and
saved the Hartungs from financial ruin.

But money could not save Marlene’s life. After fighting the
disease for two years, she died in August, 1986, at age 27. Her
brother Glen was then a medical student. “We feel strongly that
the water contributed to her death. And we feel the borough was
negligent in not warning residents about the water.” It was Glen
Hartung’s phone call that initiated the first study of the
problem by the NJ Department of Health. After the initial study
was completed, Glen says, “I was stunned at the preliminary
numbers on leukemia. And I got very, very angry, especially when
I found the commissioners knew in 1979.”

The New Jersey state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)
first reported water pollution in Hawthorne in 1979 but the state
delayed six years before closing three contaminated municipal
wells (out of nine that were found contaminated, among 22 the
municipality uses). Tests showed the wells contaminated with
trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, carbon tetrachloride, and
1,1,1-trichloroethane at levels ranging from 37 to 72 parts per
billion (ppb).

Three chemical companies–Calgon Corporation, United
Technologies, and Inmont Chemical (a division of the West German
conglomerate, BASF)–have been investigated and blamed for
contaminating Hawthorne’s well water. The state DEP ordered these
firms to make payments to the affected municipalities, or face
fines triple the amount authorities would spend to cleanse
municipal drinking water. When Inmont Chemical balked, in March,
1987, the state DEP said they were going to fine Inmont $25,000
per day until they reached an agreement with local authorities,
but agreement was not reached for many months and no fines have
ever been levied. Although state officials are certain they have
found the responsible parties, no one is facing criminal charges,
no one is facing punishment of any kind, and the companies, with
heads held disdainfully high, are making payments to help clean
Hawthorne’s water while denying all responsibility.

The report, DRINKING WATER CONTAMINATION AND THE INCIDENCE OF
LEUKEMIA is available from NJ Health Department, CN 360, Trenton,
NJ 08625; phone (609) 633-2043. See also, S.W. Lagos and
others, “An Analysis of Contaminated Well Water and Health
Effects in Woburn, MA.” JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN STATISTICAL
ASSOCIATION, Vol. 81 (1986), Applications, pgs. 583-596.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: drinking water; water; chlorination; chlorine;
cancer; carcinogens; leukemia; ozone; studies; findings; doh; nj;
disease statistics; alternative treatment technologies;
occupational safety and health; molly coye; harvard university;
hawthorne; garfield; lodi; wellington; inmont chemical company;
chemical industry; robert mckinley; robert bay; marjorie
fieldhouse; vincent hartung; death; death statistics; njdep;
water pollution; leaks; chloroethylene; tetrachloroethylene;
carbon tetrachloride; 1,1,1-trichloroethane; calgon corp.; united
technologies; fines; lawsuits; investigations;

Next issue