Authorities who want to investigate the McCullom Lake brain cancer cases first will take the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention up on its offer to review previous research.

McHenry County and state officials in a conference call this week agreed to first consult the CDC before proceeding with any investigation into why at least two dozen people with ties to the area have developed brain cancer. The discussion was a follow-up to an Oct. 28 meeting with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency in which it signaled a willingness to further scrutinize the situation.

The latest discussion included the Illinois Department of Public Health and McHenry County Department of Health Administrator Patrick McNulty, County Board Chairman Ken Koehler, R-Crystal Lake, said.

“I think the IDPH wants to hear back from the CDC about the information that is provided them,” state Sen. Pam Althoff, R-McHenry, said. “Is it enough to make a decision? Will they assist in an investigation? I think they want to hear back from CDC before they proceed.”

Thirty individual lawsuits and a class-action lawsuit filed since April 2006 allege that brain and pituitary cancers in McCullom Lake and the neighboring Lakeland Park subdivision in McHenry were caused by decades of air and groundwater pollution from the Rohm and Haas and Modine Manufacturing plants in neighboring Ringwood.

Rohm and Haas is fighting the lawsuits. Modine settled out of court last year.

Koehler asked the CDC in an Aug. 21, 2009 letter to investigate the alleged cluster and allegations that vinyl chloride pollution sickened area residents. The agency responded Oct. 5 that it would be willing to review research done to date.

“I really don’t know what to expect, but I think that we’re trying as a county,” Koehler said. “We’re sensitive to all issues related to the possible McCullom Lake cancer cluster, and we’re taking it to the highest authority we possibly can to outline it.”

Data to be sent to the CDC will include research done by the county and state health departments. The CDC requires that the data be delivered to the IDPH, which then would submit it.

County health officials stand by their pronouncement, made a month after the first lawsuits were filed, that local cancer rates were not above normal and that industrial pollution mapped since the mid-1980s never reached village wells.

The Northwest Herald concluded in a 2007 investigation that the county health department’s work was rushed and flawed, relying on cancer data too vague to be relevant and groundwater contamination maps provided and paid for by Rohm and Haas. Company executives also got to review portions of the health department’s presentation before it was shown to reassure worried McCullom Lake residents.

The IDPH also concluded that county brain cancer rates were not above normal as of 2006, the most recent year of data. But the department’s most recent update, dated Sept. 8, 2009, only examined countywide rates, not rates specific to McCullom Lake.

Officials also will send reports and maps filed with the IEPA by Rohm and Haas charting the groundwater contamination and cleanup efforts. The IEPA in its Oct. 28 meeting stood by the accuracy of the Rohm and Haas reports and the conclusion that the contamination never reached village wells, according to participants Koehler, Althoff and state Rep. Jack Franks, D-Marengo.

The newspaper’s investigation also called the accuracy of some of the Rohm and Haas reports into question and revealed that no government agency ever investigated the allegations of air pollution.

County Board member Tina Hill, R-Woodstock, said the agencies still planned to hold a town hall meeting in McCullom Lake to update residents, at the request of Hill and Village President Terry Counley. Hill began pressing for an outside investigation earlier this year – the plaintiffs include her older sister and three childhood friends.

“I’m not sure we’re going to get any new information, but the fact is, we’re keeping it out there in the public, and we’re bringing it back to the village,” Hill said.

read online