By Jan Hefler
Inquirer Staff Writer

Kiddie Kollege, a day-care center that opened inside a heavily contaminated building in Gloucester County with a fresh coat of paint and little else, is about to be razed, nearly four years after state inspectors discovered the contamination.

Workers in protective jumpsuits and masks have been preparing for the demolition, which is expected to start early next month, now that legal hurdles have been cleared. State, county, and local officials welcome the removal of the building, which has stood as a constant reminder of an embarrassing and troubling saga.

“Our concern for the welfare of these children will be ever-present, but at least we can get the site itself cleaned up and ensure it won’t cause any more harm,” State Sen. Fred Madden (D., Gloucester) said in a statement. “I don’t want any more lives put at risk.”

As many as 100 babies and children were exposed to toxic mercury vapors in the former Accutherm thermometer factory, a one-story concrete building in Franklinville, after it opened as a day care in January 2004. When the state Department of Environmental Protection ordered it shut in July 2006, 60 children who were tested had mercury in their bodies.

Mercury can cause damage to the central nervous system.

Over time, the mercury levels in the children dropped, but DEP reports revealed the building had harbored vapors 27 times acceptable limits.

Ed Putnam, an assistant director with the DEP site remediation program, said the boarded-up building would be knocked down with a backhoe and about 700 tons of debris would be taken to a toxin disposal facility in Indiana. Workers are deconstructing the interior, Putnam said.

Fog spraying will keep down the dust, and the air will be monitored to protect neighbors from mercury vapors.

The process, which is expected take more than 30 working days, will cost roughly $600,000 and is being handled by Atlantic Response Inc. of East Brunswick. New Jersey will pay for it and decide later whether to sue to recoup the money from the bankrupt factory owner and/or the former owner of the day-care building, Putnam said.

“We put them on notice to pay for it,” Putnam said, noting that neither party agreed to assume responsibility.

Diane Lilley, who lives behind the building, said she was happy to see the building go.

“Thank God,” she said last week, as a half-dozen workers were at the site. “It’s been a long time coming. I want it over and done with, and cleaned up the way it should have been done long ago.”

Lilley, a longtime resident, had warned Julie Lawlor, one of the day-care operators, about mercury spills in the old factory and said that the building was never properly cleaned up. But Lawlor, who had rented the facility, said in a 2006 interview that she had dismissed Lilley’s remarks as a rumor. She said her landlord, real estate broker Jim Sullivan III, had assured her the place was cleared for occupancy.

Lawlor is now a fugitive on unrelated embezzlement charges and was last seen in Ireland.

Sullivan testified in a court hearing earlier this year that he had misinterpreted documents that said the building was contaminated and said he believed it posed no health threat. He and family members acquired it in a tax foreclosure.

A year ago, Sullivan had blocked demolition by the DEP when he denied access. After lengthy litigation, the DEP a few months ago won approval to proceed.

A class-action lawsuit filed by parents and the day-care employees accuses Sullivan, the DEP, Franklin Township, the factory owner, and others of negligence. It is awaiting trial.

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Too many electromagnetic fields surrounding us–from cell phones, wifi, and commonplace modern technology–may be seriously harming our health. Here’s how to minimize your exposure.

By Michael Segell
Prevention Magazine

The California Cluster

IN 1990, the city of La Quinta, CA, proudly opened the doors of its sparkling new middle school. Gayle Cohen, then a sixth-grade teacher, recalls the sense of excitement everyone felt: “We had been in temporary facilities for 2 years, and the change was exhilarating.” But the glow soon dimmed. One teacher developed vague symptoms– weakness, dizziness–and didn’t return after the Christmas break. A couple of years later, another developed cancer and died; the teacher who took over his classroom was later diagnosed with throat cancer. More instructors continued to fall ill, and then, in 2003, on her 50th birthday, Cohen received her own bad news: breast cancer. “That’s when I sat down with another teacher, and we remarked on all the cancers we’d seen,” she says. “We immediately thought of a dozen colleagues who had either gotten sick or passed away.” By 2005, 16 staffers among the 137 who’d worked at the new school had been diagnosed with 18 cancers, a ratio nearly 3 times the expected number. Nor were the children spared: About a dozen cancers have been detected so far among former students. A couple of them have died.

Prior to undergoing her first chemotherapy treatment, Cohen approached the school principal, who eventually went to district officials for an investigation. A local newspaper article about the possible disease cluster caught the attention of Sam Milham, MD, a widely traveled epidemiologist who has investigated hundreds of environmental and occupational illnesses and published dozens of peer-reviewed papers on his findings. For the past 30 years, he has trained much of his focus on the potential hazards of electromagnetic fields (EMFs)–the radiation that surrounds all electrical appliances and devices, power lines, and home wiring and is emitted by communications devices, including cell phones and radio, TV, and WiFi transmitters. His work has led him, along with an increasingly alarmed army of international scientists, to a controversial conclusion: The “electrosmog” that first began developing with the rollout of the electrical grid a century ago and now envelops every inhabitant of Earth is responsible for many of the diseases that impair–or kill–us.

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Toxic legacy: Examining the old Parker Street dump

By BECKY W. EVANS

NEW BEDFORD — A Standard-Times photograph snapped at a groundbreaking ceremony for New Bedford High School on Jan. 17, 1970, captures the excitement surrounding the building of one of the state’s largest and most modern high schools at that time.

Pictured in the photo are then Superintendent James R. Hayden, architect Owen F. Hackett, Jr. and then Mayor George Rogers. The men, dressed in overcoats, suits and hard hats, grin as they shovel dirt at the site, the former home of the city-owned Parker Street dump. The crowd of onlookers includes members of the School Committee at the time, among them: Vincent J. Worden, John M. Xifaras, Rose Ferreira and Albert A. Boucher.

The festive group did not know the property contained industrial ash loaded with excessive levels of PCBs and other toxic chemicals, which local manufacturing companies dumped at the site between the 1930s and the 1970s.

“Nobody had heard of PCBs in 1970,” said Rogers, who noted that he took office in 1970, two years after city and school officials chose the former dump as the site for the new high school.

“We knew it was a dump, but then most schools all over the country were built on either dumps or cemeteries,” Rogers said. “That’s the only place where cities have free land.”

Eleven months after the groundbreaking photo was taken, the Environmental Protection Agency opened for business in the nation’s capital. Nine years after that, the EPA banned the manufacture of potentially cancer-causing PCBs.

key discovery in 2000

In 1994, the Andrea McCoy Memorial Athletic Field was constructed on city-owned land opposite New Bedford High School. The land, which has been part of the Parker Street dump, was allegedly filled with dump ash during construction of the high school in 1970. To make the soccer field, the city graded and covered the site with clean soil, according to a 2006 draft report by TRC, the city’s environmental contractor.

PCB contamination from the former dump was first detected at McCoy Field in 2000. Soil sampling identified PCBs in fill material found in a wooded area near a field where students played soccer and lacrosse. The area was fenced off and the field was deemed safe.

Further testing of the 6-acre athletic complex, prompted by school officials who were considering building the new Keith Middle School there, revealed significant concentrations of PCBs, lead and other hazardous chemicals. Consulting engineer Alan D. Hanscom advised the School Committee that it was possible to build a safe, affordable middle school on the property by excavating the contaminated dump material and capping the site.

The School Committee took his advice and decided on Feb. 11, 2001, to build the new middle school at McCoy Field.

But in 2004, after construction had begun, more extensive soil sampling showed much higher concentrations of PCBs, which triggered involvement by the EPA. The same year, soil testing at New Bedford High School identified PCBs at levels exceeding state standards.

In 2005, the EPA granted conditional approval for the City of New Bedford to continue with construction of the new Keith Middle School. The approval, as described in an Aug. 31, 2005 letter from the EPA, was contingent upon the city assessing potential PCB contamination both inside and outside New Bedford High School and submitting a cleanup plan. In addition, the city was required to investigate potential PCB contamination, and clean up what was found, on “nearby private properties, at the existing Keith Middle School, and at the associated school athletic fields.”

When he took office in January 2006, Mayor Scott W. Lang inherited the Keith project from former Mayor Frederick M. Kalisz, Jr. The new Allen P. Keith Middle School opened to students on Dec. 12, 2006.

“We came into this office with a situation that was well established and what we have been trying to do is work with the EPA and DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) to make sure it is clean for the kids,” Lang told The Standard-Times during a recent interview.

He described EPA approval for Keith construction and the surrounding cleanup as “very unique.”

“The EPA went across the street to the high school, which was built before their existence,” he said. “They said, ‘We want kids to go to a clean middle school and, by the way, if they are going across the street afterwards, we want to make sure the high school is clean, too.’”

massive cleanup continues

Nearly 40 years after the groundbreaking ceremony for New Bedford High School, the City of New Bedford is engaged in a massive cleanup of PCB contamination at the former Parker Street dump.

Cleanup activities, estimated to cost $103 million (including the $70 million cost of Keith Middle School), are focused inside a 140-acre footprint known as the Parker Street Waste Site. The area includes New Bedford High School, the new Keith Middle School, athletic fields, residential properties, private businesses, a state-owned skating rink and a church.

Thousands of soil samples from the former dump show a laundry list of toxic chemicals: polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and heavy metals, including arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, lead and mercury.

Lang said he is optimistic that the full cleanup will be done “within the next couple of years.”

“It’s been a three-and-a-half-year project that we’ve been working on literally every day,” he said, noting that the city has developed a strong working partnership with the EPA and the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Site remediation is complete at Keith Middle School and nearly complete at Walsh Field, the mayor said. In terms of testing for and remediating PCB-contaminated building materials inside New Bedford High School, the city is “way ahead of most schools in the country,” he said.

“The next place we’re going to hit is the area around the high school,” he said. “At the same time we will continue to work inside the high school.”

The city will also be “making decisions” related to PCB contamination in wetlands behind Keith Middle School, he said.

more soil testing

The one thing that could extend the cleanup timeline is the results of additional soil testing, Lang said.

The EPA is spearheading an effort to perform soil sampling in new areas after neighborhood residents raised concerns that dump contamination may extend beyond the existing boundaries of the Parker Street Waste Site. Residents and members of the local advocacy group Citizens Leading Environmental Action Network, or CLEAN, want soil testing at private residential properties and public housing projects.

“It is important that these additional areas be tested because of the imminent health risks to those living and working in these areas,” said CLEAN president Eddie L. Johnson.

EPA spokesman David Deegan said the agency will host a public meeting sometime in the next four to six weeks to discuss plans for future sampling.

“We are developing a sampling plan and making concrete steps forward to address community concerns,” he said.

A draft EPA document obtained by The Standard-Times lists 11 potential sampling areas, including: some private residential properties on Maxfield, Florence and Hunter streets; a multi-unit private residence at the corner of Hunter and Parker streets and the Carabiner’s Indoor Climbing gym; New Bedford Housing Authority’s Parkdale complex; some private residential properties on Greenwood, Ruggles and Summit streets and Hathaway Boulevard; the former Bethel A.M.E church property; a right-of-way on Summit Street; private residential properties and city-owned properties on Durfee Street; a wetland area between Durfee and Potter streets; the state-owned Hetland Memorial Skating Rink; the eastern site footprint boundary along Walsh Field; and the New Bedford Housing Authority’s Westlawn complex.

The Rev. Curtis Dias, an environmental justice advocate, said he would like to see additional soil sampling around the foundation of Keith Middle School and underneath New Bedford High School.

“This is urgent for the public health of students and children,” he said.

enrollment mushroomed

During the late 1950s, New Bedford school officials warned that increased enrollment, partly due to an influx of immigrants, was leading to overcrowding at the old high school on County Street.

The School Committee spent much of the next decade weighing options for expanding the high school, among them: building an addition to the County Street school, remodeling the junior high school for use as a high school, constructing a second high school in the city’s north end, or building a single new high school on 40 acres of vacant land, known as the former Parker Street dump.

For decades, the west end property had served as part of a city-owned dumping ground for incinerated industrial waste, household ash and garbage, abandoned cars and other junk. People who lived in the Parker Street neighborhood during the 1940s and 1950s described the site in recent interviews as a sprawling dump filled with rats, rusty refrigerators and burning debris.

Dumping operations ceased during the early 1960s and the site was eyed as a potential location for the new high school.

Newspaper accounts of School Committee and City Council meetings during the 1960s show little concern for the dump’s impact on public health and the environment.

“Environmental concerns were not apparent at that time,” said architect Owen F. Hackett, Jr., who was hired by the city to design the high school.

Hackett said he and others were initially “very concerned” about constructing a 500,000-square-foot building on a former refuse dump, but only for structural reasons. The “peat and junk fill” at the site meant the land was too soft to support such a large structure, he said.

lobbying for site

Both the New Bedford League of Women Voters and the Exchange Club of New Bedford lobbied the School Committee in support of constructing a new high school at the Parker Street site.

Committee members twice rejected the Parker Street proposal in 1965, mainly due to the estimated $18 million price tag. However, a year later on May 20, 1966, the committee reversed its stance and voted 4-2 to build a new high school at the former dump.

Voting in favor of the site were members Dr. Paul F. Walsh, Dr. John T. Barrows, Rose Ferreira and Attorney Paul J. McCawley.

James W. Whitehead and Donat F. Fortin, who supported building a second high school in the North End, voted against the project. Mayor Edward F. Harrington, who missed the meeting, wrote a letter to the committee saying he favored expanding the current high school facilities on County Street, according to a Standard-Times article from May 21, 1966.

Five months after the School Committee vote, the City Council approved the Parker Street high school proposal. The State School Building Assistance Commission, which ultimately provided $9.2 million in funding for the $18 million high school, also approved the school’s location in 1966.

It took two more years to make the decision final.

The 40-acre site, which had once been owned by the city, was now privately owned by several entities.

The City Council intended to take back the land by eminent domain, but the move was delayed by a rezoning controversy related to the proposed construction of apartments on 21 acres of the property. School Committee members insisted that the new high school would require the entire 40-acre site and could not be built in addition to the apartments.

On June 10, 1968, the City Council voted final approval for an order taking all 40 acres of the former Parker Street dump. The vote killed the residential housing proposal and paved the way for a new 4,000-student high school.

site preparation

Perini Corp. of Framingham won the bid to build the new high school. Rogers said one of his first tasks as mayor was to sign Perini’s contract.

“All the work was done by the Harrington administration,” he said. “The only thing left was to sign the contract.”

But before construction could begin, special site-preparation work was necessary.

“Soil engineers say the material there isn’t suitable for roads and parking areas, nor for a building,” according to a Standard-Times article from Feb. 27, 1969. “However, the problem can be overcome, the engineers said, by removing material from beneath the building site and replacing it with acceptable fill.”

Hackett, the architect, said in a recent interview that it would have proved too expensive for the city to excavate all the “unsatisfactory” dump fill on the 40-acre site.

“They couldn’t afford it,” he said. “It was always budget, budget, budget.”

Instead, the city opted to remove only the fill beneath the school itself.

For the rest of the property, it chose a cheaper alternative. Termed “pre-loading,” the alternative involved using piles of granular material to pack down fill in places that would later become paved parking lots and roadways.

About 65,000 cubic yards of material was dumped in huge piles that compressed the dump fill over a period of four to six months.

Before laying the foundation for the school, workers excavated a 460,000-square-foot area that contained “peat, refuse and other unsatisfactory” fill from the former dump, according to a Standard-Times article from March 19, 1969.

Later, the same granular material from the pre-loading phase was used to fill in the foundation area.

When recently asked where the excavated dump ash was disposed, Hackett had no answer.

“I don’t know. I had no authority with that,” he said.

Rogers also denied knowing where the excavated soil ended up.

“The excavation was all predetermined before I took office,” he said. “Perini made the decision.”

decades of dumping

City manufacturing companies are suspected of dumping incinerated ash containing PCBs, heavy metals and other chemicals at the Parker Street dump between the 1930s and the 1970s, according to Molly Cote of the state Department of Environment Protection. The City of New Bedford recently found PCB-laden electrical capacitors stamped with the Cornell-Dubilier name buried at 102 Greenwood St., across from the high school.

Anecdotal evidence from city-conducted interviews and historical photographs indicate that ash excavated from the high school construction site was dumped across the street on empty land that later became McCoy Field, said David Sullivan of TRC Environmental Corp., a city contractor. Over the years, the ash was used for land grading and filling in wetlands around the neighborhood.

“We hear that the stuff was brought over here in piles,” said Sullivan, while pointing to empty lots off Hathaway Boulevard, pictured in an aerial photograph from 1971.

A Standard-Times photograph from 1970 offers even closer views of the land. Tire tracks show evidence that the ash was pushed around the site.

One lot in particular appears to be covered with a large amount of ash. The lot is the current site of an overgrown lot that the city granted to Bethel AME Church in 1964 for a new church building.

Today, the undeveloped lot may contain some of the highest concentrations of PCBs in the Parker Street Waste Site. The city recently repurchased the property from Bethel AME Church.

death of an activist

Pauline Woolley, mother of the late environmental activist Brian Woolley, told The Standard-Times in an interview before his death that when her son was 10 years old, he would bring water to workers building the new high school. The family lived on Summit Street, just a few blocks from the construction site.

Pauline didn’t learn until years later that Brian sometimes rode in the back of dump trucks that hauled excavated ash from the site to nearby wetlands.

“I remember watching them bringing up this black dirt, and they’d fill up the dump truck and back it into the field where Keith is — it was all swamp until they filled it in,” Brian said during the same interview. “So much damage was done and we weren’t even aware of it.”

When he was 19 years old, Brian was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, a rare cancer of the lymph tissue. Radiation and chemotherapy cured the cancer but permanently damaged his aorta. During his 40s, he suffered a heart attack related to artery blockage from his cancer treatment.

Then in late 2007, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The disease killed him after a two-year-long battle, during which he continued to push for comprehensive cleanup of the Parker Street waste site.

Brian, who was founder and president of the advocacy group Wasted Away, now CLEAN, believed there was a connection between his illnesses and decades of living and playing on contaminated land in the Parker Street neighborhood.

Health Studies

PCBs, which city companies such as AVX Corp. and Cornell-Dubilier used in the manufacturing of electrical devices, are believed to cause cancer and other serious health problems.

In 2006, the Massachusetts Teachers Association assigned Cambridge attorney Sarah Gibson to work with the New Bedford Educators Association. Gibson specializes in working with teachers’ unions on occupational health and safety cases.

Gibson said several teachers reported health problems they believed were associated with PCBs and general air quality inside the New Bedford High School building.

Gibson and the local union urged city officials to conduct PCB blood testing for teachers and neighborhood residents who worried about the health effects of living and working near land contaminated with PCBs, heavy metals and other toxins.

In April 2007, the state Department of Public Health offered to conduct PCB blood testing for teachers at New Bedford High School and Keith Middle School as well as people who lived near the schools.

Blood samples were collected in February and March 2009, but their analysis was delayed last spring due to laboratory activities associated with the H1N1 flu, according to the DPH’s Bureau of Environmental Health.

Reports on PCB blood testing, indoor air quality at New Bedford High School, and cancer rates in the Parker Street neighborhood are due out in spring 2010, according to the agency.

Gibson said she is keeping track of PCB testing and remediation work at the high school, so that she will have information to give doctors if teachers are found to have health problems associated with contamination there.

“I think what makes New Bedford High School and that area different from many of my other cases is that there is contamination on the site … and then there are issues with respect to the building materials themselves having PCBs,” she said. “That is somewhat different from what I normally run into.”

Gibson has worked on cases involving schools with PCB-laden building materials that were built on former dumps, but those dumps did not have PCB contamination.

New Bedford High School “seems to combine the two,” she said.

Grand OPENING

New Bedford High School opened to sophomores, juniors and seniors during the first week of September 1972.

Over the preceding Labor Day weekend, The Standard-Times published a 14-page special section describing the school’s state-of-the-art facilities and revamped curriculum. Local businesses and politicians placed advertisements peppered with congratulatory messages.

Mayor Rogers, in his ad, described the school as “a new adventure in learning.”

The school’s “four houses flow into a central core for specialized learning and corridors lead away from the core area into rooms to develop creative arts and career opportunities and finally into the gymnasium and swimming pool were our youngsters will develop physically,” he wrote.

Former Standard-Times sports editor Don Harrington referred to the school as the “Taj Mahal of secondary education in this end of the state.”

In the special edition, Principal Paul Rodrigues is quoted as saying, “New Bedford High School will challenge any facility in the state.”

Superfund Investigation

In 1980, Congress established the Superfund program to fund the cleanup of toxic waste sites around the country. Six years later, the waste management division of EPA Region 1 initiated a preliminary study to investigate whether New Bedford High School should be listed as a Superfund site.

Under the Superfund law, people with knowledge of hazardous waste disposal sites were required to notify the EPA, said Richard Cavagnero, deputy director of EPA Region 1’s Office of Site Remediation and Restoration.

“There was a blitz of paper that came through the door after the law was passed,” he said. The law was officially called the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, or CERCLA.

The EPA drafted an umbrella list of potential hazardous waste sites, which were entered into a database, known as CERCLIS. The agency then hired contractors to conduct file reviews for each site at state offices.

“EPA really had no involvement in these sites prior to CERCLA,” Cavagnero said. “The state was the only source of information.”

The CERCLIS file for the New Bedford High School site is very thin. There are two reports submitted by NUS Corp., an environmental contractor with offices in Bedford, Mass., and Pittsburgh, Pa.

One report, dated Sept. 9, 1989, states that there are “threats of groundwater contamination and direct contact with any contaminants which may be present at” the New Bedford High School site. The report notes that the company conducted interviews with local officials during a 1985 investigation of the site.

“During those interviews several people reported that the property was originally a swamp and had been historically used as an ash dump,” according to the report. “Also, prior to construction of the high school approximately 8 to 10 feet of material was reportedly excavated and moved to another dump across Hathaway Boulevard and to the New Bedford Municipal Landfill. One person also stated that harbor sediments may have been used as fill during construction of the high school.”

The report concludes that further inspection be set at medium priority due to a lack of information about “the types and quantities of material disposed on the property, the proximity of private wells, and the potential for direct contact with any contaminated soils.”

This is where the paper trail ends for the New Bedford High School site.

Today, the CERCLIS databases contains 945 toxic waste sites in Massachusetts. Of those sites, 32 are on the National Priorities List of Superfund sites, 376 are being evaluated for a potential listing, and 945 are labeled as having “no further response action plan,” Cavagnero said.

He believes New Bedford High School shares this last status.

In the 1980s, the review process for getting a hazardous waste site added to the National Priorities List required proof that there was a direct threat to the drinking water supply, Cavagnero said. Since no drinking water wells were located at the New Bedford High School site, it was seen “as having no groundwater exposure pathway,” he said.

“That pretty much killed it in terms of a potential NPL listing.”

Today, the process for adding sites to the NPL considers additional pathways for exposure to hazardous waste such as through direct contact with contaminated soil, Cavagnero said.

REVISITING SUPERFUND

Mayor Lang insists there is no reason to revisit whether the Parker Street waste site should be placed on the National Priorities List.

“The EPA looks at you and says, “This is not a Superfund site in any way,’” Lang said. “It doesn’t have that kind of toxicity in any manner.”

Cavagnero said the EPA has no plans to take the lead role in overseeing the cleanup of the former dump. That role currently falls to the state Department of Environmental Protection under state cleanup laws, known as Chapter 21E.

“I think we would only do that if we thought there was a need to have federal authority on top of state authority to get done what ultimately needs to get done.”

Listing the former dump as a Superfund site would require a recommendation from Gov. Deval Patrick based on advice from the DEP.

Molly Cote, project manager for DEP’s Southeast regional office, said sites are usually recommended if there is not a viable responsible party to conduct the cleanup work.

“In this case, it’s not one we’d recommend since we have someone doing the work,” she said, referring to the City of New Bedford, which is paying for and orchestrating the $103 million cleanup.

For now, the EPA is focusing its efforts on developing a plan for additional soil sampling in the Parker Street neighborhood.

“We are working with the state, city and community to address what people see as information gaps and I think we are making progress there,” Cavagnero said. “We are going to make an effort to help them get all that information. Where it goes from there, I think the information will tell us if it will stay a 21E site.”

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Study Warns Radiation Dose From Single Test Can Trigger Disease in Some People

By SHIRLEY S. WANG
The Wall Street Journal

The risk of cancer associated with popular CT scans appears to be greater than previously believed, according to two new studies published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The findings support caution against the overuse of CT scans and other medical technologies that use radiation. The studies also bolstered the rationale behind controversial new breast-cancer screening guidelines, which pushed back the recommended age for annual mammograms to 50 from 40. Mammograms also use radiation, but in smaller doses.

The CT — short for computerized tomography scan — can detect injuries and tumors. Its use has tripled in the U.S. since the early 1990s to more than 70 million in 2007. Though it has long been known that radiation increases a person’s chance of getting cancer, the exact risk of these scans wasn’t clear.

One of the studies, which examined more than 1,000 adult patients at four hospitals, projected that the dose of radiation received in a single heart scan at age 40 would later result in cancer in 1 in 270 women and 1 in 600 men.

Risks were lower for those who received a head CT scan: 1 in 8,100 women and 1 in 11,080 men would likely develop cancer from the radiation, the study said.

Doses of radiation from the scans varied wildly, according to the study, even within the same procedure at the same hospital.

Some patients got only one-tenth the radiation that others got, according to Rebecca Smith-Bindman, the first author on the study and a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging and epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco.

The findings raise questions about why radiation doses differ, and whether the variation is acceptable. “These are doses we should be concerned about,” said Dr. Smith-Bindman. “They don’t have to be this high.”

The variation in radiation exposure for any particular CT procedure is likely due to such factors as a lack of standardized settings, and differences in how the radiologists and technologists use the technology for different patients, according to Dr. Smith-Bindman.

A radiation dose that is too low, for example, could yield a picture that isn’t clear enough to reveal abnormalities.

The second study analyzed data from several databases and estimated that 29,000 future cancers could be related to CT scans received in 2007, with the greatest number of cancers projected in the abdomen and pelvis.

The cancer risk was greatest for young patients, this study found. For instance, a female who received an abdominal scan at age 3 had a 1 in 500 chance of developing cancer because of the radiation from that scan. That figure dropped to 1 in 1,000 by age 30, and 1 in 3,333 at age 70.

Overuse of radiation-based tests is a concern when they are performed to diagnose patients who have a known abnormality. But the concern is even greater when they are performed for screening purposes, said Amy Berrington, an investigator at the National Cancer Institute and an author on both papers. “You’re exposing a lot of healthy people” to radiation,” she said.

The doses of radiation received from mammograms are much smaller than from CT scans, yet the small cancer risk should be weighed when deciding whether to undergo routine breast-cancer screening, Dr. Berrington said.

In loosening the mammogram guidelines last month, a federally funded task force of physicians cited, among other factors, the potential harm from testing.

Despite these concerns, CT scans provide “great medical benefit,” she said. “On an individual basis, if the scan is justified, then the benefits should outweigh the risks.”

Write to Shirley S. Wang at shirley.wang@wsj.com

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Three Democratic state legislators are reaching out to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to request a meeting on a “troubling report” from the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services (NJDHSS) that there is an increased incidence of certain types of cancer among residents who live in a contaminated area of the borough known as “the Plume.” U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg and U.S. Senator Robert Menendez released a letter late Friday afternoon to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson calling for this meeting of agency officials, congressional staffers and community leaders.

“We believe that the situation in Pompton Lakes is a serious public health concern and needs immediate attention,” the letter stated.

Meanwhile, NJDHSS is expected to schedule a special hearing to discuss the latest findings on illnesses for residents who live in the area where there is groundwater contamination, known as “the plume.”

On Dec. 10, the NJDHSS and the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry released a report that concluded that there were two statistically high elevations of kidney cancer in women (but not in men), and non-Hodgkin lymphoma in men (but not in women) between 1994-2006 in the plume area.

To make this conclusion, the NJDHSS analyzed 13 individual types of cancer from 1979 to 2006 in the plume area. All other cancer rates were similar to statewide rates.

This report explained that since the rates for these two cancers were not elevated in both men and women, no conclusive link could be established between the cancers and the groundwater contaminants.

However, the contaminants cannot be ruled out as a potential cause of the elevated rates because other risk factors, such as tobacco use or occupational exposures, could explain the elevations, the report explained.

Mayor Katie Cole said she does not want to leave this as it is and will go to federal officials to find out more information to see if these elevated numbers are results of the contaminants.

“The Department of Health is not able to take it to the next level to confirm a conclusion, so I reached out to Congressman (Bill) Pascrell’s office to find an agency possibly on the federal level that could help us,” said Cole. “I feel that a door has been open where I feel that there is a possibility, although there is not a definite possibility that it is so we need to get answers for the residents.”

“The findings are not surprising to many of us long-time residents here. I am elated to know that some of the information is finally being unfolded. Unfortunately I think it is just the beginning,” said Councilwoman Lisa Riggiola.

Regina Sisco, president of the Citizens for a Clean Pompton Lakes group, said, “If they do a real intense study and go door-to-door to everybody that lived in town and do a history of people that moved out of the area, they will find a lot more and I wish that could happen.”

This past April the NJDHSS performed a survey of this area and initially reported that cancer-related illnesses in the Plume area are not the result of contaminants in the ground water.

“It (the NJDHSS report) is a big step in the right direction that they finally documented that. We do have clusters of illnesses in the area. If you can be happy about the situation we are happy that finally things are moving in the right direction and that people are believing us and doing a thorough job this time,” Sisco also said.

This study sprung from a request made by Mayor Cole after Plume area residents learned the volatile organic compounds (VOC) Tetrachloroethene (PCE) and Tricholorethene (TCE) were seeping into the air from the contaminated groundwater.

In the 1980s contaminants were found in the groundwater below 450 homes originating from the DuPont Company, which manufactured explosives at a facility in the borough for many decades. The state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) ordered the company to remove these pollutants. As part of this cleanup, since the late 1990s, DuPont has been treating the contaminated groundwater on the site of its former manufacturing plant and pumping treated water back into the ground to prevent further spread of contaminants off-site.

To treat the TCE and PCE, DuPont has been arranging with every homeowner in the affected area to test the air and install a vapor mitigation system that would remove these pollutants.

The NJDHSS report explains that residents can decrease their current and future exposures to these chemicals by participating in the vapor mitigation system. According to this report, so far 368 of the 450 homes in area either have the system installed or they are preparing to do so.

If these systems are not installed, the NJDHSS has concluded there is a potential that the TCE and PCE could affect the health of residents. The report explains that if conditions such as temperature, wind or moisture change, these gases can enter their home.

On Dec. 11, DuPont’s Public Affairs Manager Bob Nelson said that DuPont is still reviewing the NJDHSS report.

“We agree with their recommendation that all homes above the contaminated groundwater Plume get a mitigation system installed to eliminate the health risk from Plume contaminants,” he said.

“Since June 2008, we have actively encouraged homeowners, in cooperation and coordination with the DEP and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to have the mitigation systems installed at no cost to residents as a remedy that is protective of human health. We will continue remediating our historic contamination in Pompton Lakes and will do so in a responsible and science-based manner that is protective to the environment and to the safety and health of residents of Pompton Lakes,” said Nelson.

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NorthEscambia.com
December 13, 2009

Pensacola has the worst drinking water of any American city, according to the results of a national survey released Saturday.

In the study, there were 21 chemicals found in Pensacola’s water that exceeded health guidelines, including radium, lead, benzene and carbon tetracholride.

In an unprecedented analysis of 20 million tap water quality tests performed by water utilities between 2004 and 2009, Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that water suppliers detected a total of 316 contaminants in water delivered to the public. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set enforceable standards for only 114 of these pollutants.

Another 202 chemicals with no mandatory safety standards were found in water supplied to approximately 132 million people in 9,454 communities across the country. These “unregulated” chemicals include the toxic rocket fuel component perchlorate, the industrial solvent acetone, the weed killer metolachlor, the refrigerant Freon and radon, a highly radioactive gas.

Pensacola’s worst water ranking was among 100 of the nation’s largest water systems in cities over 250,000 in population. In North Escambia, water systems are operated by small independent water companies such as Walnut Hill Water Works, Molino Utilities, Central Water Works, Bratt-Davisville Water System and the Town of Century. These smaller water systems were not part of the worst water results. Only the water provided by the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority (ECUA) in the Pensacola metro area was part of the water study. The smaller North Escambia water systems were not included in the study by EWG.

“The nation’s tap water has been compromised by weak federal safeguards and pitiful protection of drinking water supplies,” said Jane Houlihan, Senior Vice President for Research at EWG.

“Utilities do the best job that they can treating a big problem with limited resources,” said Houlihan, “but we must do better. It is not uncommon for people to drink tap water laced with 20 or 30 chemical contaminants. This water may be legal, but it raises serious health concerns. People expect better water than that, and they deserve it.”

Federal law does not require tap water to be safe for long-term consumption; the long-term risks of cancer and other health threats are balanced against the cost and feasibility of purification. As a result, health officials acknowledge that legally binding contamination limits typically allow exposure to levels of pollutants that present real health risks. For hundreds of other contaminants there are no legal limits at all — any amount is legal.

Some communities have made the commitment to deliver safer water, with dramatic results. Boston had a serious contamination problem that peaked in 2004-2005. After installing a new filtration system and changing treatment techniques, the regional water system now delivers some of the highest-rated big city water in the country. It has also committed to a well-protected reservoir system, a key to preserving the long-term effectiveness of the new techniques.

Tap water contaminants come from a wide variety of sources. EWG’s analysis revealed 97 agricultural pollutants, including pesticides and chemicals from fertilizer- and manure-laden runoff; 205 industrial chemicals linked to factory discharges and consumer products; 86 contaminants that originate in polluted runoff and wastewater treatment plants; and 42 byproducts of water treatment processes or pollutants that leach from pipes and storage tanks.

“In most U.S. households, pouring a glass of tap water means exposing families to hundreds of distinct chemicals and pollutants, many of them completely unregulated,” said Houlihan.

Chemicals detected in Pensacola’s water supply from 2004 to 2008 were: Barium (total), Chromium (total), Cyanide, Mercury (total inorganic), Nitrate, Nitrite, Selenium (total), Trichlorofluoromethane, 1,2,4-Trichlorobenzene, cis-1,2-Dichloroethylene, 2,2-Dichloropropane, Monochloroacetic acid, Dibromoacetic acid, Chloroform, Xylenes (total), p-Dichlorobenzene, 1,1-Dichloroethylene, 1,1-Dichloroethane, 1,1,1,2-Tetrachloroethane, Monochlorobenzene (Chlorobenzene), Toluene, Ethylbenzene, Alpha particle activity (incl. radon & uranium), Combined Uranium (pCi/L), Cadmium (total), Lead (total), Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, Heptachlor epoxide, MTBE, Total haloacetic acids (HAAs), 1,2-Dibromo-3-chloropropane (DBCP), Bromoform, Bromodichloromethane, Dibromochloromethane, Total trihalomethanes (TTHMs), 1,2-Dichloroethane, Carbon tetrachloride, 1,2-Dichloropropane, Trichloroethylene, 1,1,2-Trichloroethane, Tetrachloroethylene, Benzene, Alpha particle activity (excl radon and uranium), Radium-226, Radium-228.

Pictured: The nation’s best and worst water systems in cities over 250,000 population, according to a study released Saturday by the Environmental Working Group.

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Some residents of the impoverished town wonder if a nearby
hazardous waste facility is to blame.

By Louis Sahagun

December 8, 2009

Reporting from Kettleman City, Calif.

When environmental activists began a survey of birth defects in this small migrant farming town halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, the results were alarming.

Approximately 20 babies were born here during the 14 months beginning in September 2007. Three of them died; each had been born with oral deformities known as clefts. Two others born with the defect during that period are undergoing medical treatment.

The 1,500 primarily Spanish-speaking residents of this impoverished enclave just off Interstate 5 want to know what is causing these health problems. Some blame them on a nearby hazardous waste facility — the largest landfill of its kind west of Louisiana and the only one in California licensed to accept carcinogenic PCBs.

Residents and environmental activists want the Kings County Board of Supervisors to stop a proposed expansion of the 1,600-acre landfill until the issue can be investigated by state and federal regulatory agencies. Even Chemical Waste Management Inc., which owns the site, has also expressed concerns about the county’s reluctance to call for an outside investigation.

County health officials say it is extremely difficult to quantify the relationship between pollution and birth defects.

“I understand why people are concerned,” Kings County health officer Michael MacClean said in an interview. “But most of the time, when we are talking about small numbers such as these, they are just random occurrences.

“We will definitely continue to monitor the situation to see if over time the apparent excess of cleft palates continues,” he said. “If so, I would at that point ask for the state to come in and investigate.”

On Monday, dozens of Kettleman City residents and hundreds of landfill employees and supporters traveled to Hanford Civic Auditorium, some 40 miles away, to hear the Board of Supervisors consider an appeal of the county planning commission’s recent unanimous approval of the expansion.

Supervisors heard from several witnesses into the evening. A final decision on whether to approve the expansion is expected Dec. 22.

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New York Times

OP-ED COLUMNIST

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: December 5, 2009

The battle over health care focuses on access to insurance, or tempests like the one that erupted over new mammogram guidelines.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof
On the Ground

In his blog, Nicholas Kristof addresses reader feedback and posts short takes from his travels.

But what about broader public health challenges? What if breast cancer in the United States has less to do with insurance or mammograms and more to do with contaminants in our water or air — or in certain plastic containers in our kitchens? What if the surge in asthma and childhood leukemia reflect, in part, the poisons we impose upon ourselves?

This last week I attended a fascinating symposium at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, exploring whether certain common chemicals are linked to breast cancer and other ailments.

Dr. Philip Landrigan, the chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Mount Sinai, said that the risk that a 50-year-old white woman will develop breast cancer has soared to 12 percent today, from 1 percent in 1975. (Some of that is probably a result of better detection.) Younger people also seem to be developing breast cancer: This year a 10-year-old in California, Hannah, is fighting breast cancer and recording her struggle on a blog.

Likewise, asthma rates have tripled over the last 25 years, Dr. Landrigan said. Childhood leukemia is increasing by 1 percent per year. Obesity has surged. One factor may be lifestyle changes — like less physical exercise and more stress and fast food — but some chemicals may also play a role.

Take breast cancer. One puzzle has been that most women living in Asia have low rates of breast cancer, but ethnic Asian women born and raised in the United States don’t enjoy that benefit. At the symposium, Dr. Alisan Goldfarb, a surgeon specializing in breast cancer, pointed to a chart showing breast cancer rates by ethnicity.

“If an Asian woman moves to New York, her daughters will be in this column,” she said, pointing to “whites.” “It is something to do with the environment.”

What’s happening? One theory starts with the well-known fact that women with more lifetime menstrual cycles are at greater risk for breast cancer, because they’re exposed to more estrogen. For example, a woman who began menstruating before 12 has a 30 percent greater risk of breast cancer than one who began at 15 or later.

It’s also well established that Western women are beginning puberty earlier, and going through menopause later. Dr. Maida Galvez, a pediatrician who runs Mount Sinai’s pediatric environmental health specialty unit, told the symposium that American girls in the year 1800 had their first period, on average, at about age 17. By 1900 that had dropped to 14. Now it is 12.

A number of studies, mostly in animals, have linked early puberty to exposure to pesticides, P.C.B.’s and other chemicals. One class of chemicals that creates concern — although the evidence is not definitive — is endocrine disruptors, which are often similar to estrogen and may fool the body into setting off hormonal changes. This used to be a fringe theory, but it is now being treated with great seriousness by the Endocrine Society, the professional association of hormone specialists in the United States.

These endocrine disruptors are found in everything from certain plastics to various cosmetics. “There’s a ton of stuff around that has estrogenic material in it,” Dr. Goldfarb said. “There’s makeup that you rub into your skin for a youthful appearance that is really estrogen.”

More than 80,000 new chemicals have been developed since World War II, according to the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai. Even of the major chemicals, fewer than 20 percent have been tested for toxicity to children, the center says.

Representative Louise Slaughter, the only microbiologist in the House of Representatives, introduced legislation this month that would establish a comprehensive program to monitor endocrine disruptors. That’s an excellent idea, because as long as we’re examining our medical system, there’s a remarkable precedent for a public health effort against a toxic substance. The removal of lead from gasoline resulted in an 80 percent decline in lead levels in our blood since 1976 — along with a six-point gain in children’s I.Q.’s, Dr. Landrigan said.

read full article online

Op-Ed Columnist

The New York Times

Nicholas D. Kristof

The battle over health care focuses on access to insurance, or tempests like the one that erupted over new mammogram guidelines.

But what about broader public health challenges? What if breast cancer in the United States has less to do with insurance or mammograms and more to do with contaminants in our water or air — or in certain plastic containers in our kitchens? What if the surge in asthma and childhood leukemia reflect, in part, the poisons we impose upon ourselves?

This last week I attended a fascinating symposium at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, exploring whether certain common chemicals are linked to breast cancer and other ailments.

Dr. Philip Landrigan, the chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Mount Sinai, said that the risk that a 50-year-old white woman will develop breast cancer has soared to 12 percent today, from 1 percent in 1975. (Some of that is probably a result of better detection.) Younger people also seem to be developing breast cancer: This year a 10-year-old in California, Hannah, is fighting breast cancer and recording her struggle on a blog.

Likewise, asthma rates have tripled over the last 25 years, Dr. Landrigan said. Childhood leukemia is increasing by 1 percent per year. Obesity has surged. One factor may be lifestyle changes — like less physical exercise and more stress and fast food — but some chemicals may also play a role.

Take breast cancer. One puzzle has been that most women living in Asia have low rates of breast cancer, but ethnic Asian women born and raised in the United States don’t enjoy that benefit. At the symposium, Dr. Alisan Goldfarb, a surgeon specializing in breast cancer, pointed to a chart showing breast cancer rates by ethnicity.

“If an Asian woman moves to New York, her daughters will be in this column,” she said, pointing to “whites.” “It is something to do with the environment.”

What’s happening? One theory starts with the well-known fact that women with more lifetime menstrual cycles are at greater risk for breast cancer, because they’re exposed to more estrogen. For example, a woman who began menstruating before 12 has a 30 percent greater risk of breast cancer than one who began at 15 or later.

It’s also well established that Western women are beginning puberty earlier, and going through menopause later. Dr. Maida Galvez, a pediatrician who runs Mount Sinai’s pediatric environmental health specialty unit, told the symposium that American girls in the year 1800 had their first period, on average, at about age 17. By 1900 that had dropped to 14. Now it is 12.

A number of studies, mostly in animals, have linked early puberty to exposure to pesticides, P.C.B.’s and other chemicals. One class of chemicals that creates concern — although the evidence is not definitive — is endocrine disruptors, which are often similar to estrogen and may fool the body into setting off hormonal changes. This used to be a fringe theory, but it is now being treated with great seriousness by the Endocrine Society, the professional association of hormone specialists in the United States.

These endocrine disruptors are found in everything from certain plastics to various cosmetics. “There’s a ton of stuff around that has estrogenic material in it,” Dr. Goldfarb said. “There’s makeup that you rub into your skin for a youthful appearance that is really estrogen.”

More than 80,000 new chemicals have been developed since World War II, according to the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai. Even of the major chemicals, fewer than 20 percent have been tested for toxicity to children, the center says.

Representative Louise Slaughter, the only microbiologist in the House of Representatives, introduced legislation this month that would establish a comprehensive program to monitor endocrine disruptors. That’s an excellent idea, because as long as we’re examining our medical system, there’s a remarkable precedent for a public health effort against a toxic substance. The removal of lead from gasoline resulted in an 80 percent decline in lead levels in our blood since 1976 — along with a six-point gain in children’s I.Q.’s, Dr. Landrigan said.

I asked these doctors what they do in their own homes to reduce risks. They said that they avoid microwaving food in plastic or putting plastics in the dishwasher, because heat may cause chemicals to leach out. And the symposium handed out a reminder card listing “safer plastics” as those marked (usually at the bottom of a container) 1, 2, 4 or 5.

It suggests that the “plastics to avoid” are those numbered 3, 6 and 7 (unless they are also marked “BPA-free”). Yes, the evidence is uncertain, but my weekend project is to go through containers in our house and toss out 3’s, 6’s and 7’s.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground.