By MITRA MALEK
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

THE ACREAGE — Outrage erupted among residents and politicians Wednesday after state health officials announced they don’t plan to search for an environmental cause of The Acreage’s cancer cluster — and instead will mount a campaign to raise “awareness” about childhood brain cancer.

The announcement came from Dr. Alina Alonso, director of the Palm Beach County Health Department, who noted that brain cancer is thought to be rising across the industrialized world, with potential contributors including cell phones, microwave ovens, artificial sweeteners and genetics.

Alonso said the state’s investigation hasn’t pointed to a cause of the central Palm Beach County community’s elevated levels of childhood brain cancer and brain tumors. And she doubts it will, even after investigators wrap up the second phase of their work in mid-March.

“From what we have right now, it does not seem practical or reasonable to start searching blindly,” said Alonso, whose agency is part of the state Department of Health.

“It’s frustrating for me not to give them a cause,” Alonso said. “I can’t make up science.”

In response, some residents scoffed at what they called the department’s “complete mishandling” of the cluster, whose existence the agency confirmed this week.

“That infuriates me,” said Greg Dunsford, whose 7-year-old son had a brain tumor removed two years ago. “It’s like, ‘Hey best of luck to you.’”

Some elected leaders were equally upset.

“To ask us to accept the unknown is ridiculous and unacceptable,” said Michelle Damone, president of Indian Trail Improvement District, which governs some aspects of The Acreage. “There will be no comfort for anyone in those terms.”

Tying the Acreage cluster to a general brain-cancer rise worldwide is “speculation,” said state Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, who is running for attorney general.

“It’s unreasonable to simply say there is no known cause, when many factors could have contributed to environmental contamination in The Acreage,” he said. Among them: large groves and farms, as well as the nearby Pratt & Whitney plant, which has spilled chemicals on its property over the years.

Alonso told reporters that she has “nothing saying these cancers are a result of Pratt & Whitney.”

State Rep. Joseph Abruzzo said he was “deeply disturbed” with Alonso’s general reasoning.

“These are all hypotheses until we do a certain level of testing,” said Abruzzo, D- Wellington.

Since June, the state Health Department has been investigating whether the 32,000 to 39,000 residents of the semi-rural Acreage are experiencing higher rates of brain tumors and cancer than normal. Results released Monday confirm that they are. They show “significantly elevated” pediatric brain and central nervous system cancers, particularly for girls, in those up to 19 years old.

It’s unclear what exactly causes brain cancer, but excessive radiation is a known contributor. Brain cancer is the second most common type of cancer in children, behind leukemia.

Epidemiological experts acknowledge that a specific cause isn’t necessarily linked to a cluster — which the National Cancer Institute defines as a higher-than-expected number of cases within a certain group of people in a geographic area over a period of time.

Sharon Watkins, a state Health Department environmental epidemiologist involved with The Acreage study, wrote to a worried parent this week that a cluster “does not mean or imply that this elevation is related to one particular cause or that it must be linked to a contaminant.”

“I think that people automatically assume that any increase in cancer must be linked to an environmental cause and that is not always true nor can it be proven,” Watkins added. She wrote: “It is unlikely that all types of pediatric brain cancers have exactly the same risk factors.”

Both Watkins and Alonso said pediatric brain cancers might be elevated in other parts of the county as well, but no one would know without an investigation.

Health officials pinned assurances that well water in The Acreage is of good quality based on random samples that the state Department of Environmental Protection took at 50 wells last year. A few of those tests, however, showed elevated levels of radiation, which could have been from natural causes.

Through a spokesman, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson reiterated his call for environmental tests to start quickly and said he would “insist” that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention help state health officials “in getting to the bottom of this concentration of cancer cases.”

Alonso said she would welcome federal help but plans to put energy into public awareness and pushing for large-scale research.

“Our best way of trying to help children is to have early detection,” she said. She said the health department is not planning to take soil samples, do genetic testing or go beyond the interviews it has conducted with patients’ families.

Calling for more awareness is absurd, said Tracy Newfield, whose 15-year-old daughter had a brain tumor removed in 2005.

“We’ve been focusing on awareness for the last nine months,” Newfield said. “I don’t know where she’s been.”

The CDC isn’t expected to step in, nor does the state health department plan to ask the agency to investigate anything at this point, county health department spokesman Tim O’Connor said.

“They’ve been with us from the beginning,” O’Connor said. “They know what’s going on.”

Staff writer Stacey Singer contributed to this story.article online

By MITRA MALEK
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

THE ACREAGE — After months of debate about a potential cancer cluster in The Acreage, three law firms have begun signing up clients and considering whom they could sue.

The clients are all families of cancer patients in the semi-rural community, who think that environmental contamination may be to blame.

The key question — what caused the pollution, if any? — remains unanswered. One New York City law firm, affiliated with environmental crusader Erin Brockovich, says it could take months to figure out whom to target in court.

But the Romano Law Group in Lake Worth expects to identify “likely defendants” within six weeks, attorney John Romano said today.

“Most cases that come into a law firm, you know right away who is the plaintiff and who’s the defendant,” Romano said. “In a case like this, you often don’t know that.”

The state Health Department is still studying whether a cancer cluster even exists in The Acreage, and leaders have said the inquiry might not be done until February or later.

Worried families in The Acreage started contacting lawyers shortly after the Health Department began its investigation in June. Preliminary findings released in August showed potentially higher-than-expected levels of brain tumors or brain cancer in children, although the department cautioned that outdated population figures may have skewed the findings.

Brockovich’s New York firm, Weitz & Luxenberg, has teamed up with Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley, a law firm based in West Palm Beach. The two declined today to share how many clients have retained them.

Romano Law Group has signed up six young adults with different types of cancer, Romano said. The Lake Worth practice is waiting for more definitive scientific information from a Colorado-based environmental expert, he said.

Weitz & Luxenberg and Searcy Denney, on the other hand, have keyed in on radiation, which is known to cause brain tumors or brain cancer. The state Department of Environmental Protection said last month that some homes in The Acreage have well water with elevated levels of radium and other radioactive substances, which could result from natural causes.

But Weitz & Luxenberg said it drew different conclusions from its own tests of 10 wells of families affected by brain tumors.

“Some of this can’t be explained by naturally occurring sources,” said attorney Lemuel Srolovic. He said additional tests pointed to man-made manipulation of radium.

Meanwhile, state officials have said since early October that they haven’t found any man-made form of contamination in The Acreage based on their analysis of 50 random private well-water samples. But the state has not tested specifically for radiation caused by man-made activity.

“Our bigger point was you can’t just assume all radioactivity in the community is naturally occurring,” Srolovic said. “That’s something you actually have to think about and do some testing to know definitively one way or the other.”

Weitz & Luxenberg and Searcy Denney are considering contamination theories that would involve more than three defendants, none a “government entity,” said Mara Hatfield, an attorney who works with Searcy Denney. She wouldn’t elaborate.

The clients don’t have to pay anything to the law firms unless they prevail.

“They wouldn’t be putting all of this time and effort into the situation out here if they didn’t think something was wrong,” said Jennifer Dunsford, the mother who requested the state study.

read article online

April 17, 2008 4:15PM

The Kind of Story I Wish Was Fiction

By Alexis Glick

Remember that book that I told you I was reading over vacation — The Appeal by John Grisham? The story about a cancer cluster caused by a plant that was dumping toxic waste in the ground and throughout the water system? The class action suit filed against a publicly-traded company?

This morning, I interviewed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mike Papantonio, both very well known lawyers. Kennedy, a big defender of the environment and considered a trailblazer for his fight to help clean up the Hudson River. Papantonio, a partner at one of the largest plaintiffs’ law firms in the country.

They came on the show to talk about a class action lawsuit that they filed on April 11th against Raytheon (RTN: 64.71, +0.13, +0.20%), a huge defense and aerospace systems supplier. The lawsuit concerns a facility in St. Petersburg, Fla. which residents believe has released toxins into the water and its neighboring environment. The toxic chemicals — trichloroethylene, vinyl chloride and dioxane — are all believed to be responsible for cancer, birth defects and death. It’s a very sad story about what has happened to this area in Florida. The damages are estimated to be between $250 and $400 million. The case could take two years to settle.

State admits Tallevast pollution study way off mark

By CHRISTOPHER O’DONNELL

Published Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 4:30 a.m.

MANATEE COUNTY — During the last 20 years, Tallevast residents say dozens of their neighbors have died prematurely. Others are still fighting cancer and beryllium-related health issues.

But a draft Florida Department of Health report on the community blighted by more than 200 acres of polluted ground water found just four cases of cancer.

The report could hardly be more different from a survey by residents that showed about 90 cases of cancer or beryllium-related diseases in the mainly black community.

DOH officials who met with the neighborhood group FOCUS on Monday agreed that their numbers, based on a state database and figures from a local hospital, were wildly off the mark. They also admitted they had studied the wrong ZIP code.

Although Tallevast has a post office, most Tallevast residents live in a Sarasota ZIP code.

“That’s one of the problems of dealing with a statewide database,” said Randy Merchant, a DOH administrator. “It’s hard to get a handle on what is happening in so small an area.”

The results left community leaders upset that state officials had not worked more closely with them to ensure errors like this did not happen.

“We’re angry,” said Wanda Washington, vice president of FOCUS. “We’re just not sure what road to take. No one ever came into the community to do a study. If you are doing it from behind a desk, you’re going to miss a lot.”

FOCUS’ figures on incidences of cancer came from a door-to-door survey quizzing families about their medical histories.

The community of about 80 homes sits above more than 200 acres of polluted ground water left behind by the former American Beryllium Co., which built parts for nuclear warheads for the federal government for nearly 40 years.

State officials said they will likely get an epidemiologist to conduct a similar door-to-door survey.

The cost would be about $125,000, they said.

State Rep. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, said if the DOH cannot fund it he will look for other funding sources.

“I’ve committed myself to help see that that happens so that the question can be answered and a more accurate picture developed,” Galvano said.

Residents in Tallevast have asked Lockheed Martin, the company responsible for the cleanup of the site, to pay for them to move. They have also filed several lawsuits against Lockheed and other companies that operated at the site seeking damages for health issues and falling property values.

Lockheed became the owner of the Tallevast site after the company acquired the former Loral company in 1996. It shut down the plant and sold the property, but not before discovering soil and ground-water pollution on and around the site.

In 2000, Lockheed notified county and state officials of the pollution, which included trichloroethylene, or TCE, a compound linked to liver and kidney cancer and other ailments.

Residents, who were not informed for almost four more years, continued to use well water. Their homes were switched to the county drinking water system in 2004.

FOCUS leaders said they would welcome state officials’ repeating their survey.

“We think the state will be better at it,” Washington said. “You need to put your feet on the ground and come out here and collect that information