By Chris Burrell
Patriot Ledger

HANOVER, Mass. —
More than six decades of munitions manufacturing and testing at a factory that armed the U.S. military during four wars has polluted a 280-acre site in Hanover with enough mercury, lead and other chemicals to make it a sure-fire candidate for a high-ranking, federal Superfund site.

But nearly 20 years after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency first discovered and documented high levels of contamination at the old National Fireworks Co. site, Hanover selectmen are pressing the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection to steer clear of the Superfund route.

They want the state to map out a plan to pay for clean-up without the federal brand and all the stigma that comes with it.

“The town’s interest is in revitalizing the area,” said town administrator Troy Clarkson. “And that designation is not conducive to revitalization.”

David Ozonoff, an expert in Superfund sites and a professor at Boston University School of Public Health, put it more bluntly: “Having your town with a Superfund site is not one the things you put in the brochure. To be labeled a cancer community or waste site community is not good for real estate values.”

But up until two weeks ago, the state environmental agency was threatening to push for Superfund status if it failed to make any progress negotiating with the three remaining players in the contamination, known as potentially responsible parties.

Those parties are the U.S. Department of Defense, Rockland-based National Coating Corporation and MIT, which used the site to dump toxic waste. Another player, Tronox, Inc., previously Kerr-McGee, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009 but Massachusetts can tap at least $950,000 from a settlement negotiated by 22 states and the federal government.

Now the state says it is making significant progress toward reaching a settlement with the three parties that would cover the cost of removing mercury and other toxic chemicals from the soil, ponds and three miles of river.

Estimates for a comprehensive clean-up reach as high as $158 million, but a more realistic remedy comes with a price tag of close to $28 million, said Ed Coletta, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Wearing coveralls and paper caps for protection against toxic dust, workers at National Fireworks melt TNT, a yellowish powder used in making amatol. Click on the image to see “National Fireworks Review,” a book from the 1940s.

Chemical contamination at the site is designated Tier 1A, the most severe the state Department of Environmental Protection deals with, because of ecological risks.

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Patriot Ledger

MEGHAN FOLEY
The Bennington Banner

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The state Department of Public Health plans to update its evaluation of thyroid cancer cases in the four towns that send students to Mount Greylock Regional High School.

DPH decided to update the evaluation after a concerned resident contacted the agency, spokeswoman Julia Hurley said. The Transcript published on article on July 25 that focused on growing concerns in the community that the high school may be the site of a cancer cluster.

“We did reiterate to the resident, however, that the weight of the scientific evidence is that perchlorate is not expected to cause cancer in humans, and that the concern is hypothyroidism at sufficient exposure levels,” Hurley said.

At press time, it could not be determined exactly when DPH will updated its evaluation.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, a cancer cluster occurs when “a greater than expected number of cancer cases occurs within a group of people, in a geographic area, or over a period of time.”

Most of the students who attend Mount Greylock live in Williamstown, Lanesborough, Hancock or New Ashford.

Several residents of the regional school district have told the Transcript that they wondered if high levels of the chemical perchlorate — which was first detected in April 2004 in the wells that supplied the school’s drinking water — had anything to do with several Mount Greylock alumni and staff either developing

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cancer or having thyroid problems.
The presence of perchlorate — a chemical used in the production of rocket fuel, fireworks, flares and explosives — in drinking water is regulated by the state. Public water supplies are required by the state to have a perchlorate level of no more than two parts per billion.

Since the article was published, four Mount Greylock graduates have contacted the Transcript to say that they have battled thyroid cancer, while a fifth said she has Hashimoto’s Disease. Hashimoto’s Disease is an autoimmune disorder that often results in an underactive thyroid.

One Mount Greylock graduate who had thyroid cancer said two family members also became sick. One also had thyroid cancer, while the other contracted non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. All three are no longer afflicted.

The Transcript has now learned of 12 Mount Greylock alumni and former staff members who have been afflicted with thyroid cancer. Five others have experienced thyroid issues —including Graves’ Disease. Also, one more developed Hodgkin’s lymphoma; one had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma; and one developed a rare sarcoma. These 20 individuals were all diagnosed from 1990 to 2011.

Scott Harris of Clarksburg, who graduated from Mount Greylock in 1979, is preparing for his fourth surgery. His thyroid cancer has returned three times since he was first diagnosed in 1990.

“I’m done with it,” Harris said. “I don’t want it anymore.” Harris, who lived in Boston from 1981 to 2004, said his family has no history of thyroid cancer or thyroid problems. He said doctors really don’t know what originally caused the cancer to develop and then return twice.

He said the water situation at Mount Greylock has been a problem for many years. “They need to get some public water up there,” Harris said. “It’s a high school for crying out loud.”

Built in 1960 on the site of a former airport and farm, the school initially relied on two wells for its water supply. Both wells were first tested for perchlorate on April 15, 2004 after the state Department of Environmental Protection issued emergency regulations that required the testing to take place.

Well No. 2 — located south of the school — registered 1.03 parts perchlorate per billion, just over the state’s then advisory limit of 1 part per billion. But the level of perchlorate in Well No. 1 registered five times higher than the state limit at 5.05 parts per billion. Well No. 1 is located north of the school.

Over the next year, both wells continued to produce high levels of perchlorate, which forced the school to use bottled water for drinking and cooking until September 2006 when a new well was commissioned.

The new well, located about a quarter of a mile to the west of the school, was sought after efforts to have the town extend a water line further down Cold Spring Road failed. State DEP spokeswoman Catherine Skiba said perchlorate has not been detected in Well No. 3.

“The two wells with the initial perchlorate detection have been severed from the water system, but remain available for use in the event of an emergency with MassDEP approval,” she said.

While the source of the perchlorate contamination wasn’t definitively identified, it was suspected that fireworks were the source, she said. According to a report by the state DEP that examined both the occurrence and sources of perchlorate in Massachusetts, fireworks were launched on the high school’s football field between 1989 and 1992, and from 1999 to 2003.

Regional School Committee Chairman Robert Ericson said the school acted appropriately when it stopped using the first two wells after perchlorate contamination was discovered in 2004.

Still, he said, many issues were never resolved. They include where the contamination came from, how long people were exposed to it and how much perchlorate was in the water before the problem was discovered. “It is of concern, and the concern is for the kids who attended the school before the problem was fixed,” he said.

He said the School Committee plans to discuss what the regional district can do now to address the issue.

Jennifer Cushman, a 1996 graduate of Mount Greylock who lives near Rochester, N.Y., was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at the age of 31 in 2009. She had her thyroid gland removed and is currently cancer free. “If this is related to the school, it would be nice if something could be done,” she said.

Suzanne Condon, the director of the Massachusetts Bureau of Environmental Health, said one of the challenges her agency faces when it tries to determine the existence of a cancer cluster occurs when many afflicted people have moved out of the area where the problem may exist. For example, Cushman said her cancer would not be listed in the Massachusetts registry because she was diagnosed while living in New York.

“In Massachusetts, we have a population-based registry,” Condon said. “We know where people live when they are diagnosed, but we don’t know if that is where they’re living at that point in time and have lived in a different place or state. We don’t have the ability to track people diagnosed with cancer,” she said

Cancer clusters are also difficult to determine because they generally involve only a small number of people, Condon said. There are also more than 100 forms of cancer.

“According to statistics from the American Cancer Society, one in every three women are diagnosed with cancer, and for men, it’s one in every two,” Condon said. “When I started doing this work a few decades ago, we used to say it was one in every four people. So the data has changed significantly over the years.”

S. Boston cluster may be genetic, not environmental, but true cause is elusive

Elizabeth Lombard is among the residents of South Boston who has scleroderma, the autoimmune disease that hardens muscles and internal organs. Elizabeth Lombard is among the residents of South Boston who has scleroderma, the autoimmune disease that hardens muscles and internal organs. (Suzanne Kreiter/ Globe Staff)

By Meghan Irons
Globe Staff / January 25, 2010

Elizabeth Lombard’s right hand is stiff and wooden, unable to flex or move.

“It won’t bend,’’ she said, displaying the tightened skin that is pulling back her fingers into a crooked and clawlike form.

Lombard has scleroderma, a rare, life-threatening autoimmune disease that hardens muscles and internal organs, and causes the body’s immune system to attack itself.

The disease, which has no cure, has long confounded South Boston, where a cluster of longtime residents from the City Point section – most of them middle-aged women – were falling ill with it. The residents, who lived near a power plant and hazardous waste sites, believed they were victims of their environment.

Their case gained national media attention and sparked an 11-year investigation by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. In their findings, released earlier this month, state researchers acknowledged “higher than expected cases’’ of scleroderma in South Boston, a neighborhood of roughly 30,000 people.

But it determined that genetics, not the environment, played a significant role.

“It’s not necessarily that the community they were living in was producing this disease,’’ said Robert Simms, the chief of rheumatology at Boston Medical Center and a researcher in the study. “When you look at the data, it does not support that.’’

Researchers also said low participation in the $1.75 million study may have limited their ability to find an environmental link.

Without a large enough sample, Simms said, it was difficult for scientists to gather reliable estimates on scleroderma’s link to the residents’ proximity to toxic wastes and other pollutants.

“Those are the things the South Boston study tried to do and came up short,’’ said Simms, who added that the study now opens the door for much larger, national research.

The study found that people with a family history of specific autoimmune-rheumatic diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, Raynaud’s disease, lupus, and thyroid disease, were more likely to develop scleroderma.

For the women afflicted with the disfiguring disease, the findings have come as a bitter disappointment.

“I thought that if we had an answer then we could fix it,’’ said Lombard, whose eyebrows have fallen out and whose face is tight and covered with red blotches. “It would help us make sense of why so many of my neighbors have this horrible disease.’’

Ann Dilorati Macaulay, another woman with scleroderma, recalled being slick with oil after swimming in the bay and seeing soot raining down from the oil-burning former Boston Edison power plant, blackening residents’ clothing and backyard laundry. The plant now uses natural gas.

“I still believe that there is something in the environment that is causing this,’’ Macaulay said. “I do think there is a genetic component, but when we are exposed to it, it triggers the disease.’

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