the acreage cancer cluster

It would be an act of war, Dycus notes. The companys 7,000 acres of swampland are bordered on the south by a 60,000-plus-acre wildlife preserve. A news conference slated to discuss the results of a Acreage Cancer Cluster study being conducted. Kaye McCann, also in the auditorium, was more pessimistic. The plaintiffs attorneys notified both the state and county health departments of their findings in September of last year and urged them to begin larger-scale testing. But a few months later, Dunsford learned that another student in the local elementary school had been diagnosed with a brain tumor, which made four children with brain cancer that she knew about, all living within two miles of one another. Based on the calculations in the report from the Florida Department of Health, a girls chance of getting a brain tumor in the Acreage was five and a half times what it was in the rest of Florida. Then, in the summer before ninth grade, while her family was visiting a Civil War memorial on the coast of Alabama, Hannah collapsed. The ordeal was also a turning point for Jennifer Dunsford. If I could move I definitely would, she said. As is the case of most cancer-clusters throughout the United States, no cause was ever found. Our Platform. "We're confident that in subsequent cases, we'll be able to establish that the radioactive materials that Pratt & Whitney mishandled on its property, as the jury found, were, in fact, transported to the Acreage.". Last week many residents of The Acreage rode a roller coaster of emotions as the story of the Acreage cancer cluster took new turns and twists. They Refused to Fight for Russia. The tangle of allegiances between the company and local officials was on display in 2009, when the Acreage Community Focus Group was founded, supposedly to address residents concerns about the cluster. | Credit: GARY CORONADO/THE PALM BEACH POST. The study found that much of South Florida lies in a childhood cancer cluster. For its part, Pratt & Whitney is staying, too. And both were so grueling that they left the victors unsure whether the effort had been worth it. The plaintiffs were parents and families from The Acreage who claimed that Pratt & Whitney was to blame for the cancer cluster. The agencies tested water from over seventy private wells and several of the canals that ran through the area, as well as soil samples from thirty-five homes, for more than 200 chemicals. The deal, which helped land two county commissioners in prison for fraud (a consultant advising the agency, it turned out, was being paid by the mining company), stipulated that Palm Beach Aggregates couldnt be held legally responsible for any contamination of water in the used pits. clicky.init(190756); var _gaq = _gaq || []; A 2010 report from the Florida Department of Health confirmed her worst fears. People said stuff like The Dunsfords are gold diggers, and they used their sons tumor as an excuse to go after a big company and get dollars, Dunsford remembers. Yet once again, concerns about the cancer rates in the community have been raised, this time by a law firm representing nine clients, most of them former Acreage residents with victims of cancer in their families. Hatfield countered that medical experts her West Palm Beach firm hired will refute those claims. Though Becky Samarripa chose not to get involved in any litigation, the radiation theory makes sense to her. At the time, neither Jennifer Dunsford nor Becky Samarripa considered that her childs illness might be part of something larger. The Dunsfords created all this fear, resident Michelle James told The Palm Beach Post. A Scary Reality The Acreage Cancer Cluster. The lawsuit extends to "every current or former Acreage area landowner who owns or owned an Acreage property at any time since August 24, 2009." Instead, most homeowners rely on private wells. Since Jennas death in 2006, Kaye had become less trusting. Even the politicians in attendance were unhappy. In November 2012, the company announced plans to add 230 jobs at its Florida campus over the next eight years and to invest $63 million in its facilities there. A community group has counted 18 children with brain Meanwhile, Pratt & Whitney enjoys close ties with regulators. Some left that three-hour meeting feeling more frustrated than when they arrived. What was around me? There are so many unknowns, and unknowns create hysteria and fear, she said. var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); At the request of site members who just want to know how many brain tumorsand cysts are on the map, we have provided a breakdown below: By request, we have broken down the data we have collected by year: We are trying to update our Victim Database. Earlier this month, the Florida Health Department confirmed that a Some residents of The Acreage have filed a class action lawsuit against Pratt & Whitney. The community was in That problem was much in evidence last week at an emotion-packed community meeting at Seminole Ridge High School, where a standing-room-only crowd of about 1,000 residents heard from a panel of state and county experts. Cynthia Santiago was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2009 at the age of 13 while living in a South Florida community known as the Acreage. Where did I live? WebThe Acreage is an unincorporated Palm Beach community which has experienced significant growth in its 25 years to around 39,000 people. We are concerned residents just like you. The lawsuit was filed in 2016, but the issue started well before in 2009 when several residents in the community reported brain and head tumors that were increasingly above expected rates. Periodically, the belt would start beeping in the middle of the night. But it could be something in the ground, pesticides, we dont know. The Acreage suits which now include at least thirteen individual personal-injury and wrongful-death cases, and two class-action suits over the loss of real-estate value are no easy moneymakers. Some of that drop was due to the nationwide crash that followed the housing bubble, but the news of the cancer cluster clearly played a role. Im usually a very rational person, but that night I put on a pair of shoes that belong to someone with OCD. Since then Palm Beach County Health Department officials interviewed 12 families diagnosed with either brain tumors or brain cancers from 2003 through 2008. On Wednesday, 12 years The way the numbers and facts are being reported is confusing. And a local firm began representing several of the cases. Alonso was surely aware of how daunting a task it would be to pinpoint and prove the cause of the increase. The way some members of the community are Attorneys have claimed that the state failed to properly test for specific radioactive contamination, ignored concerns voiced by its own people and neglected to hold Pratt & Whitney accountable for not cleaning up years' worth of toxic contamination in the area. The entire story might have ended there, in 2010, if attorneys hadnt taken up where public-health officials left off. Palm Beach County families are finally getting their time in court after years of concerns over a spike in cancer cases in and around The Acreage. While Jessica, now 20, is attending college, Tracy has been spearheading the creation of the Garden of Hope, a place in the Acreage where people can go to honor their loved ones who have had cancer. This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, now known as Type Investigations, with support from the Gertrude Blumenthal Kasbekar Fund. Trucking manifests and other documents will show that contaminated soil, most of which was shipped out on rail cars to hazardous disposal sitesin Michigan and South Carolina, was handled properly, he said. West Palm Beach attorney Jack Scarola took the lead on this case for the Acreage residents. Within a few months, some of the participants felt they were being pressured to stop pursuing questions about water contamination. She enjoys her family, her job and her small town. Tracy Newfield, who had been vocal in asking for an investigation, started receiving prank calls about the cluster and had her mailbox knocked over several times. Within six months of the cluster designation, five community-run websites had sprung up and just as quickly devolved into nastiness. Please note that we have not updated this map in months. According to The Palm Beach Post last week, U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Ryskamp recently dismissed two separate lawsuits claiming aircraft engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney was responsible for a cluster of cancer-related illnesses affecting Acreage residents. But afterward, the gap widened to 77%, he said. Half a year later, on a mild evening in early 2010, state officials called a town meeting at the local high school to tell the community what the investigation had found. There are a lot of communities down here built on that, says Hatfield. Then, two years later, another study was published concluding that cancer rates among the companys workers were not elevated. Unequivocally laying the blame on one often requires showing that no other was involved. This constitutes a huge problem, though one that, he says, seems to spur little outrage. The presence of technologically enhanced concentrations of NORM products (TE-NORMS) in water systems can be associated with the metal processing industry, particularly airplane engine and turbine manufacturing; however, high concentrations of these radionuclides in an environment are more readily associated with mining operations, including the type of shell rock mining conducted by the Aggregates. But documents from the 1960s through the 90s show that Pratt & Whitney had licenses to use at least a dozen radioactive substances [PDF], including radium D and E, thoriated nickel and cesium-137, in Florida. _gaq.push(['gwo._setAccount', 'UA-230305-28']); In recent days, state officials have promised to do more. The one kind of contamination that distinguished the Acreage, according to Hatfield, was ionizing radiation, which was not just an established cause of brain cancer but the byproduct of local industry. To the attorneys assertion that Pratt & Whitney was the only possible source of the radiation, Pratts lawyers replied that it could have come from other sources, such as the Chernobyl disaster, through which nuclear radiation has been spread world-wide.. A cancer cluster is a high concentration of people diagnosed with cancer who all live or work within a close proximity of one another. Charlie Crist and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL, have urged the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to get involved. In contrast to the smooth pavement and careful landscaping of coastal West Palm, the Acreage has a wild, almost jungly feel. The family moved to Tennessee and sold their Acreage home through a short sale in 2011. The plaintiffs are parents and families from The Acreage who believe the aerospace giant is to blame for the cancer cluster that was reported more than a dozen years ago. All Rights Reserved. We really need leadership out of Tallahassee, a person designated by the governor to take charge an action plan. WebStudying cancer clusters allows scientists to identify areas of increased cancer risk, as well as to try to figure out what is causing the increase in risk. So they were shocked to hear the health officials explain that the community was definitely experiencing a cluster of pediatric brain tumors, as well as elevated rates of all cancers at all ages. Get the latest updates in news, food, music and culture, and receive special offers direct to your inbox. local Journalism in South Florida. By the time the tumor In the fall of 2004, the little girl often played in the grass of her yard with her two dogs. Soon after, the state announced it would undertake an official cancer-cluster investigation a rare step, given the high expense and low likelihood of finding any statistically significant increase. "We're disappointed with the outcome," Mara Hatfield, an attorney with Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley, PA said. 8, 2022 at 3:06 PM PDT Palm Beach County families are finally getting But when they lived there, Beckys husband, who worked as a customs official, wore a radiation-detecting gun belt for his job and stored it in the closet. Today, Pratt & Whitney has more than $10 billion in defense contracts, and United Technologies is the sixth-biggest Pentagon contractor. But many were outraged when state health officials said that instead of environmental tests to hunt for the cancer cause, they would mount an awareness campaign instead. Abruzzo said he knows some of his constituents have left the area, and just walked away from their property and their mortgage. This month the countys Health Department confirmed that The Acreage is home to a cancer cluster, defined as an area with rates of brain tumors and brain cancers higher than normal. Nor did it account for the fact that many of the cases were clumped in the northern part of the study area, which meant that the concentration of cancer in that particular spot was even higher there than what the Health Department had found in the larger area. Once the lawyers get involved, then the lawyers have to talk, the countys Alina Alonso explained to me. Now 12, he has auditory processing problems, memory issues and dyslexia, which were all diagnosed after his cancer. To view information associated with each bullet simply click on the bullet. In 2000, when Pratt & Whitney was considering leaving its Florida site, it entered into discussions with Palm Beach County about selling some of its land as a site for drinking wells. We have not received the facts. _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-230305-2']); I think about it every day, says one resident, who didnt want to give her name lest she be pilloried for believing in the cluster. 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; The Hollings researchers identified a protein called transforming acidic coiled-coil containing protein Five couples who lived in the area and whose children developed brain tumors are serving as plaintiffs in a class-action suit that seeks damages for local residents whose property value plummeted after the cancer cluster was publicized. Pratt & Whitney Named in First Lawsuit Filed Over The Acreage Cancer Cluster Some residents of The Acreage have filed a class action lawsuit against Pratt & Whitney. })(); '&utmxhash='+escape(h.substr(1)):'')+'" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">')})(); ', Much of the mudslinging took place online. Only two personal-injury and wrongful-death lawsuits involving cancer clusters in the United States have yielded any financial reward for plaintiffs. We are not simply tracking brain tumors and brain cancer. We would also like those who are in need of medical assistance to let us know. Disclaimer: This map is intended to be used as a visual tool ONLY. But if the jury agrees that Pratt didn't properly dispose of radioactive materials, she could revive a class-action lawsuit, seeking compensation for the nearly 40,000 people who own property in the rural enclave. The suit over whether several companies had caused a cluster of leukemia cases in children in Woburn, Massachusetts, chronicled in the book (and later movie) A Civil Action, was incredibly lengthy, costly and labor-intensive, and the plaintiffs walked away with relatively small settlements. A Florida man who says Pratt & Whitney created a pollution and cancer cluster told the 11th Circ. There are many factors that make it easy for a company to pollute with impunity. Seven years after the Health Department declared a pediatric cancer cluster in The Acreage another lawsuit has If you would like to print this map, you can use the print option off your web browser. This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Families argue Pratt & Whitney caused cancer cluster in South Florida, Pratt & Whitney's handling of contaminated soil key part of case. Families in this south Florida town point to two companies as the source of the contamination that caused their childrens disease. We need to get to the bottom of this., If living in The Acreage is deemed safe, Abruzzo said he thinks the community can recover both its equilibrium and its reputation. Log in, 2010 Schechter, Shaffer & Harris, LLP, All Rights Reserved, Rori Feldman is the attorney responsible for the content of this website. Becky Samarripa felt the hostility, too. We are keeping track of this information because if an environmental hazard (a causal agent) is found in the Acreage, it is very possible it could cause multiple illnesses - not just brain tumors and brain cancer. We were moms and wives and grandmothers on a mission, remembers Newfield, who describes herself as both this little housewife and as she would come to see herself over the years of struggle that followed someone who, if necessary, could become your worst enemy.. Jen Dunsford, who created the Acreage Cancer Study website and had posted a picture of Garrett in the hospital with his head bandaged, was particularly savaged. Prior to the cancer cluster, homes in The Acreage consistently sold at about 92% of the value of Jupiter Farms homes. Attorney Mara Hatfield, who is representing the parents, including ones who lost children to cancer, told a jury that the evidence against the government contractor is overwhelming. In October celebrity environmental activist Erin Brockovich spoke to a town hall meeting in West Palm Beach, urging community unity. Tell us if its safe to drink the water, shouted one man in the audience. "If they can't get that verdict, it kind of dimmers where we're at here because what is it going to take here? The Florida Department of Health and the Florida Department of Environmental Protectiondid investigate whether any contamination could have conceivably been the cause of cancer, and they found none, he said. By May 2009, Jennifer Dunsford had developed a database documenting dozens of cancers in children and adults throughout the neighborhood. Isolation was clearly part of the reason that Pratt originally chose its location in Florida. Meanwhile, the governments investigation into the Acreage cancer cluster provided some evidence for the theory that radiation was behind it. ' Her husband refuses to leave, though, because they are three years from paying off their mortgage and, if they sold the house, would lose so much money that they couldnt afford to buy another. Dunsford, along with other parents whose children were diagnosed with brain cancer, claim the aeronautics giant didnt properly dispose of radioactive waste that eventually contaminated their community. Type Media Center document.write(new Date().getFullYear()). A cancer He saidit was unlikely Hatfield's verbal slip would unduly influence the jury. She cant see some colors and has difficulty with organization and telling time, according to her mother. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines a cancer cluster as a greater-than-expected number of cancer cases that occurs within a group of people in a geographic area over a period of time. Yet because elevated numbers of any disease can occur by chance, and because cancer is relatively rare and its incredibly difficult to determine if rare events occur by chance the vast majority of investigations into suspected clusters dont confirm them. In 1979, just one year after the Acreage Homeowners Association formed and began constructing a system of canals to make the area habitable, 2,000 gallons of trichloroethylene (TCE), a carcinogenic solvent, leaked into the groundwater and surface water on Pratt & Whitneys campus, as the company later admitted. Since there is no evidence that contaminated groundwater traveled a distance of 6 to 14 miles to the Acreage from Pratts 7,000-acre compound off the Beeline Highway, Hatfield and her legal team will argue that it was carried there by trucks. The Samarripas left the Acreage in 2010. The couples two sons, Isaac, 4, and Ilan, 2, were born here, and they are growing up in a neighborhood where tall pines, open spaces and a variety of family pets are commonplace. utmx_section("Legacy Footer"), WE ARE NO LONGER COLLECTING THIS DATA - IF YOU HAVE A BRAIN CANCER CASE TO REPORT PLEASE CONTACT THE PALM BEACH COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, SIGN THE PETITION: Clyde Cancer Cluster claims 6th victim, New Approach to Treating Young Brain Cancer Patients.

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