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Three More Lawsuits Filed

BY KEVIN P. CRAVER

Three more area brain cancer victims have filed lawsuits against several Ringwood manufacturers, claiming that their illnesses were caused by decades of air and water pollution.

The latest lawsuits were filed Friday (May 26) in a Philadelphia court. They doubled the number of plaintiff families to six and came four days after McHenry County Department of Health officials testified that the number of cancers in the McCullom Lake area were not above average.

"There’s six [plaintiffs] now," said Ringwood plaintiff Frank Weisheit, whose wife Judith, 64, was diagnosed last month with glioblastoma, a deadly form of the disease. "There’s something wrong, that’s what I figure. Something [at the manufacturing plants] went amok. It may not be them, but maybe it is. There can’t be six coincidences."

The six plaintiffs allege that volatile organic compounds from a landfill and from industrial accidents since the mid-1960s seeped into groundwater, and cleanup efforts shot the chemicals into the air. As a result, the plaintiffs allege they developed either oligodendroglioma or glioblastoma, both forms of brain cancer.

Rohm and Haas Chemicals, Morton International, Huntsman, Huntsman Polyurethanes and Modine Manufacturing Co. are named in the lawsuits and a class-action suit filed on behalf of current and former McCullom Lake residents. The companies, as well as the county health department, have countered that the contaminated groundwater plume is north of McCullom Lake and does not touch its domestic wells.

Frank and Judith Weisheit lived in McCullom Lake, 1 mile south of the manufacturing plants, for six years before moving just west of the Ringwood in 1990. Sandy Wierschke, 44, who lives several blocks from the original three plaintiffs, underwent surgery May 11 for glioblastoma.

The third new plaintiff, Crystal Lake resident Scott Milliman, never lived in the area, but patrolled it for years as a McHenry County Sheriff’s deputy. According to the lawsuit, Milliman was diagnosed in 2002 with oligodendroglimona, which is a rare form of brain cancer.

"If the board of health still thinks that these numbers are unremarkable, I think they should have their heads examined," said Aaron Freiwald, who is representing all six plaintiffs. "This is a shocking and outrageous series of events. We have five malignant brain cancers among neighbors in a very small population, all diagnosed in a short time period."

Syd Havely, a spokesman for Philadelphia-based Rohm and Haas Chemicals, the largest of the five companies named in the suit, could not be reached Friday for comment. But county public health administrator Pat McNulty said it still was too early to draw conclusions about an environmental cause.

"It would be total speculation, since we have not reviewed any of the specific health records of these people to determine what their life and medical histories were," McNulty said.

Earlier this week, county health officials study examined cancer cases in McCullom Lake’s ZIP code. But the latest state data ended in 2003, meaning only Milliman’s case would have been noted, and he does not live in the sample area.

Former next-door neighbors Bryan Freund and Kurt Weisenberger filed suit April 25 against the companies. Freund was diagnosed in December 2004, and Weisenberger the following month, with oligodendroglioma, which makes up fewer than 1 in 10 brain cancer cases. The family of Franklin Branham, 63, Freund’s other neighbor who was diagnosed in May 2004 with glioblastoma and died the following month, filed suit three days later.

Freiwald said he does not have much faith in where experts had placed the groundwater plume. Monitoring did not begin until 1986, according to a 1987 correction plan commissioned by Morton.

"I expect the plume to have been curtailed after 15, 16 years of cleanup efforts," Freiwald said. "The question is, where was the plume in the 1980s, when there was substantial contamination of vinyl chlorides? Where was it in the 1960s?"

Frank Weisheit, a retired machinist, thinks more about today. Besides his concern for the health of his wife of 42 years, he is now concerned as he watches medical bills eat away at their retirement nest egg.

"Just the chemo pills are $600 every two weeks, and that’s with insurance paying 80 percent of it, and that’s one of six kinds of pills that she’s taking," he said.

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