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Experts: No Link to Cancers

BY NATE LEGUE

WOODSTOCK – Toxic chemicals leaked into the groundwater by several Ringwood manufacturers could not have caused the cancers of three men who lived nearby, health officials said Monday.

In a presentation before the McHenry County Board of Health, two health department experts disputed claims made in federal lawsuits, saying contaminated water could not have reached the wells of three McCullom Lake neighbors who were diagnosed with brain tumors within eight months of each other.

"We don’t have an unusual number of brain cancers and a lot of people in this county have worked at those facilities," said Pat McNulty, public health administrator.

But the attorney suing the five manufacturers that operated plants on the Ringwood sites questioned the accuracy of the department’s findings.

"It strikes me that the board of health wants to promote a false sense of security here," said Aaron Freiwald, a Philadelphia attorney suing Rohm and Haas Chemicals, Morton International, Huntsman, Huntsman Polyurethanes and Modine Manufacturing Company.

Freiwald’s suits put the county’s health department at the forefront of serious allegations of reckless polluting, forcing it to allay fears about a possible threat to public well-being.

But the county’s epidemiologist Sherrie Gallas also said there was no statistical evidence of a brain cancer cluster – a higher-than-average rate of cases – in the ZIP code that included the small lakefront town. However, the most recent cancer-reporting data ends in 2003, a year before Franklin Branham, the first diagnosed plaintiff, discovered his ultimately fatal brain tumor.

Plaintiffs Bryan Freund and Kurt Weisenberger were diagnosed after that.

Contaminated groundwater under the Rohm and Haas plant at 5005 Barnard Mill Road flows southeast and the toxic plume – the area of the aquifer with unsafe chemicals levels – does not touch McCullom Lake’s northern border, said Patti Nomm, environmental health director.

The county tested six wells in the town after the suit was filed last month and found no trace of any type of the chemicals, except for one well that showed a compound well below the mandated limits and was likely a testing error, she said.

"I understand the desire to just look at a map and just wish this all away, but I think the more important concern is ... why didn’t these companies test at a point in time when they knew there was a dangerous chemical in the ground?" Freiwald said.

The suit alleges that the contamination went on since the early 1960s, but Rohm & Haas Chemical didn’t begin its clean-up efforts until 1991.

Nomm said the department hoped to have a public meeting with concerned residents in McCullom Lake to discuss their findings.

"All we can do is report the facts as we find them," said Dr. Richard Gorski, a health board member. "If some people don’t want to believe us or have a different agenda, we have no control over that other than to present the facts."

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