Without a clear culprit for the cancers, some residents began blaming the families of the sick for the crisis. 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. "We're disappointed with the outcome," Mara Hatfield, an attorney with Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley, PA said. Jet fuel, which was the suspected cause of another cancer cluster in Fallon, Nevada, may also have played a role at the Acreage. 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. But afterward, the gap widened to 77%, he said. _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-230305-2']); Since Jennas death in 2006, Kaye had become less trusting. According to a 1985 Department of Environmental Regulation update, the company had soil on its property that contained PCBs chemicals that have been linked to brain cancer at more than 200 times the maximum level now allowed even in fenced-off, nonresidential areas. Sharon Lerner is a reporting fellow with Type Investigations covering environmental issues for The Intercept. (Naturally occurring means that the radioactive substances originated in the soil, water or other natural materials, but may have been concentrated by industrial activity.) Join the New Times community and help support independent But if she successfully argues that Pratt contaminated The Acreage, she could ask him to reconsider. Pratt was taking other risks, too. Websites For Complete Report Infonnation www.pbchd.com/acreage www.dep. This odd fact kept troubling her, and at the suggestion of Garretts neurologist, she e-mailed the Florida Department of Health about it. clicky.init(190756); var _gaq = _gaq || []; Added pediatrician Shairi Turner, deputy secretary of the department: We want to find an answer to what is causing brain cancer in your children.. Based on the self-reported data the pediatric cancer cluster declared by the State for the years 2004-2008 would be expanded to a general brain cancer cluster from 2004-2010.". A judge on Friday heard from a Pratt & Whitney spokesperson who admitted that some of the radioactive material was disposed of in a nearby landfill but said it was inside a steel drum. She explains why she came: I wanted my children to play in the dirt and enjoy nature and breathe the fresh air. Tracy Newfield also liked the communitys spaciousness, which allowed ample storage for her familys boat and Jet Skis. This allows the cancer cells to divide in half and survive. When Jenna was near death, she told her mother she wanted to take her caps to the hospital so the other kids could use them after she was gone. But for the Peskowitz family, and thousands of others in this western Palm Beach County community, the joy of living miles away from the urban clutter and noise has been supplanted by something louder and more insistent fear. One of Toms Rivers legacies is that public-health agencies are quite uninterested in pursuing these investigations, which are very expensive, very difficult to resolve conclusively, make a lot of people angry, and make life difficult for politicians, Fagin told me. She knew and somehow understood and was OK with it, Kaye McCann said recently. Prior to the cancer cluster, homes in The Acreage consistently sold at about 92% of the value of Jupiter Farms homes. The epidemiological investigation of the cluster took five years to conduct and cost taxpayers more than $10 million. A doctor will testify that he found evidence of radioactive material in the tissue of a teen who died. 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. Less than twenty miles inland of West Palm Beach, the Acreage functions as that citys country cousin. 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. Earlier this month, the Florida Health Department confirmed that a Some residents of The Acreage have filed a class action lawsuit against Pratt & Whitney. Separate personal injury lawsuits have been filed against Pratt by many of the same parents. 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. Our Platform. While Hannah was recovering from her brain surgery, and the boy a 5-year-old named Garrett Dunsford was undergoing his own, the parents started talking. 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. This study was requested when it was discovered that multiple children and adultssuffered or diedfrom brain tumors and live within a close radius of one another. After a while, we realized it was going off when our water was regenerating from our well, says Samarripa, who worried over the fact that Hannahs bedroom was closest to the well. A Pratt & Whitney spokesperson released the following statement regarding the verdict: "The jury's verdict confirms our conviction thatPratt & Whitney did not cause any contamination in the Acreage and did not cause any cancers in the cancer cluster. Public record? Brain Cancer Cases Shot Up in This Florida TownIs a Defense Once the lawyers get involved, then the lawyers have to talk, the countys Alina Alonso explained to me. Chicago attorney Sean Gallagher said state regulatory agencies not only cleared Pratt of wrong-doing but also declared that The Acreage is safe for families to enjoy outdoor activities in their yards.. Then, two years later, another study was published concluding that cancer rates among the companys workers were not elevated. Acreage Members of Scarola's team said Wednesday that their fight isn't over yet. fl.us/southeast/acreage/www.pbcgov. We would also like those who are in need of medical assistance to let us know. This map reflects data that we have collected via personal emails & phone calls. That amount of dirt wouldnt be enough to provide fill for one house in the 60-square-mile community. McCann knows that even if the puzzle of the Acreage cluster is finally solved, it wouldnt bring Jenna back. Throughout his opening statement, Gallagher emphasized thatthe allegations Hatfield is making dont make sense. Though the investigation turned up thirteen brain tumors in Acreage kids between 1994 and 2007, the official cluster consisted of just three girls, all of whom were diagnosed with brain cancer between 2005 and 2007. WebA cancer cluster is a statistical event, which may or may not have a cause other than chance. Some in the room knew the long odds, having followed the pediatric brain-cancer scare in the neighboring town of Port St. Lucie a few years earlier. Seminole Ridge High is a big school, and its ample, stucco-walled auditorium can hold hundreds of people, as it does for the pep rallies before Hawks games. 2 killed, 4 wounded in Mississippi shooting; man arrested, 150 years later, Dixon bridge tragedy among nation's worst, Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy says he wants to 'shut down the FBI' and replace it with something that sounds a lot like the FBI, Sanders: Biden could win in a landslide. After years of litigation, their attorney, Jan Schlictmann, was left temporarily bankrupt, homeless and personally devastated. He left out the fact that he was an engineer for Pratt & Whitney. While the frustrated participants resigned in protest, another member of the group, who had expressed doubts about environmental factors in the cluster, later received a nice surprise: a letter from the Florida Department of Health commending his efforts and offering help in finding funding for his projects. Workers dressed in protective gear sometimes sprayed pesticides in the citrus groves that abut Seminole Ridge High, even as teenagers practiced on nearby sports fields in shorts and T-shirts. The bottom line: Did Pratt & Whitney's actions depress property values? The epidemiological tools are too crude, explains Richard Clapp, an epidemiologist who has been involved in dozens of investigations into possible disease clusters in his career. And Joey Baratta, who moved to the Acreage with his mother and stepfather in 2004, when he was 15, spent much of his time there riding his ATV and working on his parents land, which abutted one of the areas many canals. that a federal district court improperly excluded three experts who said toxins from the companys property caused the kidney cancer that killed his wife. 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.. _gaq.push(['gwo._trackPageview', '/2354831680/test']); So Hatfield and Scarola took their test results to the media. Indeed, some of the children with cancer had lived just 1,000 feet from one another. The Dunsfords created all this fear, resident Michelle James told The Palm Beach Post. New Acreage 'cancer cluster' lawsuit filed. By May 2009, Jennifer Dunsford had developed a database documenting dozens of cancers in children and adults throughout the neighborhood. In court filings, Pratt & Whitney denied having any contaminations beyond properly stored chemical compounds.. PCBs were also found in fish [PDF] that swam in ponds on the companys grounds, at more than 7,000 times the safe level set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for human consumption. On another, two of her children, then toddlers, were shot with a paintball gun while they played in her backyard. WebA cancer cluster may be suspected when people report that several family members, friends, neighbors, or coworkers have been diagnosed with the same or related types of Among the first to urge officials to investigate reports of an unusually high incidence of pediatric cancers were Greg and Jennifer Dunsford, whose son Garrett, now 7, was treated for a benign brain tumor in 2008. She said she and other lawyers scoured tens of thousands of documents. The Acreage Cancer Study 2011 But the details of the process arent public. Some online commenters went so far as to accuse the affected families of just plain lying. As one poster put it, Using your childs illness as a platform is repulsive.. Your Photos. Study finds more cancer clusters in South Florida We ask that if you live in the area and have a brain tumor, some form of cancer, or another diagnosed medical problem, that you call the Palm Beach County Department of Health at 561-514-5300.
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