Since then, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection has overseen the cleanup of the area, a process that has involved the removal of many tens of thousands of tons of contaminated soil and thousands of gallons of fuel from the groundwater. 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. _udn = "none"; It is West of Palm Bch Gdns, North of Royal Palm Beach. I feel a panic for my kids health. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) define a cancer cluster as a greater-than-expected number of cancer cases that occurs within a group of people in a defined geographic area over a specific period of time. function utmx_section(){}function utmx(){} 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. 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. After Jenna got sick, Kaye and her husband, David, began making kid-size surgical scrub caps with cars and animals on them. And hes particularly prone to headaches. Acreage Cancer Cluster: Residents Can Join Class A civil engineer testified about his independent forensic investigation, which determined that the radioactive materials on Pratt & Whitney's campus matched the same materials found in The Acreage. Should I be gone?, Here Peskowitz paused. And a local firm began representing several of the cases. I think about it every time I open up the freezer and were out of store-bought ice.. Because of the damage to their credit, they havent been able to buy another, Jennifer told me. Brain Cancer Cases Shot Up in This Florida TownIs a Defense South Florida's independent WebThe Faces of The Acreage Cancer Cluster Name: Garrett D. Diagnosis: Brain Tumor Age of Diagnosis: 5 Status: Medical monitoring at St. Jude Childrens Hospital Biography: Garrett was five years old when he was diagnosed with an Astrocytoma brain tumor. Located 15 miles northwest of West Palm Beach, The Acreage is an area of dirt roads, riding trails and some 35,000 residents, many who moved here to get away from big city ills. Water testing in the affected homes turned up several radioactive contaminants. (Sharon Lerner). Becky Samarripa, too, was shaken by the cluster designation, which seemed to confirm her worst fear: that something in their surroundings was making them sick. Charlie Crist and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL, have urged the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to get involved. As retired engineer Robert Abernethy reminisced at a 2004 reunion of Pratt employees who had worked on the J58 engine, In late 1957, Pratt & Whitney had two top-secret black engine projects that were to use poison fuels! In the Acreage, there were many possible hazards to consider. Whatever you find, there will be people who doubt the veracity of your findings because we dont live in an experimental setting, and you can never control all of the factors that might have contributed to that disease occurrence.. Eventually, the family moved to Tennessee, but even now the comments still sting. What can we do to protect the family? Damone also has urged Crist to set up an office in The Acreage where residents could receive information, even counseling. Today, Pratt & Whitney has more than $10 billion in defense contracts, and United Technologies is the sixth-biggest Pentagon contractor. Ditto the drinking water, which came from a well. Still, the crowd was standing-room-only on this night. Hatfield and her boss, Jack Scarola, ordered further testing of the soil and water. It helped start the P2 Coalition of Palm Beach County (P2 is short for pollution prevention) in 1994, along with the Palm Beach County Health Department, other local businesses and the Jupiter Chamber of Commerce. That declaration came as a relief to some Acreage residents, since it confirmed what many had long suspected. clicky.init(190756); var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAllowHash', false]); DRAFTembARgoeD Congress clusters. Disease Clusters 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. When she died, Jenna was 4 years old. 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. Sadly, she said, the investigation by the state agencies wasnt thorough. August 21, 2013 Acreage Palm Beach Florida Cancer Cluster in Rural Community Perhaps because her tumor was only partially removed by the surgery, or perhaps because she now has fluid in her skull, she still suffers from severe headaches, vomiting and peripheral eye damage. 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. The process involved, at various points, the CDC, the state and Palm Beach County departments of health, and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP). There are a lot of communities down here built on that, says Hatfield. But afterward, the gap widened to 77%, he said. FULL CIRCLE FLORIDA | Tampa is becoming a hot spot for tech start-ups, and one local nonprofit is leading the change to bring them to the Bay Area. 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. 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. In 2003, Palm Beach Aggregates sold its used mining pits to the South Florida Water Management District, the local government agency that oversees water usage, for $217 million. After a five-day hearing in 2018, Marra rejected Hatfield's request to allow all Acreage property owners to be part of the lawsuit. ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? Typically, each year, one in 30,000 to 40,000 children in the United States is expected to develop a brain tumor; but the Acreage, with a population of 39,000, had four pediatric brain-tumor cases between 2005 and 2007. Lack of proof was cited as the reason for the dismissals. The entire story might have ended there, in 2010, if attorneys hadnt taken up where public-health officials left off. When the study came out, a Pratt & Whitney vice president called the universitys research full of crap, according to a report in The Palm Beach Post. And anybody with children is worried about that.. Seven years after the Health Department declared a pediatric cancer cluster in The Acreage another lawsuit has 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. Loxahatchee (Acreage) Cancer Cluster where the rate of brain tumors in children is alarmingly high, making raising a young family (or any family) in that area life threatening 3. This data does not reflect data collectedby the Florida Department of Health. Newfields mistrust, and that of others in the group, grew when they realized that the groups chair who seemed particularly eager to put the questions of contamination to rest was a former Pratt & Whitney employee. Acreage cancer cluster trial underway in West Palm Beach, Tornado that tore through Palm Beach Gardens had winds of at least 100 mph, Trees toppled, homes damaged, cars overturned in tornado, Tornado tosses boat from cove onto lawn in North Palm Beach, Unofficial Boca Bash to draw thousands of boaters Sunday, Fort Lauderdale Air Show delayed until afternoon because of bad weather, Verhaeghe scores in OT as Panthers eliminate Bruins from playoffs, Cleanup underway after tornado rips through North Palm Beach neighborhood, Butler, Heat start semifinals with 108-101 win over Knicks, National Weather Service upgrades tornado to EF2 with peak winds of 130 mph. 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. A cancer cluster is a high concentration of people diagnosed with cancer who all live or work within a close proximity of one another. Jane Musgrave covers federal and civil courts and occasionally ventures into criminal trials in state court. _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); This constitutes a huge problem, though one that, he says, seems to spur little outrage. (function(){var k='2354831680',d=document,l=d.location,c=d.cookie;function f(n){if(c){var i=c.indexOf(n+'=');if(i>-1){var j=c.indexOf(';',i);return escape(c.substring(i+n.length+1,j<0?c.length:j))}}}var x=f('__utmx'),xx=f('__utmxx'),h=l.hash; She declared the backyard pool off-limits. At some point you have to say, My credit is not worth it; were going,' said Stephanie Peskowitz, a founder of Voices of the Palm Beach Cancer Cluster, a citizens group. The Samarripas left the Acreage in 2010. They may have to work in places surrounded by concrete and congested traffic, but they dont want to live there. We expect to have peace at home, and if we have 30,000 to 50,000 people that cant sleep at night, this is a problem.. Public record? But it could be something in the ground, pesticides, we dont know. The Centers for Disease A news conference slated to discuss the results of a Acreage Cancer Cluster study being conducted. As they have since the lawsuit was filed nearly a decade ago, attorneys for Pratt vigorously denied the allegations. A Scary Reality The Acreage Cancer Cluster. 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. Now, a new study reveals that the problem isn't just in the Acreage. The history of such litigation doesnt paint a hopeful picture for the plaintiffs, who include Jessica Newfield; Garretts parents, Jennifer and Greg Dunsford; and Joyce and Bill Featherston, the mother and stepfather of Joey Baratta. Gallagher asked U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra to declare a mistrial, claiming Hatfield violated a court order by telling the jury about claims that Marra had declared off-limits. 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. Join the New Times community and help support independent When Becky heard from her pastor that another child in their congregation had been diagnosed with a brain tumor, she reached out to the boys parents, arranging to meet them in the waiting room of Miami Childrens Hospital. CANCER CLUSTER 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. Mike Clary can be reached at mclary@sunsentinel.com or at 305-810-5007. She wants so desperately to remove her children from the possible harm there that she keeps a bag packed in her bedroom and thinks about leaving daily. Trial opens in Acreage cancer cluster lawsuit, more than 10 years Thats where public health does its best job. She felt that the high number of pediatric brain tumors in the Acreage was most likely due to chance rather than any environmental cause (she also noted that the rate was no longer elevated). The company was seeking privacy because some of its projects were classified. Throughout the 1980s, the EPA was preparing to designate Pratt & Whitneys South Florida location as a federal Superfund site, which would have required detailed public disclosure of the contamination and the various steps that would be taken to remediate it. This allows the cancer cells to divide in half and survive. The verdict said that the aerospace giant did not release pollution or transport radioactive materials into the community from its facility located along Beeline Highway in western Palm Beach County. At Miami Childrens Hospital, where their son was treated, the Dunsfords met the family of another brain cancer patient who lived just a mile away. local Journalism in South Florida. You start to wonder: what are the odds? said Greg Dunsford, an insurance agent. (function() { A cancer Gov. Even though her children are healthy, she said her life was forever changed by that announcement four years ago. The way some members of the community are One is the local mining company Palm Beach Aggregates, which has mined limestone for road construction for more than two decades using a dredging process that contributed naturally occurring radiation to the local water system. _gaq.push(['gwo._setDomainName', 'none']); 8, 2022 at 3:06 PM PDT Palm Beach County families are finally getting When I asked Jess Santamaria, the Palm Beach County commissioner representing the Acreage, whether there was ever a cancer cluster there, he told me he doesnt know: Im not an expert. And when I called Michelle Damone, a local politician who helped set up the Acreage Community Focus Group, to discuss the cancer cluster, she told me that she will never utter those two words, because they drive a stake into the heart of my community., The remaining residents of the Acreage now live with excruciating uncertainty about what caused the cancers here. 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. A mixture of chemicals that can cross the blood-brain barrier and cause cancer in mice, jet fuel was found at the Pratt & Whitney facility in Florida. Alonso was surely aware of how daunting a task it would be to pinpoint and prove the cause of the increase. Less than twenty miles inland of West Palm Beach, the Acreage functions as that citys country cousin. By that time, home prices in the acreage had fallen to about half their peak in 2006. In its eagerness to close on the deal, Palm Beach Aggregates minimized the hazards posed by its pits and allowed the radiation problem to escalate, according to the plaintiffs lawyers in the Acreage case. A canal system was constructed to make The Acreage habitable. From 1997-2007, the highest number of cases that should be expected in any three year period based on both state and county comparisons is 5.1. 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.
There are other cancer clusters that occur without any obvious source of Without a clear culprit for the cancers, some residents began blaming the families of the sick for the crisis. Your Photos. Alonso argues that tracking down environmental causes of cancer is not her agencys forte. ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? "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.". As they anxiously eyed the array of health officials lined up on the stage, the Acreages residents got the news that none of them wanted. d.write('
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