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_gaq.push(['gwo._trackPageview', '/2354831680/test']); It will likely take years for the lawsuits against Pratt & Whitney to be resolved. Map of the cancer cluster in the Acreage (Palm Beach Gardens, This constitutes a huge problem, though one that, he says, seems to spur little outrage. The verdict said that the If you have any questions, please send an email to: 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 (561) 514-5300. Today, Pratt & Whitney has more than $10 billion in defense contracts, and United Technologies is the sixth-biggest Pentagon contractor. 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. var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); The anticipated three-week trial got off to a blustery start. Websites For Complete Report Infonnation www.pbchd.com/acreage www.dep. Yet neither agency did so. We are concerned residents just like you. 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. 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. source of local news and culture, Deirdra Funcheon They wanted us to move on and say our water was fine, recalls Tracy Newfield, who was a member of the group. Their press conference last August yielded a few local stories, and one unintended consequence: Judge Joseph Marx, who was presiding over Joey Barattas case, ordered the attorneys not to speak about the case with the press. 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. It is West of Palm Bch Gdns, North of Royal Palm Beach. 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. When she first moved to the area, Becky Samarripa was charmed by the sight of horses trotting by and people fishing in the canals that crisscrossed the neighborhood. Though Becky Samarripa chose not to get involved in any litigation, the radiation theory makes sense to her. But she is also a musical girl who enjoys life and loves to sing. In August, the Federal Housing Authority began advising appraisers that the cluster might affect properties in the neighborhood, a move that made it very difficult to get a mortgage there. 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. While the Florida Health Department declared a pediatric cancer cluster in The Acreage, it never found what caused the high rate of childhood cancers. They interviewed dozens of people who were involved in Pratts cleanup efforts. Garrett Dunsford, too, is both thriving and living with the ongoing health effects of his cancer. What was around me? 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.. 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. ", Jury rejects Acreage families lawsuit against Pratt & Whitney, 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. The family moved to Tennessee and sold their Acreage home through a short sale in 2011. 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. He doesnt value things at all, is how Dunsford described Garrett recently, adding that hes become the family comforter. })(); 8:05AM. that a federal district court improperly excluded three experts who said toxins from the companys property caused the kidney cancer that killed his wife. In one sense, I would not go through what theyre going through every day of their lives, wondering if [regular testing for cancer] is going to come back positive, she says. The Hollings researchers identified a protein called transforming acidic coiled-coil containing protein In October celebrity environmental activist Erin Brockovich spoke to a town hall meeting in West Palm Beach, urging community unity. Contamination spread to the nearby aquifer and canals, and the lawsuit blames the two companies. DRAFTembARgoeD Congress clusters. Disease Clusters While Marra warned Hatfield, he declined Gallagher's request. 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. Evidence suggests the incidence of such cancers may be especially elevated among children. But not a lot of communities with brain-tumor clusters.. Many parents of the children with cancer were angry and frustrated, but other residents felt relief. But afterward, the gap widened to 77%, he said. Cancer Since Jennas death in 2006, Kaye had become less trusting. You start to wonder: what are the odds? said Greg Dunsford, an insurance agent. Am I being selfish by staying here? Before you start printing and downloading, be sure you have read the article first. In Pratt & Whitneys case, no fancy PR was necessary: its product is already understood to be not just airplane and rocket engines but national security itself. Pratt was taking other risks, too. When Stephanie Peskowitz and her husband Ira bought a home in The Acreage five years ago, they figured they had found a woodsy paradise large enough for their dreams. Instead, the Palm Beach County Health Department told Hatfield to direct further contacts to its lawyer. But the effect of confirming The Acreage as a cancer cluster was immediate. Still, mixed in with an overwhelming sadness, Samarripa felt a sliver of hope that the Acreage was on its way to finding and eliminating whatever carcinogens were lurking in the environment. Tell us if its safe to drink the water, shouted one man in the audience. Someone threw a rock at her house, breaking her glass porch light. Instead of taking dirt that had been soaked with jet fuel to a facility to be cleaned and recycled, Hatfield claims it was sold as fill to people who were building homes on low-lying, flood-prone lots in The Acreage. Acreage 'cancer cluster' lawsuits dismissed for lack Had she known about Jessica Newfield, who was close to her daughters age and had been ill for many months before being diagnosed; Joey Baratta, who developed two tumors before dying at age 20; or little Jenna McCann, who got sick at age 3, perhaps shed have gotten Hannahs tumor diagnosed sooner. 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. By May 2009, Jennifer Dunsford had developed a database documenting dozens of cancers in children and adults throughout the neighborhood. (Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material or NORM.) 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. 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. The McCanns left as well and are now living in the mountains of North Georgia with their two children. A lawsuit filed in 2016 is finally being heard in federal court, but the issue started well before 2009 when several residents in The Acreage reported brain and head tumors that were increasingly above expected rates. 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. As they have since the lawsuit was filed nearly a decade ago, attorneys for Pratt vigorously denied the allegations. 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. When Hannah got sick in 2007, her mother had no idea that, just a few blocks away in the Acreage their lush South Florida community other children had also suffered through the same awful symptoms. Indeed, some of the children with cancer had lived just 1,000 feet from one another. As you can see on the map, we are tracking all health concerns that are reported to us. Tracy Newfield cried when she first heard the news. 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. Now we brush our teeth and cook with filtered water. We would like to keep a list of those in need so that when services become available we can notify you. | Credit: GARY CORONADO/THE PALM BEACH POST. 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. (Naturally occurring means that the radioactive substances originated in the soil, water or other natural materials, but may have been concentrated by industrial activity.) But thats not her focus. After the company shut several of the wells that supplied water to its workers, it commissioned a study by the University of Miami to look into the possible health effects of the contamination. 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. ' 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. But it would take all of the afflicted families years to connect the dots among their tragedies. 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. Cancer mystery still plagues California farm town McFarland The teenagers mysterious decline continued on to limping, vomiting, incontinence and perhaps her most disturbing symptom occasional fits of barking laughter that sounded so strange and demonic, her father wondered whether she was on drugs. 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. 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. 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 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. However, five years later, her youngest son was diagnosed with brain cancer. I figured it was a weird coincidence, says Dunsford, a sharp-witted mother of three with glasses and shoulder-length brown hair. But he also has a special outlook on life that his mother treasures and thinks may have resulted from his trauma. 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. 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. A pixielike girl with big blue eyes and long brown hair, Hannah Samarripa began experiencing headaches and fatigue in the middle of eighth grade. And hes particularly prone to headaches. And that scary figure didnt include the four additional Acreage children who were diagnosed with brain tumors the following year, 2008. var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); I feel a panic for my kids health. (It did come up in the litigation, but the companys lawyers dismissed it as a red herring.). It found elevated levels of cancer in children in The Acreage and designated the area as a pediatric brain cancer cluster. Trial opens in Acreage cancer cluster lawsuit, more than 10 years The Law Did Not Treat Them Kindly. Acreage Cancer Cluster - Harsh Reality - Searcy Denney Youd need a massive amount of materials, hundreds of thousands of tons of soil, to contaminate a community of roughly 12,000 homes, Gallagher said. (function() { McCann knows that even if the puzzle of the Acreage cluster is finally solved, it wouldnt bring Jenna back. 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. Kayes doubts proved well-founded just a few days later, when Dr. Alina Alonso, director of the Palm Beach County Health Department, told reporters that her agency wasnt planning to do any soil testing or other investigation into the causes of the cluster beyond interviewing families. There are other cancer clusters that occur without any obvious source of I think about it every time I open up the freezer and were out of store-bought ice.. Hatfield didnt say how much she is seeking. 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.. 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; 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.. 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. Members of Scarola's team said Wednesday that their fight isn't over yet. We are not simply tracking brain tumors and brain cancer. Please note that we have not updated this map in months. Pratt & Whitney designs and manufactures engines for airplanes, rockets and even the space shuttle. I needed to know if living there was the best thing for my family.. 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. They didnt investigate Pratt because its 6 miles away from the nearest home in The Acreage and as much as 14 miles away from those at the southern end, near Lion Country Safari. Please note: We are not The Florida Department of Health. 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. Log in, 2010 Schechter, Shaffer & Harris, LLP, All Rights Reserved, Rori Feldman is the attorney responsible for the content of this website. Acreage cancer cluster trial underway in West Palm WebA cancer cluster is a statistical event, which may or may not have a cause other than chance. A similar back-and-forth ensued when Pratt & Whitney hired epidemiologists to investigate a possible cancer cluster in its North Haven, Connecticut, jet-engine plant, where an unusual number of workers had died from an especially lethal form of brain cancer called glioblastoma the same kind that Joey Baratta and Debora Craig, another Acreage plaintiff, had. We really need leadership out of Tallahassee, a person designated by the governor to take charge an action plan.

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