I began to be concerned about the area where I lived, said Dunsford, who moved to The Acreage from Broward County. Today, Pratt & Whitney has more than $10 billion in defense contracts, and United Technologies is the sixth-biggest Pentagon contractor. (function() { 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. 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. The epidemiological investigation of the cluster took five years to conduct and cost taxpayers more than $10 million. The mining company had already been caught up in a related environmental scandal. Michelle Damone, president of the Indian Trail Improvement District, the local governing board, has been pushing for more evidence of the cluster. Last week many residents of The Acreage rode a roller coaster of emotions as the story of the Acreage cancer cluster took new turns and twists. The Florida Department ofHealth will continue to work with the people of Florida and these organizations to someday find the answer that will prevent a child from getting cancer. But, Gallagher said, only 40 dump trucks were sent to a thermal remediation facility. On February 1, 2010 the Florida Department of Health declared the Acreage a "Pediatric Cancer Cluster". _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); New Acreage 'cancer cluster' lawsuit filed. She bought bottled water which her family used for cooking, drinking and even brushing their teeth. WebWhat is a cancer cluster? That amount of dirt wouldnt be enough to provide fill for one house in the 60-square-mile community. But the effect of confirming The Acreage as a cancer cluster was immediate. The bottom line: Did Pratt & Whitney's actions depress property values? Even the politicians in attendance were unhappy. The smallest plots are more than an acre, and many are larger, so houses are a good distance from one another. It is West of Palm Bch Gdns, North of Royal Palm Beach. WebThank you for visiting The Acreage Cancer Study website. Though Becky Samarripa chose not to get involved in any litigation, the radiation theory makes sense to her. state. Garrett Dunsford, too, is both thriving and living with the ongoing health effects of his cancer. Perhaps because of all these obstacles, in September 2011, Brockovichs firm withdrew from the Acreage case, leaving the local law firm of Searcy, Denney, Scarola, Barnhart & Shipley to represent the families of at least seven children and five adults who had developed tumors and brain cancer. 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. But it would take all of the afflicted families years to connect the dots among their tragedies. 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. Abruzzo said he knows some of his constituents have left the area, and just walked away from their property and their mortgage. Instead, jurors will be asked whether Pratt is responsible for depressing property values in the community. CHINESE DRYWALL - CANCER CLUSTER - UNEXPLODED ORDINANCE function utmx_section(){}function utmx(){} It would be an act of war, Dycus notes. The experts discussed radiation, well water tests and demographic studies. 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. Public record? She cant see some colors and has difficulty with organization and telling time, according to her mother. 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. The most likely cause the only cause is the transportation of Pratt Whitney materials to The Acreage, she said during opening statements. Become a member to support the independent voice of South Florida August 21, 2013 Nearly 10 years after it was filed, Acreage cancer cluster lawsuit clicky.init(190756); var _gaq = _gaq || []; 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. Although the Defense Department (which utilizes some 30 million acres of land) and its contractors are subject to the same environmental laws as everyone else, the difficulties of prosecuting such cases means that they can and often do, according to Dycus get away with contaminating the environment. Thats what we want to know, said school cafeteria worker Lynn Randle, accompanied by her 9-year-old daughter Sierra. 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. 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. Yet neither agency did so. Pratt was taking other risks, too. The designation would have also alerted people in the area and those considering moving there to the potential for environmental danger. 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. The plaintiffs lawyers also unearthed company correspondence indicating that some of these radioactive materials wound up outside of their proper storage places. 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. The tangle of allegiances between the company and local officials was on display in 2009, when the Acreage Community Focus Group was founded, supposedly to address residents concerns about the 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. For its part, Pratt & Whitney is staying, too. Some left that three-hour meeting feeling more frustrated than when they arrived. Then, two years later, another study was published concluding that cancer rates among the companys workers were not elevated. Half a year later, on a mild evening in early 2010, state officials called a town meeting at the local high school to tell the community what the investigation had found. 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. Water testing in the affected homes turned up several radioactive contaminants. Contamination spread to the nearby aquifer and canals, and the lawsuit blames the two companies. There are many factors that make it easy for a company to pollute with impunity. 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. Acreage Cancer Cluster - Harsh Reality - Searcy Denney '&utmxhash='+escape(h.substr(1)):'')+'" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">')})(); 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. We are concerned residents just like you. Nearly 10 years after it was filed, Acreage cancer cluster lawsuit headed to trial this month The plaintiffs allege Pratt & Whitney dumped chemicals that caused brain And a local firm began representing several of the cases. Though the FDEP says that Pratt & Whitney is in compliance, it also says there are still twenty-five hazardous-waste sites being remediated, and the cleanup which began in 1985 is today only 77 percent complete. 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. Cancer cluster frightens Palm Beach County, Cancer cluster frightens Palm Beach County community, Widening manhunt for Texas gunman who killed five neighbors slowed by zero leads, Golden Beach police sergeant in stable condition after shooting during chase of car-theft suspects, Skies clear in South Florida as residents clean up from 130-mph tornado in Palm Beach County, Mike Shannon, who spent 50 years in the St. Louis Cardinals broadcast booth after winning 2 World Series, dies at 83. There are a lot of communities down here built on that, says Hatfield. 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. Map Of Cancer Clusters In Florida Printable Maps Can I download quality, printable maps? 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. 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.. Im usually a very rational person, but that night I put on a pair of shoes that belong to someone with OCD. 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. I needed to know if living there was the best thing for my family.. The Acreage suits which now include at least thirteen individual personal-injury and wrongful-death cases, and two class-action suits over the loss of real-estate value are no easy moneymakers. And the air was often filled with smoke, which came from both the burning of sugar cane and the fires on the banks of nearby Lake Okeechobee. If they do have to do an investigation, they have to find the funds for it or have to get the Legislature to appropriate funds. WebStudying cancer clusters allows scientists to identify areas of increased cancer risk, as well as to try to figure out what is causing the increase in risk. Home - The Acreage Cancer Cluster After a five-day hearing in 2018, Marra rejected Hatfield's request to allow all Acreage property owners to be part of the lawsuit. 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. Jenna was a strong-willed, generous and ultimately prescient child, according to her mother, Kaye. local Journalism in South Florida. Added pediatrician Shairi Turner, deputy secretary of the department: We want to find an answer to what is causing brain cancer in your children.. So reactions in the community were decidedly mixed when, in November 2010, with the battery of state and local studies having rendered their results, the Acreage investigation was officially closed. He was introduced to us as an engineer, Newfield says. Soon, Dunsford discovered that three other youngsters in the sprawling rural community in the western reaches of Palm Beach County had recently received similarly grim news. })(); _gaq.push(['_setAllowHash', false]); var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); The groups efforts extend to sponsoring green-themed events, such as elementary-school poster contests on environmental topics and Earth Day Peace Jams., But the defense contractor and the county were less keen about publicizing contamination on the companys property. var _gaq = _gaq || []; Attorneys claimed that the state failed to properly test for specific radioactive contamination, ignored concerns voiced by its own people and neglected to hold Pratt & Whitney accountable for not cleaning up years' worth of toxic contamination in the area. The lawsuit blames Palm Beach Aggregates, a mining company, and Pratt & Whitney, an aerospace and engines manufacturer, for radioactive waste that allegedly caused the cancers: 30.