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Unseal statement by State Attorney Dave Aronberg's ex-wife in Glenn Straub case, newspapers ask judge, Abortion lawsuit: Boynton synagogue fights Florida's abortion limits in religious freedom suit, Corey Jones shooting: Ruling opens door to Corey Jones' family suing Palm Beach Gardens over rights violation in his death. And both were so grueling that they left the victors unsure whether the effort had been worth it. The case in Toms River, New Jersey, documented in Dan Fagins Pulitzer Prizewinning book Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation, took place over ten years and was similar to the Woburn case in both its underwhelming financial payoff and the monumental public and private effort that led to it. We need to get to the bottom of this., If living in The Acreage is deemed safe, Abruzzo said he thinks the community can recover both its equilibrium and its reputation. Florida will appeal to the federal government for help investigating the cancer cluster in The Acreage, Gov. Because of the damage to their credit, they havent been able to buy another, Jennifer told me. 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. Added pediatrician Shairi Turner, deputy secretary of the department: We want to find an answer to what is causing brain cancer in your children.. (It did come up in the litigation, but the companys lawyers dismissed it as a red herring.). The Centers for Disease Homeowners such as Stephanie and Ira Peskowitz, a law enforcement officer, are wondering how long they can wait. I think about it every day, says one resident, who didnt want to give her name lest she be pilloried for believing in the cluster. Our Platform. Garrett Dunsford, too, is both thriving and living with the ongoing health effects of his cancer. Its always with me were out to dinner or whatever, and you hear Tick, tock. 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. 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. Becky Samarripa felt the hostility, too. 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. Convinced something in the water or the soil was making children sick, Dunsford said the familys dream home quickly turned into a prison. 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.. In June of 2009, a local reporter got hold of one of the forms Dunsford was sending around and wrote a story about her efforts. 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. Instead, most homeowners rely on private wells. 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. | Credit: GARY CORONADO/THE PALM BEACH POST. Thissite has been developed to help share information about a confirmed cancer cluster in The Acreage with those who live in or around The Acreage (which includes Loxahatchee, Unincorporated West Palm, and parts ofRoyal Palm Beach) in Florida. Instead, jurors will be asked whether Pratt is responsible for depressing property values in the community. While Marra warned Hatfield, he declined Gallagher's request. As they have since the lawsuit was filed nearly a decade ago, attorneys for Pratt vigorously denied the allegations. List of cancer clusters - Wikipedia Cancer Erin Brockovich, who inspired the eponymous film about her fight against polluted water in California, had taken on some of the affected families as clients. The anticipated three-week trial got off to a blustery start. Water testing in the affected homes turned up several radioactive contaminants. Alonso emphasized the many questions about the causes of cancer: diet soda, cellphones and microwave ovens may play a role, she said, concluding that it doesnt seem practical or reasonable to start searching blindly. Instead, Alonso said, the health agency would focus on raising awareness of the signs and symptoms of brain cancer to increase early detection. The presence of technologically enhanced concentrations of NORM products (TE-NORMS) in water systems can be associated with the metal processing industry, particularly airplane engine and turbine manufacturing; however, high concentrations of these radionuclides in an environment are more readily associated with mining operations, including the type of shell rock mining conducted by the Aggregates. 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. The evidence, she said, shows Pratts carelessness caused children to get sick and die. But he also has a special outlook on life that his mother treasures and thinks may have resulted from his trauma. While much of the trial will focus on the trauma the families experienced and complex scientific information about the sources, causes and dangers of radiation, the jury wont be asked to determine if the parents should be compensated for their childrens illnesses and deaths. Jenna McCann, too, liked the outdoors. Contamination spread to the nearby aquifer and canals, and the lawsuit blames the two companies. "We're disappointed with the outcome," Mara Hatfield, an attorney with Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley, PA said. The deal, which helped land two county commissioners in prison for fraud (a consultant advising the agency, it turned out, was being paid by the mining company), stipulated that Palm Beach Aggregates couldnt be held legally responsible for any contamination of water in the used pits. We would also like those who are in need of medical assistance to let us know. 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. 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. Kaye McCann says she doesnt miss Florida only Jenna, who is still buried there. The other camp focused on the good news, such as the FDEPs pronouncement that the local drinking water was generally good, as the letter accompanying the water-testing results put it, reassuring residents that in general, residential property in the Acreage is safe for families to enjoy outside activities in their yards.. A pixielike girl with big blue eyes and long brown hair, Hannah Samarripa began experiencing headaches and fatigue in the middle of eighth grade. DRAFTembARgoeD Congress clusters. Disease Clusters ' 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. Cancer cluster frightens Palm Beach County community 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. At the time, neither Jennifer Dunsford nor Becky Samarripa considered that her childs illness might be part of something larger. The company trumpeted the results of a ten-year investigation that found no statistically significant elevations in the overall cancer rates among the workforce throughout the state. There are about 10,000 houses in the area. 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. The research found that, between 1967 and 1980, the average death rate from cancer among the companys employees had shot up from 13 per 100,000 workers to 122 [PDF] a roughly ninefold increase. Pratt was taking other risks, too. Since Jennas death in 2006, Kaye had become less trusting. The smallest plots are more than an acre, and many are larger, so houses are a good distance from one another. Michelle Damone, president of the Indian Trail Improvement District, the local governing board, has been pushing for more evidence of the cluster. There are a lot of communities down here built on that, says Hatfield. Though health officials confirmed a cluster of pediatric brain cancers, the lawsuit alleges that adults have been affected too: "According to self-reported data from the community, the 2008-2010 incidence of brain tumors for the entire Acreage population is above 30. What was around me? Acreage On Wednesday, 12 years after Dunsford asked for the investigation, she told her story to a jury as the first witness in a long-delayed and much-anticipated trial that will determine whether jet engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney will be blamed for the cancer cluster. By May 2009, Jennifer Dunsford had developed a database documenting dozens of cancers in children and adults throughout the neighborhood. fl.us/southeast/acreage/www.pbcgov. But many were outraged when state health officials said that instead of environmental tests to hunt for the cancer cause, they would mount an awareness campaign instead. The entire story might have ended there, in 2010, if attorneys hadnt taken up where public-health officials left off. The experts discussed radiation, well water tests and demographic studies. I look at the kids when they are sleeping, and I have to stop for a minute and take a breath, said Stephanie Peskowitz, 34, a nurse. In the fall of 2004, the little girl often played in the grass of her yard with her two dogs. He doesnt value things at all, is how Dunsford described Garrett recently, adding that hes become the family comforter. You most likely made your way to this site because you are aware of the Cancer Study that was conducted in our area by the Florida Department of Health (not us - we in no way conducted the study). But, Gallagher said, only 40 dump trucks were sent to a thermal remediation facility. Please specify what type of assistance you need so we can better assist you. 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. I began to be concerned about the area where I lived, said Dunsford, who moved to The Acreage from Broward County. that a federal district court improperly excluded three experts who said toxins from the companys property caused the kidney cancer that killed his wife. Most cancer clusters reside in a gray area of uncomfortable non-resolution. Millions of dollars could be at stake. They dont walk, they run in the opposite direction of these kinds of things, says Clapp. 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. As is the case of most cancer-clusters throughout the United States, no cause was ever found. The verdict said that the _udn = "none"; 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. They Refused to Fight for Russia. You start to wonder: what are the odds? said Greg Dunsford, an insurance agent. 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. She had also gotten together with the mothers of other sick children, including Tracy Newfield, Becky Samarripa and Kaye McCann, as well as a few concerned friends and relatives, to see how they might get to the bottom of what was going on in the Acreage. 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. Throughout his opening statement, Gallagher emphasized thatthe allegations Hatfield is making dont make sense. 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.