On Wednesday, 12 years Their family menagerie includes two horses, a pony, seven dogs, goats and a pig. The epidemiological investigation of the cluster took five years to conduct and cost taxpayers more than $10 million. The ordeal was also a turning point for Jennifer Dunsford. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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). 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. But the details of the process arent public. 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. 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. If you would like your information added to this map, please email us at info@theacreagecancerstudy.com and provide us with your address, sex, age, and diagnosis. Jane Musgrave covers federal and civil courts and occasionally ventures into criminal trials in state court. At least at first, the land to the south of that was uninhabited and, since much of it was underwater, largely uninhabitable. 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. 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. WebThe Florida Department of Environmental Protection designated a pediatric cancer cluster in 2010 in The Acreage after a spate of pediatric brain tumor cases. The most likely cause the only cause is the transportation of Pratt Whitney materials to The Acreage, she said during opening statements. WebThe Acreage is an unincorporated Palm Beach community which has experienced significant growth in its 25 years to around 39,000 people. For example, studying clusters Jonathan S. Harris, Matthew D. Shaffer & Arthur. 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. Now, a new study reveals that the problem isn't just in the Acreage. I began to be concerned about the area where I lived, said Dunsford, who moved to The Acreage from Broward County. Without a clear culprit for the cancers, some residents began blaming the families of the sick for the crisis. With its engines for fighter planes such as the F-22 Raptor, Pratt & Whitneys products power air forces in twenty-two countries. 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. There are about 10,000 houses in the area. var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; If you would like to print this map, you can use the print option off your web browser. 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.. Abruzzo said he knows some of his constituents have left the area, and just walked away from their property and their mortgage. In October celebrity environmental activist Erin Brockovich spoke to a town hall meeting in West Palm Beach, urging community unity. Less than twenty miles inland of West Palm Beach, the Acreage functions as that citys country cousin. While the jury found that Pratt & Whitney was not responsible for cancer that multiple residents contracted, the verdict said that the company "failed to exercise reasonable care in the use and disposal of radioactive materials" at the facility. 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. 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. She declared the backyard pool off-limits. ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? They Refused to Fight for Russia. 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. Homeowners such as Stephanie and Ira Peskowitz, a law enforcement officer, are wondering how long they can wait. (It did come up in the litigation, but the companys lawyers dismissed it as a red herring.). Who knew what had been in the water that might be coming back to haunt residents? Every day since, Ive woken up with a pit in my stomach, worrying about my children. 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 They may have to work in places surrounded by concrete and congested traffic, but they dont want to live there. Eventually, the family moved to Tennessee, but even now the comments still sting. I feel a panic for my kids health. I understand the fear and frustration. As is the case of most cancer-clusters throughout the United States, no cause was ever found. 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. We have not received the facts. 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. Before you start printing and downloading, be sure you have read the article first. 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. Then, in the summer before ninth grade, while her family was visiting a Civil War memorial on the coast of Alabama, Hannah collapsed. Should I be gone?, Here Peskowitz paused. And anybody with children is worried about that.. And, most important, it would have ensured a higher level of enforcement than the state was likely to provide. This site has been developed to help share information about a confirmed cancer cluster in The Acreage with those who To a lay audience, the scientific documents were indecipherable. Because the Acreage is unincorporated, the city doesnt provide services even water. It is West of Palm Bch Gdns, North of Royal Palm Beach. 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. 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. In the meantime, after so much bitterness, the subject of the cancer cluster has become almost taboo in the Acreage. 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. South Florida's independent Though the parcel was on the part of the companys property nearest the Acreage, this never came up during the cluster investigation. 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. That night, she found herself wondering whether health officials would ever find out what had caused her daughters cancer or whether they would even try. Charlie Crist and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL, have urged the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to get involved. 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. The community was in 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. Yesterday, the law firm of Searcy, Denney, Scarola, Barnhart, and Shipley held a news conference about lawsuits related to a cluster of pediatric brain cancer in the residential neighborhood Acreage, located in western Palm Beach County. The agencies tested water from over seventy private wells and several of the canals that ran through the area, as well as soil samples from thirty-five homes, for more than 200 chemicals. 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. Where did I live? Your Photos. Hatfield countered that medical experts her West Palm Beach firm hired will refute those claims. If anything happened to them, she said, I could not live with myself. The bottom line: Did Pratt & Whitney's actions depress property values? Members of Scarola's team said Wednesday that their fight isn't over yet. 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; But documents from the 1960s through the 90s show that Pratt & Whitney had licenses to use at least a dozen radioactive substances [PDF], including radium D and E, thoriated nickel and cesium-137, in Florida. The companys 7,000 acres of swampland are bordered on the south by a 60,000-plus-acre wildlife preserve. But she is also a musical girl who enjoys life and loves to sing. If Al Qaeda sent a team of sleeper cells to poison our groundwater and release toxic materials into the air, people would go nuts. 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. 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. 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. Make a one-time donation today for as little as $1. The evidence, she said, shows Pratts carelessness caused children to get sick and die. Soil tests are to follow. | Credit: GARY CORONADO/THE PALM BEACH POST. Even though her children are healthy, she said her life was forever changed by that announcement four years ago. In court filings, Pratt & Whitney denied having any contaminations beyond properly stored chemical compounds.. The family moved to Tennessee and sold their Acreage home through a short sale in 2011. On one occasion, her car got egged. 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. She cant see some colors and has difficulty with organization and telling time, according to her mother. WebMara And Acreage Cancer Cluster Map. Jen Dunsford, who created the Acreage Cancer Study website and had posted a picture of Garrett in the hospital with his head bandaged, was particularly savaged. 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. Water testing in the affected homes turned up several radioactive contaminants. Still, it was a full six months later, when a doctor spotted her brain tumor during an eye exam literally seeing the growth through the lens of Hannahs eye that the 14-year-old got the diagnosis and then the surgery that saved her life. The couples two sons, Isaac, 4, and Ilan, 2, were born here, and they are growing up in a neighborhood where tall pines, open spaces and a variety of family pets are commonplace. 8, 2022 at 3:06 PM PDT Palm Beach County families are finally getting Instead, jurors will be asked whether Pratt is responsible for depressing property values in the community. (function() { The designation would have also alerted people in the area and those considering moving there to the potential for environmental danger. In the fall of 2004, the little girl often played in the grass of her yard with her two dogs. The study was requested in May of 2009. Since then Palm Beach County Health Department officials interviewed 12 families diagnosed with either brain tumors or brain cancers from 2003 through 2008. Mike Clary can be reached at mclary@sunsentinel.com or at 305-810-5007. What can we do to protect the family? A Florida man who says Pratt & Whitney created a pollution and cancer cluster told the 11th Circ. The study found that much of South Florida lies in a childhood cancer cluster. Log in, 2010 Schechter, Shaffer & Harris, LLP, All Rights Reserved, Rori Feldman is the attorney responsible for the content of this website. 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. I figured it was a weird coincidence, says Dunsford, a sharp-witted mother of three with glasses and shoulder-length brown hair. (function() { The one kind of contamination that distinguished the Acreage, according to Hatfield, was ionizing radiation, which was not just an established cause of brain cancer but the byproduct of local industry. We are not simply tracking brain tumors and brain cancer. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines a cancer cluster as a greater-than-expected number of cancer cases that occurs within a group of people in a geographic area over a period of time. Yet because elevated numbers of any disease can occur by chance, and because cancer is relatively rare and its incredibly difficult to determine if rare events occur by chance the vast majority of investigations into suspected clusters dont confirm them. So Hatfield and Scarola took their test results to the media. This odd fact kept troubling her, and at the suggestion of Garretts neurologist, she e-mailed the Florida Department of Health about it. ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? Seven years after the Health Department declared a pediatric cancer cluster in The Acreage another lawsuit has McCann ultimately found it too painful to be around the group of Acreage parents pursuing the cause of their childrens cancer, because most of their children survived. Purple haze: Chargers take 3 players from TCU in NFL draft, JSO: Man found shot to death inside Brentwood neighborhood garage. _gaq.push(['gwo._trackPageview', '/2354831680/test']); Separate personal injury lawsuits have been filed against Pratt by many of the same parents. One, composed primarily of families of the children stricken with cancer, focused on the fact that the research had identified several contaminants above FDEP cleanup levels, including radium-226, benzene and a variety of other commonly occurring carcinogens. 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. She said she and other lawyers scoured tens of thousands of documents. A federal jury rejected claims Tuesday that Pratt & Whitney was responsible for a cancer cluster in The Acreage more than a decade ago. But, he said, state agencies found no evidence either the water or the soil was contaminated. So the plaintiffs attorneys have been constructing their case based on the defense contractors well-known history of involvement with projects that involve radioactive materials. The entire story might have ended there, in 2010, if attorneys hadnt taken up where public-health officials left off. Jenna McCann, too, liked the outdoors. Get the latest updates in news, food, music and culture, and receive special offers direct to your inbox. Tracy Newfield cried when she first heard the news. Then, two years later, another study was published concluding that cancer rates among the companys workers were not elevated. Hell ask for something and say, I appreciate that you bought me that, but lets go snuggle. He values spending time with people.. The way the numbers and facts are being reported is confusing. They wanted us to move on and say our water was fine, recalls Tracy Newfield, who was a member of the group. 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. 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. Still, the crowd was standing-room-only on this night. Submit & Share. 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. function utmx_section(){}function utmx(){} Palm Beach Aggregates did not respond to a request for comment for this article, and in court documents has vehemently denied causing any environmental harm. On another, two of her children, then toddlers, were shot with a paintball gun while they played in her backyard. We are seeking answers to a long list of questions and we are hoping that this websiteprovides usefulinformation to you. And the reputation of an area long known as a healthy, bucolic alternative to urbanization was in tatters. So they were shocked to hear the health officials explain that the community was definitely experiencing a cluster of pediatric brain tumors, as well as elevated rates of all cancers at all ages. Public record? Her mother, Becky Samarripa, did it for her, and then drove Hannah to school and waited outside, knowing shed be able to put in only a brief appearance. In response, the company waged a fierce, years-long battle against the Superfund designation and, in 1985, it won that fight. The deal is being financed with some $4.4 million in public incentives, including $3.4 million from the state and $1 million from Palm Beach County. Today, Pratt & Whitney has more than $10 billion in defense contracts, and United Technologies is the sixth-biggest Pentagon contractor. 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. That declaration came as a relief to some Acreage residents, since it confirmed what many had long suspected. But not a lot of communities with brain-tumor clusters.. Alonso was surely aware of how daunting a task it would be to pinpoint and prove the cause of the increase. 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. 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. state. But the effect of confirming The Acreage as a cancer cluster was immediate. 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. While the Florida Health Department declared a pediatric cancer cluster in The Acreage, it never found what caused the high rate of childhood cancers. Type Media Center document.write(new Date().getFullYear()). Shaggy cabbage-palm and cypress trees flank the neighborhoods sandy, unpaved roads. The anxiety and uncertainty now haunting The Acreage began to surface months ago. Many parents of the children with cancer were angry and frustrated, but other residents felt relief. The Samarripas left the Acreage in 2010. We are concerned residents just like you. He doesnt value things at all, is how Dunsford described Garrett recently, adding that hes become the family comforter. _udn = "none"; It is time for more aggressive and decisive action.. So its to the credit of those who pushed for a more thorough look at the Acreage including then-Governor Charlie Crist and Senator Bill Nelson that an investigation into the possible causes of the cluster was launched at all. We really need leadership out of Tallahassee, a person designated by the governor to take charge an action plan. 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. famous adpi sisters,
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