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The Northwest Herald (IL) has created an outstanding multimedia presentation that tells the story of the McCullom Lake cancer lawsuits. And boy, what a way to tell the story!
They include video interviews with plaintiffs and with attorneys for both sides, map of the contamination area, documents associated with the lawsuit (including an important expert report from Redpath’s Dr. Sidney Finkelstein that we will highlight at another time) and more.
For those interested in McCullom Lake, the causal connection between brain cancers and TCE/vinyl chloride/chlorinated solvent exposure, and legal actions for personal injuries caused by chlorinated ethylenes, we highly recommend you check it out.
Warning: The title of the presentation is “Coincidence or Cluster?” We believe this is a poorly-chosen title and it does not properly reflect the main issue in these suits. The main issue, as we understand it, is whether or not the defendants’ chemicals caused the individual plaintiffs’ cancers. Whether McCullom Lake’s cancers can be considered a cancer cluster is a red herring. So please ignore the overly simplistic title, but do check out the presentation.
The Northwest Herald (McHenry County, IL) reports:
Modine Manufacturing tentatively has settled out of court in the McCullom Lake brain-cancer cases, agreeing to pay an undisclosed sum to the 22 plaintiffs and $2 million to settle a class-action lawsuit.
If approved by a U.S. District Court judge, the settlement announced Friday would end Modine’s financial liability in the lawsuits, which tied pollution from its Ringwood manufacturing plant to brain-, nerve- and pituitary-cancer victims. That would leave Rohm and Haas, which operates a plant just north of Modine’s, and subsidiary Morton International as the only remaining defendants.
Modine does not, in any way, admit liability with the settlement, said James Rulseh, vice president of the company’s American operations. The lawsuits alleged that Modine contaminated groundwater and air with trichloroethylene, a chemical used as an industrial-strength degreaser, which in turn broke down into carcinogenic vinyl chloride.
[...]
The class-action lawsuit and the first three individual lawsuits were filed in April 2006. Three former McCullom Lake next-door neighbors, about a mile to the south of the factories, were diagnosed with brain cancer within eight months of one another.
Of the $2 million class-action settlement, Modine will pay $1.4 million toward a medical monitoring program to reimburse current or former village residents who want an MRI. Another $100,000 will establish a fund to reimburse property owners seeking property value relief, and the remaining $500,000 will pay for court-approved attorney’s fees and settlement costs.
Payments to the 22 individual plaintiffs will remain confidential under the settlement, attorney Aaron Freiwald said. The damage cases were filed in state court in Philadelphia, home to Freiwald’s law office and Rohm and Haas’ world headquarters.
Of the plaintiffs, 18 have brain or nerve cancer, three have pituitary cancer, and one has cirrhosis of the liver of unknown origin. Eight of the plaintiffs have died, all but one from glioblastoma multiforme, a deadly brain cancer that occurs in just more than 3 people per 100,000.
[...]
Freiwald said Friday that the settlement allowed him to focus all of his scrutiny on Rohm and Haas, which he said by far was the major contributor to contamination. The factory, owned at the time by Morton, dumped wastes into an 8-acre landfill/lagoon between 1960 and 1977. Rohm and Haas assumed control of the factory in 2005, six years after acquiring Morton for $5 billion.
[...]
The medical-monitoring class includes anyone who lived in village limits for at least one cumulative year between Jan. 1, 1968, and Dec. 31, 2002. The property damage class includes anyone who owned property in the village between April 25, 2006 – the date the class-action lawsuit was filed – and Jan. 18, 2008.
Read the full story here.
The Chicago Daily Herald (IL) tells us of a 2005 report that was just released by the Illinois Department of Public Health:
A state report on the relationship between cancer cases in Lisle and Downers Grove and groundwater contamination found no significant disease clusters.
The study was the result of two separate pollution problems in areas of south Lisle and west Downers Grove.
In Lisle, hundreds of private wells were tainted with the solvent trichlorethylene, or TCE, due to spills at the Lockformer Co. plant on Ogden Avenue.
In Downers Grove, TCE and a related chemical, tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, were detected in the groundwater in several homes. The toxins came from the Ellsworth Industrial Park, authorities concluded.
Illinois Department of Public Health scientists compared countywide data with cancer cases in the neighborhoods where the wells were tested for toxins using statistics from the Illinois State Cancer Registry.
The study looks at 19,093 cancer cases reported between 1998 and 2002 in DuPage County. Fifty-three cases were found in neighborhoods with tainted wells.
Researchers concluded “no significant elevation of cancer incidence was found in the target area and no correlation was suggested between TCE or PCE contamination in well water and increase of cancer incidence.”
Read more here. Or download the report here.
According to this report in the Chicago Tribune (IL):
No groundwater contamination has been detected in a small northeast McHenry County town, and people who live there are not more susceptible to brain cancer–despite legal claims to the contrary–state environmental and county health officials said this week.
Stan Black, a spokesman for the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, said Wednesday night that chemicals decades ago from an industrial area in Ringwood leached into groundwater and contaminated a shallow aquifer. But the contaminated underground plume is drifting east of the village of McCullom Lake and has not entered any village well or McCullom Lake’s watershed.
Read the full story here.
A reader just sent us the following tip about additional plaintiffs involved in the lawsuit re: toxic exposure and cancer in McHenry County. He tells us that 2 meetings are slated to take place tonight:
There are now 6 people in the lawsuit.
There will be public meetings tonight, 5/31, at 6:30 p.m. and another at 8:00 p.m. at the town hall of McCullom Lake, IL.
Two meetings to accomodate the expected number of people at the meetings.
Thanks R. for the tip.
Update: The McCullom Lake town hall is located at 4811 W. Orchard Drive, McCullom Lake, IL. See here for the Google map.
The Chicago Tribune reports:
Unsafe levels of a chemical used as an industrial grease cutter have been found in northeast McHenry County groundwater, but the contamination has not entered the drinking water supply, a county health official said Wednesday.
Trichloroethylene, or TCE–a degreaser and industrial solvent–has been detected in a shallow aquifer in Spring Grove, said Patrick McNulty, administrator for the McHenry County Department of Health.
County officials will answer questions on the issue at 6:30 p.m. Thursday in Spring Grove Village Hall, 7401 Meyer Rd.
According to village and county officials, the source of the TCE is Spring Grove-based Intermatic Inc., a manufacturer of timers, night-lights and burglar alarms. The contaminate has leached into the soil, traveled with the underground water flow northward, beneath the Wisconsin & Southern train tracks and Scot Forge Co., 8001 Winn Rd., and into Nippersink Creek, officials said. Both companies draw their water from a deeper aquifer than where the TCE has been detected and thus have not been affected by the contamination.
(Again, no mention of vapor risk or having ruled it out. Wonder how shallow /contaminated the aquifer is…)
Sorry we’re late on the meeting notice. You can read more about the findings and the clean-up plan here.
This Chicago Tribune article from last week reveals a number of questions inspired by the recent McCullom Lake lawsuits:
- What kinds of toxins polluted the groundwater, soil, and/or air near five Ringwood companies? Are these the same contaminants of concern in McCullom Lake?
- Did toxic contamination from one or more of the Ringwood companies reach residents nearly 1 mile away? If so, how did the toxins travel? (note: According to Patrick McNulty, McHenry County public health administrator, there has never been any evidence of contamination in the McCullom Lake area and groundwater does not flow from Ringwood to McCullom Lake.)
- Did residents make actual contact with these toxins? If so, how did this exposure occur? Was it through a contaminated water supply? Or by inhaling toxic vapors in their air? Was there absorbtion through skin via direct contact with contaminated soil or water?
- What is the relationship between the cancers contracted by these men and the toxins/contaminants of concern?
As we learn more about this developing story, we’ll be sure to keep you posted.
Cyndi Klapperich has this to say in May 2’s Northwest Herald Online:
If the allegations made by Philadelphia attorney Aaron Freiwald are true, officials at five Ringwood industries not only poisoned area groundwater for decades, but concealed their miserable conduct…
Freiwald says officials at these companies not only knew better, but intentionally hid their knowledge that groundwater had been severely contaminated. If he’s right, that’s unforgivable, and should be severely punished.
Read the full piece here
The Chicago Tribune (IL) reports:
Two McHenry County men got brain cancer because companies near Ringwood “have been spilling, leaking, and dumping into the air, soil and groundwater massive quantities of highly toxic chemicals” for five decades, two lawsuits said. Filed this week in state and federal courts in Pennsylvania, the lawsuits target Rohm and Haas Chemicals, based in Philadelphia. Its plant near Ringwood makes plastics, adhesives and sealants.
“These are serious allegations and serious illnesses, and we’re treating it very seriously,” Rohm and Haas spokesman Syd Havely said Wednesday.
…
The lawsuits allege that chemicals including trichloroethylene and vinyl chloride “invaded” the air and water of the men’s homes. The men argue that vinyl chloride has been shown to cause brain cancer.
…
Also named in the suit is Morton International, which was based in Chicago and once ran the Ringwood plant, which Rohm and Haas purchased in 1999. The other defendants are Huntsman Corp. of Salt Lake City, which owns the Huntsman Polyurethanes plant near Ringwood, and Modine Manufacturing Co., of Racine, Wis., which has a plant near Ringwood.
…
“The statistical likelihood of three super-rare cancers side by side is astronomical,” said their lawyer, Aaron Freiwald of Philadelphia. A neighbor died of brain cancer in June 2004, the suit said.
Freiwald also filed a federal class-action suit in Philadelphia on behalf of the nearly 500 residents of McCullom Lake, a village north of McHenry and south of the plants.
Read the full story here. Also read more about it here and here, the latter of which includes the following:
“This is really a case about toxic exposure that has been going on for years in secrecy,” said Aaron Freiwald, a Philadelphia attorney representing the McCullom Lake residents. “These companies did everything they could to ignore this community. They need to be held responsible, especially when they acted so grotesquely irresponsible.”
We recently posted an article about ongoing tests for TCE contamination in Tallevast, FL. In the very same story, environmental attorney Shawn Collins offers this advice on the requirements for effective mapping of contamination plume boundaries:
Nothing less than a picket fence of monitoring wells spaced 25 to 50 feet apart will accurately define the plume, said Collins.
Collins reached a $16.9 million settlement in 2004 for 1,400 clients whose drinking water was contaminated by TCE traced to the nearby Lockformer Co. In another suit against the company, Collins won a $10 million class-action jury award in 2002 for 186 other families in LeClerq, Ill. whose drinking water was contaminated by a second plume near the Lockformer plume.
He also secured a $7.2 million settlement in 2003 for Anne Schreiber, who spent 11 years of her childhood in the LeClerq, Ill., area. Collins proved Schreiber was exposed to TCE as a child, which caused her to develop Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma later in life.
In the Lisle case, almost all of the families relied on drinking-water wells for their needs, Collins said. Testing all of those wells for TCE exposure gave a good representation of what toxins were underground, he said.
The Tallevast situation warrants similar blanket testing, Collins said in a recent phone interview.
Collins warned that TCE can form slugs or pools of high concentration. If a well is drilled outside of that pool or slug, it may not pick up the true level of the toxin in the ground.
“Unless you have established that picket fence of monitoring wells, you cannot say where the boundaries lie,” Collins said.
Finding those boundaries is of paramount importance, said Collins. The answers, he added, are obtainable.
“Whether it is Lisle or Bradenton or Dayton, Ohio, the direction of the groundwater is known,” said Collins. “The speed is known. You can determine fairly accurately how long it has been in the ground and you can determine the concentrations and movement through the community’s groundwater. The company and the government owe it to the people to find these things out.”
…to keep people safer from TCE, please encourage them to contact:
Jody Milanese (millaneese) in Congresswoman Sue Kelly’s office at 202-225-5441
The Chicago Tribune (IL) notes in a very brief story:
A developer has reduced the number of town homes proposed to be built on an old farm on Naperville’s north side to 102 from 107.
[...]
Naperville officials agreed in May 2003 to extend city water to the property, owned by the Mayne family, because it is in an area feared to be contaminated with the toxic chemical trichloroethylene.
Read it here.
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