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.

More from the GAO Report, as promised. Please bear in mind:

· 85% of the sites below were discovered 15 yrs ago or more
· over 60% of the potentially eligible sites and over 35% of all sites below report no clean-up activities

---
Table IV.1: Sites Classified as Awaiting an NPL Decision in Each State, by Eligibility for Listing and Status of Cleanup Progress
+
Table VI.1: State Officials’ Assessments of States’ Financial Capabilities to Clean Up Potentially Eligible Sites

State	Number of sites classified as awaiting an NPL decision	Number of sites unlikely to become eligible for the NPL	Number of potentially eligible sites with some cleanup activities	Number of potentially eligible sites with no reported cleanup activities	Number of sites for which no surveys were received	State officials’ assessment of state’s financial capability to clean up potentially eligible sites
Alabama	25	10	7	8	0	Very poor
Alaska	28	14	8	6	0	Excellent
Arizona	34	16	10	8	0	Excellent
Arkansas	4	3	0	1	0	Good
California	a 189	64	51	74	0	Fair
Colorado	30	12	10	6	2	Very poor
Connecticut	290	74	98	118	0	Poor
Delaware	1	1	0	0	0	Excellent
District of Columbia	a 1	0	0	1	0
Florida	269	74	85	110	0	Fair
Georgia	74	39	8	27	0	Poor
Guam	2	2	0	0	0
Hawaii	17	12	4	1	0	Fair
Idaho	16	5	5	6	0	*
Illinois	207	95	43	69	0	Fair
Indiana	54	21	15	18	0	Very poor
Iowa	33	29	4	0	0	Very poor
Kansas	37	28	4	5	0	Very poor
Kentucky	20	15	2	3	0	Good
Louisiana	10	6	4	0	0	Poor
Maine	56	28	17	11	0	Poor
Maryland	20	8	4	8	0	Other b
Massachusetts	a 201	11	19	171	0	Fair
Michigan	50	22	18	10	0	Excellent
Midway Island	1	1	0	0	0
Minnesota	17	6	6	5	0	Good
Mississippi	9	4	1	2	2	Very poor
Missouri	91	73	7	11	0	*
Montana	11	2	7	2	0	Very poor
Navajo Nation	14	0	0	14	0
Nebraska	a 36	16	4	15	1	Very poor
Nevada	12	8	3	1	0	Poor
New Hampshire	42	24	9	9	0	Poor
New Jersey	172	60	49	63	0	Good
New Mexico	15	7	6	2	0	Very poor
New York	a 192	135	15	41	1	*
North Carolina	57	18	21	18	0	Poor
North Dakota	4	2	1	1	0	Poor
Northern Mariana Islands	1	0	1	0	0
Ohio	79	25	23	31	0	Very poor
Oklahoma	7	4	1	2	0	Very poor
Oregon	29	7	6	16	0	Fair
Pennsylvania	73	35	18	20	0	Excellent
Puerto Rico	16	3	4	9	0
Rhode Island	121	14	23	84	0	Poor
South Carolina	45	32	8	5	0	Good
South Dakota	8	6	2	0	0	Other b
Tennessee	102	51	19	32	0	Poor
Texas	21	18	1	2	0	Poor
Utah	48	17	8	16	7	*
Vermont	30	16	5	9	0	Poor
Virginia	22	8	2	12	0	*
Washington	28	11	8	9	0	Fair
West Virginia	11	7	4	0	0	Other b
Wisconsin	53	34	8	11	0	Excellent
Wyoming	1	1	0	0	0
Total	3,036	1,234	686	1,103	13

a California, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, and Nebraska did not respond to surveys. For these states, the data in table IV.1 are based on EPA’s survey responses alone and, for that reason, may be less reliable than for states having responses from both EPA and states. New York provided responses to only a few questions in our survey.

b “Other” indicates that the respondent was uncertain about the state’s financial capability.

* State officials in Idaho, New York, Missouri, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming declined to participate in [the] telephone survey.

Following up on the EPA's press release, the Chicago Daily Herald brings us this story:

Now state and local officials are giving about 700 residents who benefited from the $4.3 million project another reason to celebrate.

The homeowners won't have to pay an anticipated $2,000 fee to connect to water pipes in Downers Grove because of a recent settlement.

...Resident Elizabeth Chaplin is among those who won't benefit because she and her husband already paid the fees. But, she said, the waiver will help many of her neighbors who can't afford it.

"I think they are going to be thrilled," she said. "Our goal was safe water at an affordable price without annexation. We have achieved that. When residents hear about this, they are going to be ecstatic."

Read the full story here. Read similar coverage in the Chicago Tribune (free reg req'd).

From the EPA:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5, the state of Illinois, DuPage County and the village of Downers Grove said today that because the 2003-2004 effort to bring safe public drinking water to about 800 residents of unincorporated Downers Grove was completed well under budget, remaining funds will be used to pay for a $2,000 per home village connection charge.

Read the full EPA Press Release. Also, here's some background from the EPA on the Ellsworth Industrial Park Site (a.k.a. Downer's Grove Groundwater site):

From May 2001 to January 2002, the Illinois EPA sampled more than 500 residential wells in unincorporated areas near Downers Grove, Illinois, and found more than 400 of these wells to be contain the chemicals trichloroethylene (TCE) and/or tetrachloroethylene (PCE). Of those, more than 200 were above the federal safe drinking water standards. As a result, one of the most intensive ground water investigations ever undertaken in Northern Illinois was conducted by U.S. EPA Region 5's Emergency Response Branch and the Illinois EPA.

The Ellsworth Industrial Park Site is a direct result of this $2 million-dollar effort. The investigation indicated that a group of 15 former and present businesses and individuals in the industrial park that investigation may be responsible for the residential ground water contamination. EPA sent General and Special Notice Letters to this group of “Potentially Responsible Parties,” or PRPs, in the September and October of 2002. EPA has asked this group of PRPs to address the threat to human health and the environment by paying most of the costs of hooking up approximately 800 homes to Lake Michigan water and by beginning their own investigation of how to address the contamination in the area’s ground water.

For more information on the contaminated site from the EPA, see here.

Suburban Chicago News.com brings us this encouraging report:

People with contaminated wells will finally have one person to go to when they want clean drinking water.

DuPage Board of Health members approved a job position March 3 that will be dedicated to testing private wells and setting up public water lines for those found with contamination.

The new job comes with a new program. This spring, the health department will launch the nation's first private well-testing program.

In recent years, toxic chemicals were found contaminating wells near current or formerly industrial parts of Naperville, Lisle and Downers Grove.

..."We were frustrated because ... TCE (trichloroethylene, a known carcinogen) had been found in public wells in Downers Grove and nobody had thought to mention to residents on private wells there could be possible contamination," [a Resident] said.

Well done, Dupage.