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. 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. But after two assessments of the plot in question found ubiquitous contamination, the deal quietly fell through. Acreage Cancer Cluster - Harsh Reality - Searcy Denney But Hatfields radiation theory also involves the operations of another, far larger company: Pratt & Whitney, one of the big three airplane-engine manufacturers in the world, whose local industrial site was separated from the homes of the sick children in the Acreage by a swampy preserve. _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-230305-2']); A community group has counted 18 children with brain Only two personal-injury and wrongful-death lawsuits involving cancer clusters in the United States have yielded any financial reward for plaintiffs. WebThank you for visiting The Acreage Cancer Study website. Submit & Share. 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. South Florida's independent At the opening of Pratt & Whitneys South Florida campus in 1958, the chairman of the county commission said that Pratt & Whitneys coming to this site is considered the largest single industrial accomplishment so far in Palm Beach County. Since then, Pratt and its parent company, United Technologies, have received tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks from the county and state to encourage it to keep its operations and jobs in Florida. This allows the cancer cells to divide in half and survive. Among the first to urge officials to investigate reports of an unusually high incidence of pediatric cancers were Greg and Jennifer Dunsford, whose son Garrett, now 7, was treated for a benign brain tumor in 2008. Periodically, the belt would start beeping in the middle of the night. Also citing the gag order, Pratt & Whitney declined to answer questions for this article, stating only that Pratt & Whitneys position is documented in its court filings related to the Acreage.. They wanted us to move on and say our water was fine, recalls Tracy Newfield, who was a member of the group. I think about it every time I open up the freezer and were out of store-bought ice.. Then there were the rumors that the area had been a dumping ground before the Acreage was developed. state. Shaggy cabbage-palm and cypress trees flank the neighborhoods sandy, unpaved roads. Mike Clary can be reached at [email protected] or at 305-810-5007. 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. This is a privately run and owned website. This odd fact kept troubling her, and at the suggestion of Garretts neurologist, she e-mailed the Florida Department of Health about it. There are a lot of communities down here built on that, says Hatfield. They interviewed dozens of people who were involved in Pratts cleanup efforts. If you would like your information added to this map, please email us at [email protected] and provide us with your address, sex, age, and diagnosis. In November 2012, the company announced plans to add 230 jobs at its Florida campus over the next eight years and to invest $63 million in its facilities there. And although the interviews did not enable investigators to pinpoint the cause of the disease, Health Department director Alina Alonso on Feb. 1 confirmed the existence of a cancer cluster. A judge heard testimony Friday about a forensic investigation that's shedding light on radioactive materials found on the campus of Pratt & Whitney and The Acreage community. The ordeal was also a turning point for Jennifer Dunsford. 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. Florida will appeal to the federal government for help investigating the cancer cluster in The Acreage, Gov. 8:05AM. Instead, the Palm Beach County Health Department told Hatfield to direct further contacts to its lawyer. I feel a panic for my kids health. 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. Seven years after the Health Department declared a pediatric cancer cluster in The Acreage another lawsuit has Whatever you find, there will be people who doubt the veracity of your findings because we dont live in an experimental setting, and you can never control all of the factors that might have contributed to that disease occurrence.. Our Platform. 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. In contrast to the smooth pavement and careful landscaping of coastal West Palm, the Acreage has a wild, almost jungly feel. Contact her at [email protected]. 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. The results of radon testing appeared as strings of letters and numbers, and the soil-testing report was essentially a 500-page compendium of test values and chemical names. But the answer to that question is not available, the experts said, and the frustration of the audience often boiled over into angry outbursts. Since then Palm Beach County Health Department officials interviewed 12 families diagnosed with either brain tumors or brain cancers from 2003 through 2008. During the next year, while Jenna was undergoing cancer treatment, both dogs developed tumors and died. And both were so grueling that they left the victors unsure whether the effort had been worth it. source of local news and culture, Deirdra Funcheon We know youre fearful of what these results mean, said Sharon Watkins, an environmental epidemiologist with the Florida Department of Health. 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. Pratt & Whitney had licenses to use at least a dozen radioactive substances, the average death rate from cancer among the companys employees had shot up from 13 per 100,000 workers to 122, This Week in Extremism: Far Right Extremism in 2023 and the January 6th Insurrection, Faulty Information About Immigrants Can Lead to Family Separation and Denied Asylum Claims, Hanfords Leaky Nuke Tanks and Sick Workers, A Never-Ending Saga. WebMara And Acreage Cancer Cluster Map. It will likely take years for the lawsuits against Pratt & Whitney to be resolved. Jet fuel, which was the suspected cause of another cancer cluster in Fallon, Nevada, may also have played a role at the Acreage. (Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material or NORM.) 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. The Law Did Not Treat Them Kindly. clicky.init(190756); var _gaq = _gaq || []; She knew and somehow understood and was OK with it, Kaye McCann said recently. On one occasion, her car got egged. Jenna was a strong-willed, generous and ultimately prescient child, according to her mother, Kaye. Newfields mistrust, and that of others in the group, grew when they realized that the groups chair who seemed particularly eager to put the questions of contamination to rest was a former Pratt & Whitney employee. Convinced something in the water or the soil was making children sick, Dunsford said the familys dream home quickly turned into a prison. Public record? Isolation was clearly part of the reason that Pratt originally chose its location in Florida. Jenna McCann, too, liked the outdoors. utmx_section("Legacy Footer"), WE ARE NO LONGER COLLECTING THIS DATA - IF YOU HAVE A BRAIN CANCER CASE TO REPORT PLEASE CONTACT THE PALM BEACH COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, SIGN THE PETITION: Clyde Cancer Cluster claims 6th victim, New Approach to Treating Young Brain Cancer Patients. Jane Musgrave covers federal and civil courts and occasionally ventures into criminal trials in state court. 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. 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. Like most other suspected clusters, that one had failed upon investigation to clear the statistical bar. 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. Lawsuit Linking Child Cancer to Aerospace Plant Hangs in the
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