LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR
HUFFINGTON
08.12.12
Tainted
Fields,
Tainted
Wines
AST MONTH IN Huffington, Lynne Peeples
wrote about our society’s unacceptably slow
progress in the half-century since
Rachel Carson sounded the alarm
about the dangers of exposure to
chemicals. This week, Katherine
Bindley tells a story that puts flesh
and blood on that failure—and the
nightmarish consequences of not
heeding Carson’s warning.
The town is Briarcliff Manor, an
affluent New York suburb, where in
1998 the local school district made
a deal allowing a trucking company
to dump construction debris on
school grounds in return for building athletic fields. At the time, such
deals were common. But the Briarcliff fields have come under scrutiny as eight students who gathered
ART STREIBER
L
there over the years—for sports
practice, pep rallies, and bonfires—
have developed cancer.
One student, Demetri Demeropoulos, died from a spinal cord
tumor at 18. Others, like Nicholas
Mazzilli, have been successfully
treated—though parents worry
about long-term effects. Parents are contemplating suing the
school, which has responded not
by cleaning the field but by hiring consultants to disprove the
harmfulness of the soil’s contents.
Environmental experts say a link
between the field debris and the
cancer diagnoses, while possible,
cannot be proved conclusively.
But Max Costa, NYU’s chair of
environmental medicine, puts it
Join the
conversation
on Twitter
and Facebook