Huffington Magazine Issue 9 | Page 87

HUFFINGTON 08.12.12 ric cancer epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota’s Masonic Cancer Center, says the distribution of the cancer cases in Briarcliff fit the pattern you’d see in almost any group of young people—so it’s hard to link those cases to PAHs in the sports fields. However, just how PAHs interact with one another and with metals like lead, which was also found in the fields, hasn’t been fully studied yet. “Construction debris by nature is not clean,” says John Wargo, a professor of risk analysis and environmental policy at Yale. “It’s a really nasty, complicated mixture of chemicals that are pretty well recognized to be hazardous.” Wargo argues that because of the varied nature of this debris, which could range from pieces of an incinerator to furnaces, more samples should have been taken over the years, with much tighter grids than were mapped out. He also says that he would have counseled Briarcliff differently and told the district to dig up and dispose of all the debris. He considers the soil caps Briarcliff has used in the fields a temporary solution that just leaves the problem looming for the next generation to solve. “There are a whole bunch of reasons why I would say that this was seriously insufficient, and that’s not making any claim about causation between the exposures and the cancers,” says Wargo. “But it’s no way to manage the environment of children.” Cancer-causing or not, Wargo argues that the Briarcliff situation raises questions about whether anyone has the right to expose people to known hazardous substances without their knowledge or without their consent. His answer is no. And that seems to be what the families in Briarcliff are getting at in their questions about what has occurred in their town. They know they aren’t going to find definitive proof linking their children’s cancers to the fields today, but they’re still worried that some illness might emerge years from now and prove otherwise. Nicholas Mazzilli’s doctor’s appointment last month showed no signs of thyroid cancer, but he’ll keep having to go to get checked. “We have relief right now,” says Pickett, his mother. “But you know, you’re going to hold your breath for years.” SUDDEN DEATH