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