Date: Mon, 02 Mar 1998 10:07:04 -0500 From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu> Subject: M-I: Pollution and rare cancers March 2, 1998 Mother Seeks Answers as Rare Cancers Appear ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- When Debbie Cusenz gets together with neighbors, she catches up on the activities of their children. Not just Little League and school plays, but brain scans, chemotherapy and surgery. Mrs. Cusenz, 40, keeps track of the children with a map in the living room of her home. She marks cancer cases with multicolored stars and angels. Red angels represent leukemia, and blue angels, lymphoma. But it is the green angels, marking children with rare cancers of the brain and central nervous system, that have caused the most concern; there have been 68 such cases in Monroe County since 1976. Many parents here believe that the cases are a cancer cluster related to environmental pollutants, and some have sued the Eastman Kodak Co., the county's biggest employer. Some environmental groups have said that it is also the state's largest polluter. Mrs. Cusenz, whose husband works at Eastman Kodak, thinks the problem is bigger than any one company. She said that although she believes that Kodak is not blameless, she thinks pollution by all companies, both large and small, should be examined. Kodak officials say there is no scientific evidence of a link between film manufacturing and cancer. At a public hearing on Wednesday, experts in epidemiology from the Federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry said they had determined that past local studies, which had found no evidence of a link, were scientifically sound, but they called for further review. The problem may be part of a national trend, they said. Brain cancer in children up to 4 years old has increased by a per capita rate of 47 percent in the last 20 years, said Dr. Wendy Kaye, chief epidemiologist for the federal agency, which is based in Atlanta. She wants to include Rochester in a $500,000 study of the occurrence of brain cancer in three states. Mrs. Cusenz (pronounced like cousins), whose cancer maps drew the interest of the federal experts last fall, said she would keep pressing them for more studies. She has been involved in the effort since 1995, when the oldest of her two sons became her first green angel. She had taken her son Christopher, now 21, to the doctor to follow up on his complaint that two fingers on his right hand were becoming numb. His illness was diagnosed as cancer of the spinal cord, one of just 150 cases seen worldwide each year. Four days later, the family flew to New York City, where the tumor was surgically removed. Although Christopher Cusenz lost some motor control and had to learn to walk and feed himself again, doctors were optimistic about his recovery. But eight months later the tumor was back. During a second visit to New York for surgery, Mrs. Cusenz met Sandra Schneider, whose daughter was being treated for cancer of the central nervous system. Mrs. Cusenz said, "We got to talking and comparing where we lived," which turned out to be within a few miles of each other. In Rochester, they started an informal support group named Brainstormers that grew from 2 families to 11 in a year. "It just seemed too coincidental," Mrs. Cusenz said. "Evelyn started saying, 'Gee, is there a chance Kodak is to blame or this?"' Concerns about the company's emissions peaked in 1988, when Kodak acknowledged that it had released 20 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air the previous year. About half the material released was methylene chloride, a toxic solvent used to make film base. The Environmental Protection Agency suspects methylene chloride to be a carcinogen, but medical experts have never proved that it is. In the years since, Kodak has established a community information center and bought the homes of some neighbors who wanted to move away from its manufacturing site. From 1988 to 1993, it cut emissions by 63 percent to 3.3 million pounds, and it has continued to reduce them. But according to a report released last summer by the Environmental Working Group in Washington and the New York Public Interest Research Group, Eastman Kodak remains the state's top polluter, having released thousands of tons of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and microscopic soot into the air in 1995. A company spokesman, James Blanphin, said there was no link between film manufacturing and cancer. "We've looked at it," he said. "We've watched these trends. Our workers have been exposed to higher levels than anybody, and we've never seen an increase in cancer rates." Members of Brainstormers are divided on whether to believe Kodak. Six families decided to initiate a lawsuit seeking $185 million from the film manufacturer after meeting with a lawyer last May. Mrs. Schneider is one of the six, and she declined to be interviewed because of the pending litigation. Mrs. Cusenz did not join the lawsuit. The two women do not speak to each other any more. "Our original goal was to find out if there was a link," Mrs. Cusenz said. "There was never any talk about lawsuits, money, nothing." Last fall, after Christopher Cusenz's third operation, his family learned that his cancer was growing again. The doctors cannot operate any more. Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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