File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9803, message 19


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 




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