Trial to start in cancer cluster case

Franklin Branham lived in tiny McCullom Lake for more than 30 years before retiring to Arizona, where the seizures began.

The doctor's diagnosis was shattering. He had glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer.

During a trip back to McCullom Lake in McHenry County, his wife, Joanne, learned that other neighbors had come down with brain cancer as well.

"That's when we first started thinking something was wrong," she said.

Beginning this month, a jury in Philadelphia is scheduled to hear weeks of testimony on whether chemical plant pollution caused Branham's cancer in McCullom Lake.

The trial will start Sept. 20 on Branham's case — one of 31 individual claims against Philadelphia-based Rohm and Haas Chemicals, operator of the plant. All were from McCullom Lake, McHenry or Lakeland, or had business in those communities.

In 2006 Branham and two next-door neighbors who were diagnosed with rare forms of brain cancer sued the company for negligence, claiming that vinyl chloride from its plant in nearby Ringwood contaminated local water supplies and caused their tumors.

The suits against the Dow Chemical subsidiary allege that "these individuals contracted brain cancer because for more than five decades, defendants have been spilling, leaking and dumping into the soil and groundwater thousands of pounds of highly toxic chemicals." Also named is Morton International Inc., which Rohm and Haas bought in 1999.

The first claim to be heard will be that of the estate of Franklin Branham, who died at age 63 in 2004.

"What they did was so very wrong," said Joanne Branham. "They played with people's lives. I lost my husband and many neighbors and friends."

While sympathizing with cancer patients, Rohm and Haas officials said there was no connection to the Ringwood facility's operations. They cited reports from the McHenry County Health Department, the Illinois Department of Public Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"These independent reviews also have concluded that a 'cluster' of primary brain tumors does not exist in McHenry County," a company statement said.

The outcome of the trial, which lawyers say may last six to 12 weeks, depends on the weight jurors will give to competing findings of scientific experts. Jurors must determine if a cancer cluster exists, whether those who came down with brain tumors were exposed to vinyl chloride, a carcinogen, and whether that chemical compound causes cancer.

Aaron Freiwald, a Philadelphia lawyer who is representing Branham and the other plaintiffs, said 17 have been diagnosed with malignant brain cancer and 13 have benign brain tumors. One plaintiff required a liver transplant due to severe organ toxicity.

Another plaintiff, Sandra Wierschke, still lives in McCullom Lake. She was diagnosed with glioblastoma in May 2006 and lived a couple of blocks away from Branham, Freiwald said.

Ten of the plaintiffs, ranging in age from 42 to 74, have died, he said.

"From what I've seen, it is the largest brain cancer cluster reported in a nonwork environment," Freiwald said. "You have to have a lot of pieces fit together for a cancer cluster case to make sense, and these pieces do fit together in a very profound way."

He said a pathologist would testify that samples of brain tissue from the plaintiffs with brain cancer show patterns of environmental damage to DNA.

Freiwald said that when the McHenry County Health Department found no cancer cluster, it mistakenly compared the county's population with the state's. The findings would be different if the focus were on the population of McCullom Lake — population 1,111 — and those living near the chemical plant, Freiwald said.

Richard Neugebauer, a Columbia University research scientist hired by the plaintiffs, concluded that glioblastoma occurred in people who lived near the plant at a rate that is three to six times that of the state's population.

"We conclude that the epidemiologic evidence supports the claim of a cluster of glioblastoma multiforme in the population residing in close proximity to the Rohm and Hass chemical plant in Ringwood," Neugebauer said in a report filed with the court in July.

Kevin Van Wart, an attorney for Rohm and Haas, said the report is suspect at its source.

"This is not someone who came in with a public health agenda," Van Wart said. "This is someone asked to prepare an analysis that's going to be used to advance claims in litigation."


Van Wart, who is with the firm of Kirkland and Ellis in Chicago, said it was wrong to start a study around known cancer cases.

"From the beginning their experts have been drawing circles around known cases," he said. "The tighter you draw a circle around known cases, the more likely you are to produce a false increase in rates."

Allan Tereshko, the Court of Common Pleas judge who is hearing the case, ruled in May that the McHenry County Health Department study and the statements from public agencies supporting it would not be admitted into evidence because they did not deal with the smaller subset of the village's population.

The judge said the analyses might cause confusion by suggesting a brain cancer rate of a population that differs from that of McCullom Lake.

Rohm and Haas employs about 145 workers at the Ringwood plant, making polymers, adhesives and sealants used in food packaging. An 8.2-acre chemical waste pit on the property was used from 1959 to 1977.

Since 1991, Rohm and Haas has been working with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to clean up toxic chemicals at the site. By 2004, an underground "plume" of contamination had spread about 1,000 feet beyond the company's land to the southeast.

Vinyl chloride has not been detected in residents' drinking wells to the south. And an official with the Illinois State Water Survey has said historical groundwater records indicate that contaminants did not reach the McCullom Lake area in the past.

Van Wart said a problem with the plaintiffs' case is making a connection between a chemical and a disease.

"Although science has consistently shown vinyl chloride is capable of causing a rare form of liver cancer, it has not shown the vinyl chloride causes brain cancer," Van Wart said.

Last month, Rohm and Haas offered to pay $50,000 to finance an independent analysis of whether there had been vinyl chloride exposure in McCullom Lake.

It also said it would put up $50,000 to test an additional 400 private residential wells for the presence of the chemical compound and $5,000 for an air study.

"While these same issues may be presented to a Philadelphia jury in the coming months, the underlying scientific questions should not be relegated to a courtroom hundreds of miles away, but should be independently evaluated on behalf of the county and its residents," wrote Tom Bielas, manager of the Ringwood plant.

In a letter to McHenry County Board Chairman Ken Koehler, Bielas suggested that the county or the Illinois EPA select the testing firm "to assure that such results are both independent and credible."

Koehler said Rohm and Haas was being a "good corporate steward" by offering to pay for well testing.

"Because of the coverage on this for many years, people are feeling that this may not be one of the better places to purchase a home based on hearsay," Koehler said. "It's always better to work with scientific data as best you can to show there is an issue or to show there isn't."


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