Toms River (75 page)

20.
Morris Smith, “Solids and Solvent Waste Disposal,” October 11, 1966, memo, 2: “Every 6–8 weeks, approximately 50 AQ [anthraquinone] laden filter socks must be disposed of. Because this material cannot be burned in the incinerator without generating huge quantities of black smoke, it is usually burned at night.” See also September 7, 1967, letter from W. A. Helbig of Atlas Chemical Industries Inc. to James Crane of Toms River Chemical: “We understand it is the desire of Toms River Chemical Corporation that we refrain from making public the work on waste effluent treatment at your plant.”

21.
Raymond Simon,
Toms River Chemical Company Public Opinion Survey
, February 1, 1968, report to Toms River Chemical. Simon, a Utica College professor of public relations, and ten of his students designed the questions and conducted the poll.

22.
“Public Opinion Survey Reveals TRC’s Standing in the Community,”
TRC Color
(Spring 1968).

23.
In addition to the
Abbatemarco
deposition, this chapter’s account of the events at Reich Farm in 1971 and 1972 relies on a 119-page report entitled, “Analysis of a Land Disposal Damage Incident involving Hazardous Waste Materials, Dover Township, New Jersey.” It was prepared in May 1976 by Masood Ghassemi, an environmental engineer at TRW Inc. who was serving as a consultant to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

24.
Nick Fernicola “just kept digging holes all around the place. Digging holes and digging holes and digging holes, and we kept dumping the chemicals on the ground,” recalled Richie Winton, one of the truck drivers Fernicola hired.
Abbatemarco
deposition of Winton, 73.

25.
Abbatemarco
deposition of Nicholas Fernicola, 37–38.

26.
The state’s “unfortunate” decision not to investigate further what Nick Fernicola was doing at Reich Farm is cited in an April 27, 1977, memo about the case written by New Jersey deputy attorney general Lawrence E. Stanley.

27.
Twenty-two years after the 1971 dumping incidents at the town landfill and Reich Farm, Nick Fernicola claimed in a sworn deposition that drivers from Ciba-Geigy and the Lakehurst Naval Air Station “without a doubt” paid bribes in 1971 to get rid of drums at the town landfill. But he did not provide names or other
evidence to support this claim. See
Abbatemarco
deposition of Nicholas Fernicola, 83–84.

28.
Abbatemarco
deposition of Nicholas Fernicola, 43, 80.

1.
This chapter’s description of the early life of Michael Gillick is drawn primarily from published sources, including numerous magazine and newspaper articles and Linda Gillick’s book about his childhood,
For the Love of Mike
(WRS Publishing, 1994). The author also conducted a ninety-minute on-the-record interview with Michael Gillick and had several informal conversations with Linda Gillick at her home and office. Ultimately, however, Linda Gillick did not agree to a formal interview.

2.
Bruce M. Rothschild, Brian J. Witzke, and Israel Hershkovitz, “Metastatic Cancer in the Jurassic,”
The Lancet
354 (July 31, 1999): 398. See also Bruce M. Rothschild et al., “Epidemiologic Study of Tumors in Dinosaurs,”
Naturwissenschaften
90 (2003): 495–500. In the second study, interestingly, although Rothschild and his collaborators used fluoroscopy to examine more than ten thousand fossilized bones from 708 dinosaurs representing seventy-seven species, they found tumors only in bones from the duck-billed hadrosaur family. The authors suggest that both genetic and environmental factors may explain the finding, since hadrosaurs had a unique diet that consisted largely of cone-bearing evergreen trees and shrubs.

3.
James Henry Breasted, trans.,
The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus
(University of Chicago Press, 1930), 404–5, 457–58.

4.
W.H.S. Jones, trans.,
Hippocrates, Volume IV, and Heracleitus On the Universe
(Heinemann, 1959), 189.

5.
This chapter’s discussion of Rudolf Virchow’s contributions and character is based on Leon Eisenberg, “Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow, Where Are You Now That We Need You?”
American Journal of Medicine
77 (September 1984): 524–32; J.M.S. Pearce, “Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow,”
Journal of Neurology
249 (2002): 492–93; Myron Schultz, “Rudolf Virchow,”
Emerging Infectious Diseases
14:9 (September 2008): 1480–81; and “Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902)—Anthropologist, Archeologist, Politician, and Pathologist,” unsigned editorial,
Journal of the American Medical Association
188:12 (June 22, 1964): 1080–81.

6.
In another 1848 editorial in the same newspaper, Rudolf Virchow famously declared: “The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and social problems fall to a large extent within their jurisdiction.”

7.
“The chief point,” Rudolf Virchow wrote, is that “the cell is really the ultimate morphological element in which there is any manifestation of life, and that we must not transfer the seat of real action to any point beyond the cell.” Rudolf Virchow,
Cellular Pathology as Based upon Physiological and Pathological Histology
, trans. Frank Chance (John Churchill, 1860), lecture 1, 3.

8.
According to National Cancer Institute estimates for 2002–2006, the average yearly cancer incidence rate per year for people under age 65 was 221.1 cases per 100,000 people. For people over 65, the rate was 2,134.3 cases per 100,000.

9.
William B. Ershler, “Cancer: A Disease of the Elderly,”
Journal of Supportive Oncology
1, Supp. 2 (November/December 2003): 5–10.

10.
The estimate of thirty-eight newly diagnosed cases of childhood cancer per day in the United States is derived from the National Cancer Institute’s incidence data for 2002–2006 for children under twenty years of age: 16.6 cases per 100,000 children per year. Also according to the institute, there were 12.9 new cases per 100,000 children and teenagers in 1975, compared to 17.6 in 2005, a 36 percent increase. Overall cancer incidence (for all ages) rose from 400.38 per 100,000 in 1975 to 459.94 in 2005, a 15 percent increase.

11.
Because he was so young, Michael Gillick’s chance of surviving was somewhat greater than the overall rate of 5 percent. For reasons that researchers do not yet understand, neuroblastoma tumors in infants are much more likely to undergo spontaneous regression compared to those in older children. Michael’s tumors did not disappear, but their rate of growth slowed. Today, the overall five-year survival rate for late-stage metastatic neuroblastoma is greater than 50 percent and is nearly 90 percent for infants. Current treatments include a combination of surgery, drugs, radiation, and antibody therapies to stimulate the immune system.

12.
James Crane and N. Morley, “Waste Clarification and Solids Separation Study,” November 14, 1968, 2.

13.
The 1970 merger of Ciba and Geigy allowed the Swiss to finally (if temporarily) surpass their longtime rivals in Germany and the United States and become the largest dye manufacturing company in the world. One of the merger’s most important proving grounds was Toms River, where the two companies had worked closely together since 1955. Before the merger, Ciba owned 58 percent of Toms River Chemical and Geigy 21 percent. The other 21 percent was owned by Sandoz, which merged with Ciba-Geigy in 1996 to form Novartis.

14.
The estimate of 8,800 waste drums per year dumped into the unlined landfill comes from Morris Smith in “Pre-Proposal Visit: Toms River Chemical,” an August 6, 1968, memo from J. R. Lawson of Roy F. Weston Inc., page 4. The description of the “cliff” is in “Final Project: New Chemical Dump,” an October 21, 1971, report from William Bobsein to Toms River Chemical executives, page 1. Describing practices at the old dump, Bobsein wrote: “At present, those waste chemicals which are suitable for burial are packed into ‘scrap’ steel drums. These drums are transported by truck to a dumping site at the southern side of the plant property, along the edge of an abandoned lagoon which formerly comprised part of the wastewater treatment facility. The drums are then dumped over the edge of the ‘cliff.’ Most of the contents are spilled. At intervals of three to four months, some drums are crudely rearranged and the pile consolidated by the use of a crane. Sand is then spread over the drums, and the working ‘face’ of the dump is thus advanced.”

15.
William Bobsein, “Disposal of Combustible Wastes Status Report,” October 17, 1969, memo to Philip Wehner, 4.

16.
“Pre-Proposal Visit: Toms River Chemical,” 3.

17.
William Bobsein, “Hazardous and Solid Wastes,” a 1969 presentation, 1–10.

18.
“TRC Teach-In on Control of Pollution Attracts 1,100-Plus,”
TRC News
, December 1970.

19.
What came to be known as the “Refuse Act” is actually a section of the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899. More than twenty federal rivers and harbors laws were adopted between 1882 and 1970, their primary purpose being to keep the nation’s waterways navigable to boat traffic, which was crucial to commerce. The “refuse” section in the 1899 version that would eventually become so important as a tool of environmental enforcement was an afterthought even to its sponsors, one of whom (Senator William P. Frye of Maine, the chairman of the Rivers and Harbors Committee) described it as a mere compilation of existing laws with “very slight changes to remove ambiguities.” In the Refuse Act’s heyday in the early 1970s, some legal scholars objected that Congress had never intended for its criminal penalties to apply to polluters, only to physical barriers to boat traffic such as dumped rocks and soil or illegal bridges. The controversy faded when new federal laws, including the Clean Water Act of 1977, became the primary tools for enforcing water-quality standards. For more information, see Diane D. Eames, “The Refuse Act of 1899: Its Scope and Role in Control of Water Pollution,”
California Law Review
48:6 (November 1970): 1444–73; and William H. Rodgers Jr., “Industrial Water Pollution and the Refuse Act: A Second Chance for Water Quality,”
University of Pennsylvania Law Review
119:5 (April 1971): 761–822.

20.
Toms River Chemical had a 1965 construction permit from the Army Corps of Engineers for its ocean pipeline but not an operating permit, so the pipeline was operating with state, not federal, approval.

21.
Philip Wehner, “Meeting with Representatives of the Federal Environmental Protection Agency on the Mercury Problem at TRC,” September 15, 1971, memo, 1–3.

22.
To settle the case,
U.S. vs. Asbury Park
, the offending towns agreed to barge their sludge to dump sites farther offshore; wastewater discharges through ocean pipelines continued unabated.

23.
A January 18, 1977, quarterly report to Toms River Chemical’s board of directors included this assessment of the company’s talks with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, on page 15: “Considerable progress was made with EPA in regard to the effluent limitations for the new treatment plant. Litigation against EPA in regard to these limits will probably not be required. It appears that limitations will soon be adopted which are feasible and attainable by careful operation. Those limitations in the originally-proposed permit issued in October of 1976 could not have been attained.”

24.
J. Richard Pellington, “206 Count Indictment Astounds Officials,”
Ocean County Observer
, July 17, 1972. See also “TRC and Pollution,” unsigned editorial,
Ocean County Observer
, July 20, 1972.

25.
The current Environmental Protection Agency standard for many industrial organic compounds is just five parts per billion, and New Jersey’s current limit for some organic solvents is just one part per billion.

26.
Bob De Sando, “State Finds Contaminants in Water Company Wells,”
Asbury Park Press
, January 10, 1975. “A lot of people were very angry at me after that first story,” recalled the reporter, Bob De Sando. “They thought it was inflammatory and would get people scared, and that then things would spiral out of control.”

27.
Bob De Sando, “Wells Held Safe: State Contends Phenol Levels Not Hazardous,”
Asbury Park Press
, January 11, 1975. The article quotes Steven Corwin, a special assistant to the state environmental protection commissioner: “We feel there is no problem.… Phenols are not desirable by any means and could contribute to a taste and odor in some instances. But at those levels there is no physical detriment.… We sure wouldn’t let people drink anything that would be dangerous.” The article, which ran on the front page, essentially contradicted the story that appeared the previous day.

28.
Gillick,
For the Love of Mike
, 94.

1.
Don Bennett, “Lab Found More Problems,”
Daily Observer
, September 16, 1984.

2.
Among those who noticed occupational clusters of scrotal cancer was the Scottish surgeon Joseph Bell in 1876. A stickler for close observation, Bell was Arthur Conan Doyle’s teacher and the chief inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. “A Brief History of Scrotal Cancer,” 395.

3.
The chapter’s description of the Schneeberg mines and Walther Hesse and Friedrich Härting’s “mountain sickness” studies is drawn from several sources: Walther Hesse, “Das Vorkommen von Primärem Lungenkrebs bei den Bergleuten der Consortschaftlichen Gruben in Schneeberg,” translated as “The Occurrence of Primary Lung Cancer in the Miners of the Consortium Mines in Schneeberg,”
Archiv der Heilkunde
19 (1878): 160–62 [NIH Library Translation NIH-90-394]; Dieter H. M. Gröschel, trans., “Walther and Angelina Hesse—Early Contributors to Bacteriology,”
American Society for Microbiology News
58:8 (1992): 425–28; Margarethe Uhlig, “Schneeberg Lung Cancer,”
Virchow’s Archive for Pathological and Physiological Anatomy
230 (1921): 76–98 [NIH Library Translation NIH-90-58]; and M. Greenberg and I. J. Selikoff, “Lung Cancer in the Schneeberg Mines: A Reappraisal of the Data Reporting by Härting and Hesse in 1879,”
Annals of Occupational Hygiene
37:1 (1993): 5–14.