The news website NJ.com in April reported on more than 40 cancer cases in a Keyport neighborhood near the former Aeromarine Industrial Park. The property, where workers churned out military seaplanes and flying boats, closed in 1979. Today it is a dormant landfill with confirmed contamination.
Two months after the story ran, a study commissioned by NJ.com has logged 370 cases, leading to greater fears of a potential cancer cluster. Residents are calling on the state and the site owner for answers in Keyport, 41 miles south of Manhattan on the Raritan Bay and home to about 7,100 people.
“We’ve reached out to the community,” said Karin Price Mueller, an NJ.com investigative journalist who broke the story. “And community members have come to us with concerns about cases in their families or even their own case.”
The NJ.com study plots the verified cases — including blood, lung and kidney — in a 0.6-square-mile radius of the site. Researchers also are examining an area about 2.5 square miles beyond the primary neighborhood.
“So many people who have reported to us said that they had genetic testing done,” Mueller said. “And they were told, ‘No it’s not a genetic cause. It’s environmental.’”
No evidence links the cancer cases to the landfill. The researcher who analyzed the initial data, though, concluded that residents in the vicinity are 15% more likely to develop cancer than the rest of Monmouth County.
“It’s such a remarkable number of cases that everyone seems to think it deserves further study,” Mueller said.
A 2010 site study found known and likely carcinogens including benzene, arsenic and lead. Following the initial NJ.com report, the state Department of Environmental Protection said it will study the site in tandem with Pacer Partners, a potential buyer. Pacer applied for a state permit to test for contaminants in February.
“They’re going to determine whether or not there is a so-called pathway for human exposure,” Mueller said. “And that is supposed to tell people whether or not whatever chemicals can be found there could have gotten to people.”
It will take years to know whether the neighborhood is a cancer cluster. Some Keyport families, meanwhile, are mourning loved ones.
“We may never know what caused all of these peoples’ cancers,” Mueller said. “But it’s understandable that they’re worried and they’re concerned.”
The owner, Bay Ridge Realty Corp. of Brooklyn, has been fined $1.2 million, and the site has not been remediated.
“The responsibility at this point is still on the current owner,” Mueller said. “And not a penny has been paid in those fines.”
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