By Courtney Dentch
Southeast Queens leaders and volunteers are planning to go door-to-door in Jamaica over the next few months to conduct a cancer study to determine the extent of the disease in area residents.
The state Department of Health is working with the neighborhood to canvass the area within about a one-mile radius of the West Side Corporation site, at 107th Avenue and 180th Street, where groundwater was contaminated by dry-cleaning chemicals and gasoline additives, said state Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-St. Albans).
Smith is coordinating the study along with Assemblyman William Scarborough (D-St. Albans), Councilman Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans) and Manuel Caughman, president of the Brinkerhoff Action Association.
Concern about cancer rates in the community stems from fear that a series of wells from the old Jamaica Water Supply system were contaminated. The city bought the wells, many of which were closed due to a lack of maintenance rather than safety issues, in the mid-1990s.
City and state environmental agencies have been working to clean the well at the West Side site, where industrial chemicals, such as perchloroethylene, known as PERC, and methyl tert-butyl ether, known as MTBE, were stored and had leaked into the ground.
Community outcry grew over the summer, when the city proposed opening other wells that had been tested for contaminants to ease the drought. Residents were concerned the groundwater that was added to their drinking supply would carry toxins, but city and state tests found those pumps were not contaminated.
The new study follows one the state Department of Health completed about a year ago, which found fewer cancer cases than expected for the years between 1980 and 1988, Smith said.
“We all felt we needed a little more detail because we were finding residents saying there are 20 to 30 people on a block who have cancer,” he said. “The study's results weren't ringing true.”
The original study found 878 cases of the disease, broken down into nearly 20 types for men and women, about 40 less than had been anticipated.
One of the reasons for the low incidence of cancer in the first report was that the study relied heavily on the cancer registry, which lists patients who have the disease, but does not track people who may have moved or died, Smith said.
The door-to-door study will use a questionnaire, asking residents about the type of cancer they have, lifestyles that may contribute to the disease and any information they have about relatives or neighbors who may have moved away, Caughman said.
“We want a more precise study,” he said. “The survey the state did was more of a general study.”
Both Caughman and Smith stressed that all information will be kept confidential.
The group is still compiling the questionnaire and Smith hopes to hold a community training session for volunteers toward the end of February, he said. Canvassing will likely begin next month and continue through April, Smith said.
“People want answers,” Smith said. “We want to be able to give the people of southeast Queens a comfort level, not only with the history but with the future as well. We need to protect the citizenry.”
Reach reporter Courtney Dentch by e-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com, or by phone at 229-0300, Ext. 138.
