Rather interesting. My own father died of Cancer and he worked there for a long time! I also have a good friend's sister who lived blocks from Pratt & Whitney in Fla and had Cancer a few years ago and now has it back again!! She recently moved. Coincidence? Rather interesting, nonetheless!!
Read these recent articles about it in the Palm Beach Post:
...........................................................................................
Potential Cancer Cluster Investigated Near Pratt In Florida -- Courant.com
By ERIC GERSHON
August 8, 2009
Public health officials in Florida are investigating a potential brain cancer cluster in a residential community near a Pratt & Whitney facility in West Palm Beach and expect to release early findings later this month.
A vast Pratt-sponsored study of brain cancers among its Connecticut employees, begun in response to concerns about workers at a former plant in North Haven, is now in its eighth year.
The Florida Department of Health began its inquiry in May, after a request from a single household in The Acreage, a community of 50,000 residents in Palm Beach County, according to Michelle Dahnke, a department spokeswoman. The Acreage is about 6 miles from Pratt's space propulsion and jet engine test facility.
Other Acreage residents also fear that chemicals from the Pratt operation have contaminated their well water, according to reports in The Palm Beach Post and posts on a blog called theacreagecancerstudy.com/.
No cause has been established for The Acreage cancer cases, however, and no link has been established to Pratt's activities in West Palm Beach, where the company has operated since the late 1950s. The Florida health department has not said how many or what type of cancer cases have been identified in The Acreage.
On Aug. 2, The Palm Beach Post reported a local estimate of at least eight cases of glioblastoma multiforme, a rare brain cancer, between 2004 and 2009, and more than 20 cases of various brain and nervous-system tumors since 1998.
Scores of Pratt workers in Connecticut have died of glioblastoma multiforme over decades.
In a statement Friday, Pratt said it is "not aware of any connection between Pratt & Whitney and the concerns in the Acreage area of Florida."
The statement continued: "Pratt & Whitney has a comprehensive program to protect the environments in which we do business and to ensure that our employees and our communities are safe."
The first part of the Florida health department's study is intended to determine whether there seems to be an increased rate of cancer, or a specific type of it, in The Acreage. The study will rely on existing health data. Results, expected this month, will "help direct the investigation into the next phases," Dahnke said.
Florida environmental protection officials this week began testing The Acreage's groundwater for a variety of contaminants, according to an agency statement on Wednesday. The statement says the agency is "not aware of any point source of pollution" of the community's groundwater, and says Pratt is in compliance "with all DEP hazardous waste regulations."
Results of the Connecticut study's first part, released last September, found a slightly higher rate of brain cancer among North Haven workers than for the state's population. But researchers said the difference was "not statistically significant" and could have been caused by factors unrelated to the plant.
Bill Gerrish, spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Public Health, said Friday that he was unaware of any contact between his agency and investigators involved in the Florida inquiry. New results are expected in the Connecticut studies next year.
Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant
..................................................................................
an earlier article of the same subject:
Acreage residents worry Pratt & Whitney contaminants played role in brain tumors
Acreage residents worry Pratt & Whitney contaminants played role in brain tumors
Listen to this article or download audio file.Click-2-Listen
By MITRA MALEK
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 27, 2009
Some Acreage residents believe contaminant spills at Pratt & Whitney might have caused brain tumors in their central Palm Beach County community, but the company says its work off Beeline Highway isn't harming public health.
The rocket and jet engine developer has accumulated a long list of toxic leaks and spills on its 7,000 acres dating back to at least 1979 - including one that spread into the neighboring J.W. Corbett Wildlife Management Area. The company also made headlines in the early 1980s with its own, on-site, cancer scare.
Brain tumor If you have a brain tumor and live in ZIP codes 33470, 33412 or 33411, or know of someone who does, you can contact The Palm Beach Post at watchdog@pbpost.com.
Meeting Thursday
Who: The Palm Beach County Health Department
What: Holding an interim update meeting on the state investigation into whether a brain cancer cluster exists in The Acreage.
When: 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday
Where: Clayton E. Hutcheson Agricultural Center, Exhibit Hall A, 559 N. Military Trail, West Palm Beach.
Acreage cancer watch
Latest on Possible Cancer Cluster in The Acreage
locator graphic showing Pratt Whitney contamination locations
Map: View locations of Pratt & Whitney spills
Fueling concern is that most of The Acreage's 50,000 residents tap wells for drinking water. As they press the state Department of Health to investigate a possible brain cancer cluster, residents have launched a community-run Web site, theacreagecancerstudy.com, that features a section on Pratt & Whitney's spills.
"They had all those hazardous solutions that leaked," said Richard Cotromano, whose daughter has an optic glioma. "We have no idea what's in our soil."
Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies Corp., initially answered questions about the spills and cleanup, but later declined additional comment.
"There's little to no migration of groundwater impact off our site," Pratt Spokesman Tom Callaghan said. Nor does it move toward The Acreage, he said.
Water generally flows southeast from the property, wrote Arcadis, an international consulting firm, in a January 2009 report updating Pratt's cleanup. The Acreage's northernmost edge is about six miles south - and slightly east - of Pratt.
"We developed a robust remediation plan to ensure that there was no risk to the environment and human health," Callaghan said. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Protection "determined that conditions here don't pose a risk to human health or the environment."
The DEP is keeping track of Pratt's remediation and its current disposal of hazardous waste. It's meeting the regulations it should be, DEP officials said.
"EPA and DEP have determined that human health exposures and groundwater contamination migration at the facility are under adequate control," said DEP spokeswoman Linda Frohock.
Pratt in 1957 started manufacturing and testing engines along Beeline Highway. Unpopulated land surrounded it. Its workforce numbered about 8,000 in the 1980s. Today, about 2,000 Pratt and Sikorsky Aircraft employees work there.
Twenty-four contaminants are still suspected to be on the property, according to a DEP permit issued in September 2008.
One contaminant, 1,4-dioxane, migrated beyond the property, 800 feet into the J.W. Corbett Wildlife Management Area. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services considers 1,4-dioxane "as reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen."
Pratt reported the problem in 2003, and it put six sampling wells on the Corbett property. The most recent tests, in April, showed one of the six sites had concentrations slightly above acceptable limits.
Otherwise, no contaminants are believed to have spread beyond Pratt's borders.
"It would be fairly unlikely that they have not found a significant source of contamination, and it would take a significant source of contamination for it to migrate off the property," said Anthony Tripp, DEP site manager for Pratt's remediation.
But properties under remediation could have caused off-site contamination long ago and not be detectable now, said Tallahassee-based environmental attorney David Ludder, former president of the Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation.
Also, it's challenging to determine how deeply contamination has gone because of a reluctance to probe too far, said Mike Annable, a University of Florida Professor of Environmental Engineering Sciences. That's because vertical drilling can worsen problems by spreading contamination farther down.
Over the years, technicians and mechanics at Pratt dumped and spilled cleaning solvents, jet and rocket fuel and toxic chemicals, including cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. A buried waste oil tank leaked volatile organic compounds.
At one point, in the early 1980s, one leak was enough to cause cancer worries at the facility.
It started with a 1979 spill of TCE. The suspected carcinogen, which dissolves grease, leaked from a Pratt storage tank and contaminated the company's water supply.
The company notified health officials and followed with a $1 million cleanup. It also commissioned a 1981 University of Miami study - which showed degreasing materials at Pratt might have increased employees' death and cancer rates.
The company rejected the report, and a National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health study two years later refuted the university's study.
Pratt began its cleanup in the early 1980s - after the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act went into effect regulating disposal of hazardous waste.
At first the EPA oversaw the work, then around 1985 the DEP took over primary responsibility.
At about the same time Pratt was evaluated for entry as a Superfund site, but the EPA in 1989 dropped it because the land was being remediated.
But that didn't mean Pratt got a gold star. Despite several years of remediation, a 1988 state Department of Health report concluded that the site was "of potential public health concern because of the risk to human health caused by the possibility of exposure to hazardous substances via chemicals in groundwater and air."
The company in 1999 reported to regulators that through that year it had excavated 22,000 tons of contaminated soil and recovered 14,000 gallons of fuel from groundwater. It also said it had finished 70 percent of soil cleanup and 85 percent of groundwater cleanup.
DEP officials said they don't know what current figures are nor do they know how much longer it will take to finish cleaning up the property.
Staff researcher Niels Heimeriks and Miami Herald archives contributed to this story.
mitra_malek@pbpost.com
Read these recent articles about it in the Palm Beach Post:
...........................................................................................
Potential Cancer Cluster Investigated Near Pratt In Florida -- Courant.com
By ERIC GERSHON
August 8, 2009
Public health officials in Florida are investigating a potential brain cancer cluster in a residential community near a Pratt & Whitney facility in West Palm Beach and expect to release early findings later this month.
A vast Pratt-sponsored study of brain cancers among its Connecticut employees, begun in response to concerns about workers at a former plant in North Haven, is now in its eighth year.
The Florida Department of Health began its inquiry in May, after a request from a single household in The Acreage, a community of 50,000 residents in Palm Beach County, according to Michelle Dahnke, a department spokeswoman. The Acreage is about 6 miles from Pratt's space propulsion and jet engine test facility.
Other Acreage residents also fear that chemicals from the Pratt operation have contaminated their well water, according to reports in The Palm Beach Post and posts on a blog called theacreagecancerstudy.com/.
No cause has been established for The Acreage cancer cases, however, and no link has been established to Pratt's activities in West Palm Beach, where the company has operated since the late 1950s. The Florida health department has not said how many or what type of cancer cases have been identified in The Acreage.
On Aug. 2, The Palm Beach Post reported a local estimate of at least eight cases of glioblastoma multiforme, a rare brain cancer, between 2004 and 2009, and more than 20 cases of various brain and nervous-system tumors since 1998.
Scores of Pratt workers in Connecticut have died of glioblastoma multiforme over decades.
In a statement Friday, Pratt said it is "not aware of any connection between Pratt & Whitney and the concerns in the Acreage area of Florida."
The statement continued: "Pratt & Whitney has a comprehensive program to protect the environments in which we do business and to ensure that our employees and our communities are safe."
The first part of the Florida health department's study is intended to determine whether there seems to be an increased rate of cancer, or a specific type of it, in The Acreage. The study will rely on existing health data. Results, expected this month, will "help direct the investigation into the next phases," Dahnke said.
Florida environmental protection officials this week began testing The Acreage's groundwater for a variety of contaminants, according to an agency statement on Wednesday. The statement says the agency is "not aware of any point source of pollution" of the community's groundwater, and says Pratt is in compliance "with all DEP hazardous waste regulations."
Results of the Connecticut study's first part, released last September, found a slightly higher rate of brain cancer among North Haven workers than for the state's population. But researchers said the difference was "not statistically significant" and could have been caused by factors unrelated to the plant.
Bill Gerrish, spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Public Health, said Friday that he was unaware of any contact between his agency and investigators involved in the Florida inquiry. New results are expected in the Connecticut studies next year.
Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant
..................................................................................
an earlier article of the same subject:
Acreage residents worry Pratt & Whitney contaminants played role in brain tumors
Acreage residents worry Pratt & Whitney contaminants played role in brain tumors
Listen to this article or download audio file.Click-2-Listen
By MITRA MALEK
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 27, 2009
Some Acreage residents believe contaminant spills at Pratt & Whitney might have caused brain tumors in their central Palm Beach County community, but the company says its work off Beeline Highway isn't harming public health.
The rocket and jet engine developer has accumulated a long list of toxic leaks and spills on its 7,000 acres dating back to at least 1979 - including one that spread into the neighboring J.W. Corbett Wildlife Management Area. The company also made headlines in the early 1980s with its own, on-site, cancer scare.
Brain tumor If you have a brain tumor and live in ZIP codes 33470, 33412 or 33411, or know of someone who does, you can contact The Palm Beach Post at watchdog@pbpost.com.
Meeting Thursday
Who: The Palm Beach County Health Department
What: Holding an interim update meeting on the state investigation into whether a brain cancer cluster exists in The Acreage.
When: 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday
Where: Clayton E. Hutcheson Agricultural Center, Exhibit Hall A, 559 N. Military Trail, West Palm Beach.
Acreage cancer watch
Latest on Possible Cancer Cluster in The Acreage
locator graphic showing Pratt Whitney contamination locations
Map: View locations of Pratt & Whitney spills
Fueling concern is that most of The Acreage's 50,000 residents tap wells for drinking water. As they press the state Department of Health to investigate a possible brain cancer cluster, residents have launched a community-run Web site, theacreagecancerstudy.com, that features a section on Pratt & Whitney's spills.
"They had all those hazardous solutions that leaked," said Richard Cotromano, whose daughter has an optic glioma. "We have no idea what's in our soil."
Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies Corp., initially answered questions about the spills and cleanup, but later declined additional comment.
"There's little to no migration of groundwater impact off our site," Pratt Spokesman Tom Callaghan said. Nor does it move toward The Acreage, he said.
Water generally flows southeast from the property, wrote Arcadis, an international consulting firm, in a January 2009 report updating Pratt's cleanup. The Acreage's northernmost edge is about six miles south - and slightly east - of Pratt.
"We developed a robust remediation plan to ensure that there was no risk to the environment and human health," Callaghan said. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Protection "determined that conditions here don't pose a risk to human health or the environment."
The DEP is keeping track of Pratt's remediation and its current disposal of hazardous waste. It's meeting the regulations it should be, DEP officials said.
"EPA and DEP have determined that human health exposures and groundwater contamination migration at the facility are under adequate control," said DEP spokeswoman Linda Frohock.
Pratt in 1957 started manufacturing and testing engines along Beeline Highway. Unpopulated land surrounded it. Its workforce numbered about 8,000 in the 1980s. Today, about 2,000 Pratt and Sikorsky Aircraft employees work there.
Twenty-four contaminants are still suspected to be on the property, according to a DEP permit issued in September 2008.
One contaminant, 1,4-dioxane, migrated beyond the property, 800 feet into the J.W. Corbett Wildlife Management Area. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services considers 1,4-dioxane "as reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen."
Pratt reported the problem in 2003, and it put six sampling wells on the Corbett property. The most recent tests, in April, showed one of the six sites had concentrations slightly above acceptable limits.
Otherwise, no contaminants are believed to have spread beyond Pratt's borders.
"It would be fairly unlikely that they have not found a significant source of contamination, and it would take a significant source of contamination for it to migrate off the property," said Anthony Tripp, DEP site manager for Pratt's remediation.
But properties under remediation could have caused off-site contamination long ago and not be detectable now, said Tallahassee-based environmental attorney David Ludder, former president of the Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation.
Also, it's challenging to determine how deeply contamination has gone because of a reluctance to probe too far, said Mike Annable, a University of Florida Professor of Environmental Engineering Sciences. That's because vertical drilling can worsen problems by spreading contamination farther down.
Over the years, technicians and mechanics at Pratt dumped and spilled cleaning solvents, jet and rocket fuel and toxic chemicals, including cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. A buried waste oil tank leaked volatile organic compounds.
At one point, in the early 1980s, one leak was enough to cause cancer worries at the facility.
It started with a 1979 spill of TCE. The suspected carcinogen, which dissolves grease, leaked from a Pratt storage tank and contaminated the company's water supply.
The company notified health officials and followed with a $1 million cleanup. It also commissioned a 1981 University of Miami study - which showed degreasing materials at Pratt might have increased employees' death and cancer rates.
The company rejected the report, and a National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health study two years later refuted the university's study.
Pratt began its cleanup in the early 1980s - after the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act went into effect regulating disposal of hazardous waste.
At first the EPA oversaw the work, then around 1985 the DEP took over primary responsibility.
At about the same time Pratt was evaluated for entry as a Superfund site, but the EPA in 1989 dropped it because the land was being remediated.
But that didn't mean Pratt got a gold star. Despite several years of remediation, a 1988 state Department of Health report concluded that the site was "of potential public health concern because of the risk to human health caused by the possibility of exposure to hazardous substances via chemicals in groundwater and air."
The company in 1999 reported to regulators that through that year it had excavated 22,000 tons of contaminated soil and recovered 14,000 gallons of fuel from groundwater. It also said it had finished 70 percent of soil cleanup and 85 percent of groundwater cleanup.
DEP officials said they don't know what current figures are nor do they know how much longer it will take to finish cleaning up the property.
Staff researcher Niels Heimeriks and Miami Herald archives contributed to this story.
mitra_malek@pbpost.com