Elevated Cancer Rates in Passaic County Community

MYFOXNY.COM - New Jersey health officials have issued a report warning residents of a Pompton Lakes neighborhood of elevated cancer rates possibly, but not conclusively, linked to contaminants.

The area is near pollution from an explosives manufacturing plant that had operated in the borough for more than a hundred years.

Officials with the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services sent letters to neighborhood residents, urging them to install equipment that can remove potentially harmful vapors from their homes.

"Residents who live near a plume of contaminated groundwater from the DuPont Pompton Lakes Works site should have vapor mitigation systems installed in their homes to remove gases that may contaminate their indoor air, according to two reports released today," officials said.

DuPont Pompton Lakes Works operated an explosives manufacturing plant at the site from the 1880s until 1994. Waste management practices at the plant lead to significant contamination of soils, surface water and ground water, both on and off the site, state officials said. The groundwater was contaminated with volatile organic compounds. The contamination seeped into the ground beneath a residential neighborhood that has about 450 homes, official said.

Health officials examined rates for 13 types of cancer in the area from 1979 to 2006. The analysis revealed elevated rates of kidney cancer in women (but not in men) and non-Hodgkin lymphoma in men (but not in women) for 1994 to 2006.