By LAWRENCE AARON
Published: November 26, 2004
© North Jersey Media Group
AT FIRST, Mickey Van Dunk turned off the light and undressed in the dark to
hide what was happening to his flesh. That was 10 years ago, when tumors
started appearing on his torso, and he didn't want to alarm his wife.
Now, 17 surgeries later, with massive infected chunks of Mickey's body
removed, Linda Van Dunk cleanses the wounds, tends the scars and soothes the
spirit of her husband, whose condition has led to facial disfigurement and
loss of function in the most private areas of his body.
Diagnosed with hidradenitis suppurativa, Mickey calls his surgeon at UMDNJ
every few months to let him know it's time to cut again.
Now weighing 190 pounds, the 6-foot-2-inch Mickey Van Dunk was once a
strapping 250-pound outdoorsman who loved working out and playing football
and basketball. That life is over. He feels miserable.
"No sex, no hunting, no fishing, no sports," he says with sardonic disgust.
Van Dunk, 34, still lives in Upper Ringwood, in the same area where he grew
up and sometimes played with other kids on the mounds of industrial junk -
the tons of lead-based paints, solvents and other discarded materials Ford
Motor Co. regularly dumped very close to his home.
"You can't make me believe it didn't come from that stuff," he said,
describing going home with skin and clothes dirty from the dump. "I didn't
have nothing until I was 23. That next summer I had it all over my face, all
over my backside."
State and federal health officials are examining disease data for a joint
report delayed until early next year. However, it is limited to assessing
the Upper Ringwood community's level of exposure to lead and carcinogens
from the toxic dump site. It will take much more investigation to prove
definitively whether Ford is responsible for illnesses suffered by Mickey
Van Dunk and others.
In the meantime, residents should be offered continued health monitoring and
medical screening for potential lead poisoning and cancer.
I first learned about Mickey from his friends and relatives who stayed after
a town meeting earlier this month about Ford's on-again, off-again cleanup
of the former Superfund site since the late Eighties.
Residents were airing concerns about the health implications of so many
unresolved cases of toxic waste contamination in their yards and scattered
around a 500-acre area of Upper Ringwood where Ford dumped debris from its
Mahwah plant from 1967 to 1974. Adults and children living in the vicinity
of the contaminated site developed rashes and chronic skin problems: Mickey
Van Dunk's is one of the worst cases.
The residents blame their ailments on contact with the heaping tons of
industrial waste, some by digging in to retrieve salvageable car parts,
copper and other metals. Many breathed and ingested toxins.
No one warned them of potential health risks.
Take Larry Sheehan, 48, who has seen several doctors about the undiagnosed
burning pains in his legs. He describes it as feeling "like somebody took a
blow torch" to them.
Sheehan grew up near Peter's Mine in Upper Ringwood. He believes his
incessant pains come from the gooey chemicals he stepped in - and sank in -
and couldn't wash off.
"I think when we were grabbing all the copper, I happened to fall in some of
this stuff up to my knees," Sheehan said. "We didn't know any better."
Sheehan, who has worked more than 20 years as a machinist, is now out of a
job and lacking medical coverage to pursue answers.
Bruce Molholt, a toxicologist working with the law firm that is helping the
community deal with Ford and the EPA, took note of environmental documents
showing extremely high levels of lead. He finds equally alarming the
presence of PCBs in the discarded waste, especially when they burned in dump
fires that would last for days.
Smoke and soot released into the air from PCB-burning fires can be very
harmful to anyone breathing it in or coming into contact with it.
"If you start burning sludge, you produce a much worse compound," said
Molholt, a scientist formerly with the EPA who has worked at more than 500
waste sites around the country. "This is the only one I know of where the
Superfund site was on people's property and people had direct contact
exposure."
Molholt says anyone exposed to burning PCBs would still have contaminants
stored in their fat cells, leading to cancer, skin and respiratory problems
and possibly also posing great harm to fetal development.
He also notes the high potential for PCBs and their combustion products to
poison the immune system.
The EPA's project director Joe Gowers says EPA and Ford agreed to meet again
with residents and their attorneys next month about the cleanup. But any way
you look at it, the health consequences of Ford's dumping toxic waste are
not going away for at least several generations, even if the EPA forces Ford
to take a stab at another site cleanup.
Present and former residents of Upper Ringwood who might have been exposed
all need blood tests to determine once and for all what physical damage has
been done, and then the next few generations should be closely monitored and
given first-class medical treatment.