Daniel de Vise at the Washington Post reports on firefighters exposed to PCBs while training more than 20 years ago. Excerpts below.
Link: Tracing Cancer's Cause
At least 120 firefighters who graduated from the fire training academy in Millersville between 1968 and 1985 have been diagnosed with cancer, and at least 40 have died, according to a Montgomery County legal team that is assembling a potential case.
The firefighters believe they are a classic cancer cluster. A wave of premature deaths triggered memories of oil burned and fumes inhaled at the academy in the 1970s. The trainees didn't know then that the oil contained polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, compounds later found to cause cancer.
The firefighters, joined by the Hopkins expert and U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), seek a definitive study. More than that, though, they want help: cancer screenings for the healthy, medical coverage for the sick, burial for the dead.
A man of 20 has a 1 percent chance of contracting cancer by age 40 and a 3 percent chance by 50. Among the 2,000 recruits who trained at the fire academy between 1968 and 1985, most of whom were in their twenties, about 5 percent have contracted cancer, according to research by Cindy Ell, a retired firefighter who keeps a database of victims.
"Every time we bury somebody else, it creates a lot of anger and a lot of emotion," said Ell, a Delaware resident who has emerged as the Erin Brockovich of Anne Arundel firefighters. Much like the film and real-life heroine, Ell has almost single-handedly built a case for the firefighters while working for a lawyer sympathetic to her cause.
Accounts vary on exactly when the Anne Arundel firefighters came to regard PCBs as a ticking oncologic time bomb. Some say it was the day in 1997 that Fowler, then 43 and a robust engine driver, received his diagnosis.
The old Dollhouse still sits on the grounds of the training academy, set against a sweep of forest behind fire headquarters. The academy opened in 1968. Firefighters from Anne Arundel, Howard and Prince George's counties, Annapolis, Fort Meade and the U.S. Naval Academy trained there, according to Ell.
Starting in spring 1971, the academy accepted annual shipments of used transformer oil from Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. Trainers pumped oil into the Pit, a pool of water that would be set ablaze; the Christmas Tree, a rectangular steel structure that spat flame; and the Dollhouse.
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