They are not statistics

(Young children I had interviewed were dying. I had been in touch with their parents for two years at this point. Government officials were still dragging their feet, citing and playing numbers games. I guess I finally lost my cool for a moment. The column speaks for itself.)

By CHARLES C. RYAN
A column

Patrick Toomey was buried Saturday. Jimmy Anderson was buried in January.

Patrick was 11. Jimmy was 12.

They both went to the same school. They both died of leukemia.

They are not the only ones. Others died before them.

A four-year-old girl was just diagnosed with leukemia on March 23rd. Other children are fighting it now. They are not statistics.

When he was well enough to stay up a little later than normal, Jimmy liked to watch the "Dukes of Hazard."

Patrick was all-boy and took trombone lessons.

Jimmy died before he ever had a chance to drive a real car like his TV heroes. Patrick never had a chance to play his brass instrument in a real band.

But they were real kids and did what real kids do. They are not statistics.

Their lives were cut short. They never had a chance to try out for the football team and experience "Tanner Pride" first hand. They never went through the terror and thrill of their first date, or tasted the clumsy sweetness of their first kiss.

A high school diploma, the crazy fun and sweat of college, the nervousness of their first full-time job, falling in love, getting married, having children of their own - all of that was denied them.

Why?

"Why?" That is what one parent asked when his first born son died of leukemia in the late 1960s. "Why couldn't it have been me, instead?"

Why?

Some politicians, many businessmen, a handful of scientists, too many doctors would say it is all just a statistical coincidence. People die from leukemia, cancer, auto accidents and a thousand other causes every year. Where and when it happens is just a matter of statistics, they say. Sure.

Jimmy and Patrick are not statistics. No child is just a statistic.

Why them? Why did they die?

Some believe they died because we have opened Pandora's chemical box. That we have unleashed petrochemical genies from dark smelly bottles and those genies are poisoning us, poisoning every man, woman and - God forbid - child.

Some blame G and H wells and the foul corrosive water they used to spew forth into many of our homes. Some blame the toxic wastes left behind in North Woburn. Some blame the herbicides and pesticides sprayed on our crops and right of ways. Some blame the preservatives, food colorings, artificial additives and chemical "miracles" sprinkled into our food, drink and hundreds of every day household goods that we all handle.

They are right.

They may not be right in each given instance. But, collectively, they are right.

A man is "innocent until proven guilty" under our legal system. The same assumption is being foolishly applied to the 55,000 chemicals smothering our environment.

Why? Because we sit still for it. Because we aren't "experts" and no one will listen to us. Only "experts" can find the answers.

Hogwash!

There are no "experts" who possess the answers.

Sure there are some scientists who have obtained the funding to find out that lead or arsenic shouldn't be a significant part of our diets. They can even tell you some of the symptoms you'll suffer if you ingest a lump of the stuff. But they cannot tell you what a tiny, invisible, impossibly small amount of it taken each day for years and years will do.

Of the 55,000 chemicals surrounding us, those "experts" can tell you what an overdose of a few hundred of them will do to you.

But what will a little bit each day do?

Don't ask. They don't know.

What about the 54,000 plus chemicals they haven't tested ten ways from Sunday? What will they do to you?

Don't ask. You don't want to know because the only answer is silence.

The answer is silence because it would take forever and cost zillions to test each of those 54,000 plus chemicals.

And that isn't even the real worry. Most of those chemicals all by themselves are probably harmless in most situations in which you or I would come into contact with them.

But there is another very real worry to consider and that is something the experts call "synergism."

Simply put, synergism says that two chemicals, which may be innocuous or only mildly dangerous by themselves, become two, ten or a thousand times more dangerous when they are combined.

Why don't the experts have any answers?

Because it is physically and humanly impossible to find them all.

If a scientist (or even ten thousand scientists) were to examine all of the possible combinations, which might occur among the 55,000 known chemicals, it would mean performing an impossible number of tests approaching infinity.

Specifically it would mean conducting 2, raised to the 55,000 power, tests, less one test.

In simpler terms it means the number two followed by 16,500 zeros and after you have written all those zeros, subtract the number one.

Why don't we have any answers in Woburn then? There are only 80 or so chemicals that they have found so far.

It is the same problem. It would mean conducting around 2,097,151,999,999,999,999,999,999 tests just to find out the effects of the 80 chemicals in Woburn on laboratory animals.

When the Massachusetts Department of Public Health tells us that none of the chemicals found in Woburn is known to cause leukemia they are telling the truth. But they are also dealing in double talk because of what they do not tell us. They don't tell us that they haven't the faintest idea what the various combinations of those chemicals may do or whether or not they may cause leukemia. Nor do they know what a little bit of those chemicals mixed in with our breakfast cereal, our coffee, our soft drinks, the fumes from the plywood in our homes will do to us.

They do not know. That is the truth.

Everything else is just a numbers game. It is statistics.

But Jimmy and Patrick and all the others are not just statistics. They are children. And they are becoming ill and dying before our eyes.

But the Mayor and others don't like all the bad publicity the toxic wastes and cancer and leukemia are giving Woburn.

No one can blame the Mayor for the chemicals left behind by all the old chemical companies. No one can blame the Mayor for the high rate of cancer and childhood leukemia.

But those vitally affected by the problem can certainly wonder why the Mayor has sat back, letting others speak for him, providing no leadership, no voice at the statehouse, no voice in Washington?

Instead of yelling in outrage at the illnesses and the delays in cleaning up the problem, he yells about newspaper headlines and television reports. He decries the "bad publicity." He passes the buck to the City Engineer and Board of Health and they, very comfortably say, "We're not experts. We'll wait for the experts to give us the answers."

There are no experts.

Instead of waiting for nothing to happen, the Mayor and Engineer and Board of Health should be banging on doors at the statehouse, they should be demanding to speak before the Congress of the United States, they should be telling President Reagan to stop trying to cut Superfund.

Instead, U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Congressman Ed Markey and State Representative Nick Paleologos are making the noise our city officials should be making.

Chemicals are guilty until proven innocent.

Guilty.

The Rev. Bruce Young is a "trouble maker," a "headline seeker" because he cares enough to stick his neck out to demand answers, to demand action.

Some figure I'm a troublemaker too.

Damned right!

And there is going to be more trouble before there is less.

If the Mayor doesn't like it, if the City Engineer doesn't like it, if the Board of Health doesn't like it, if the Chamber of Commerce and real estate brokers don't like it, well that is just too bad.

Jimmy Anderson spent nine of his 12 years fighting for what most of us take for granted -- his life.

Patrick Toomey will never play with his friends again.

They were both too young to fully understand what was happening to them. They never had a chance to get angry.

But you can get angry. I can get angry.

We can yell for Jimmy. We can bang on doors for Patrick. We can stop this complacent, status quo, business-as-usual garbage.

We can try to keep any more kids from becoming statistics for those who hide behind numbers.

They are not statistics.

They are our children and they deserve a better shake than we are giving them now.

Write to the Mayor, the City Councilors, and the President. Call them. Tell them what you think, what you want done.

Do something.

Anything, dammit.

(In 1994, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) officially determined that exposure to water from G and H wells was related to an increase in childhood leukemia and other autoimmune illnesses in Woburn. The study was based on a careful epidemilogical study combined with a precise, day by day, analysis of where the water was distributed when G and H wells were running done by Dr. Peter Murphy, who is now with the U.S.G.S., and DPH Epidemiologist Kevin Costas. According to Dr. Marvin Zellen and Dr. Steven Lagakos of the Harvard University School of Public Health, Woburn has become a driving force behind a new awareness of community involvement in epidemiological studies. Dr. David Ozanoff, of Boston University's School of Public Health, said recently that nine studies have been done of trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene since Woburn. Three of them found an increase in leukemia. All of them found immunological disorders. Tetrachloroethylene, or PERC, is used at most dry cleaning establishments. It breaks down into TCE, or trichloroethylene when it is released into the environment. TCE and PERC are the second highest contaminants found in polluted wells in the United States. He said Woburn was the driving force behind those studies. All three doctors were highly critical of the "factually incorrect" articles which appeared in the first two months of 1999 in "The New Yorker," "The New York Times," and other major news outlets, claiming that cancer and leukemia clusters are a myth. The articles appeared right around the time of the release of the film A Civil Action, and the doctors attributed the coincidence to chemical industry attempts to offset bad publicity from the film.)