Brain cancer trial postponed

The first McCullom Lake brain cancer trial has been pushed back to late September.
Originally scheduled for June 7 in Philadelphia, the civil trial against chemical manufacturer Rohm and Haas was moved Friday to Sept. 20 because of a conflict with the judge’s schedule.
The lawsuit is on behalf of former McCullom Lake resident Franklin Branham, who died of brain cancer in 2004. His widow and their two former next-door neighbors, also diagnosed with brain cancer, sued Rohm and Haas in April 2006, blaming their cancers on industrial pollution from the company’s plant in neighboring Ringwood.
Both plaintiffs’ attorney Aaron Freiwald and Rohm and Haas attorney Kevin Van Wart said they were disappointed in the trial delay “because we are ready to go.”
The Branham lawsuit is one of 31 filed to date by Freiwald. The lawsuits allege that decades of operations at the plant tainted residents’ air and water with carcinogenic vinyl chloride and other cancer-causing chemicals.
Lawsuits allege that residents of McCullom Lake and the Lakeland Park subdivision in McHenry were exposed to the chemicals by a large chemical plume oozing from a closed 8-acre, 15-foot-deep waste pit at the plant. While Rohm and Haas acknowledges the pollution, the company argues that it never reached residents or made them sick.
Dumping began in the early 1960s and ended in the late 1970s, when the plant was owned by Morton. Philadelphia-based Rohm and Haas acquired the plant when it bought Morton in 1999. Rohm and Haas last year was acquired by Midland, Mich.-based Dow Chemical Co.
Morton first reported the contamination to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency in 1983, and began cleanup operations in 1991, which continue today. But confidential records show that Morton officials learned of the contamination a decade before reporting it.
No McCullom Lake well has tested positive for any of the chemicals since the lawsuits were filed.
Epidemiology work done by the McHenry County Department of Health since the first lawsuits has concluded that brain cancer rates in the area’s ZIP code and the county itself are not above normal. The department and county government stand by the work, despite Northwest Herald investigations since 2007 questioning its methods, accuracy and impartiality.
The judge earlier this month ruled that the county’s work, and similar analyses by the Illinois Department of Public Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are inadmissible at trial.
A federal judge in March denied certification for a class-action lawsuit filed by Freiwald to force Rohm and Haas to pay for medical monitoring and property value relief for McCullom Lake residents. The decision is being appealed.