Memories turn chilling
Cancer fears haunt those who grew up by Ashland plant
By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff | April 27, 2006
ASHLAND -- As a boy, Reginald Mimms recalls, he fired a pellet gun at canisters behind the Nyanza Inc. chemical and dye plant, cheering with his friends as they exploded into a cloud of steel-gray vapor.
Long foul balls sent Neil MacLennan wading thigh-high into pools of sludgy, iridescent water, as his baseball buddies watched from the bank.
In a game of tag that was an after-school ritual, Kathy Zilioli chased her younger brother, as he shrieked with delight, into the marshy woods behind their house.
These were idyllic memories of childhood in Ashland, a middle-class suburb 25 miles west of Boston. Now, decades later, these recollections are flooding back, not as the escapades of carefree youth, but as horrific moments those who experienced them wish had never happened.
A new study by the state Department of Public Health has shown that for hundreds who grew up in Ashland, swimming or wading in the foul water behind the plant put them at a far higher risk of developing cancer.
''Quite frankly, I think it scares the hell out of everybody," said Paul Thorpe, a longtime resident.
The study's findings have traumatized Ashland's residents, many of whom fear it is only a matter of time before they hear a doctor's grim diagnosis. Most everyone has at least one memory of playing behind the plant, in woods as inviting as a playground or a friend's backyard. After a victory, Ashland High School football players would splash in one of the colorful chemical lagoons created by the plant's fetid discharges. The track team would run on trails by the plant, leaping over purple puddles.
''I remember the stream changing colors daily," said Mimms, 48, who was a runner at Ashland High and now sits on the town board of health. ''But back in 1965, you weren't even thinking of that stuff."
Rose Cosman recalls her daughter, Cheryl, who graduated from Ashland High in 1978, coming back from her first year at McGill University in Montreal complaining of pains in her side. Five months later, Cheryl Cosman died in her mother's living room, 17 days before her 19th birthday, from kidney cancer that had spread to her liver. Now, Rose Cosman is haunted by memories of Nyanza's toxic woods -- and the belief that authorities should have known something was wrong.
''She started playing down there when she was 12 years old," Cosman, 70, said yesterday. ''They all played down there. The snow was blue -- everybody laughed about the blue snow -- and the dogs would go down brown, they'd come back purple. And the kids would go down with . . . their shoes one color and they'd come back another color. So, it was there. It was there."
Still, she said, she is relieved that health officials are finally confirming what she had long dreaded. ''Too many children died," she said.
The plant opened in 1917, on 35 hilly acres of scrubby pines, a short stroll from Ashland's small downtown. Beginning in 1968, when the town had about 9,000 people compared with 15,000 today, Nyanza operated the plant, and its grounds became a popular shortcut for students from nearby Ashland High. In 1978, the plant closed, but the woods stayed open to the public until 1985, when an ongoing cleanup began under the federal Superfund program.
The plant's health effects began stirring serious concern when five residents were diagnosed with sarcoma, a rare form of soft-tissue cancer, in the 1980s and 1990s. Prodded by their families, the state launched a study in 1999.
The study, released Tuesday, found that people who grew up in Ashland 20 to 40 years ago and swam or waded in the water behind the plant have a two to three times greater risk of developing cancer than residents who didn't. The state asked people who played in the water even once between 1965 and 1985 to see a doctor, as a precaution.
''I know that this information is scary, but we believe that we have a responsibility to people to share the information," Suzanne Condon, assistant commissioner of public health, told about 50 residents at Ashland High on Tuesday night. ''The important piece is that there are advances being made in cancer research every day. By working closely with healthcare providers, there are things that can be monitored."
After Condon's presentation, Liz Lahens, 32, eight months pregnant, trembling, and in tears, walked to a microphone in front of the stage. In a voice so hushed it was barely audible, she said she now fears for her safety and that of her unborn child.
''I swam. I bathed. I fished in the pond. I did all kinds of things that kids do. I did everything. What happens to me?" she asked. ''. . . I'm just frightened to hear all this. I'm very, very afraid."
Condon tried to reassure her that her risks were low.
Yesterday, in the brick shops around Main Street, news of the study reverberated. Some people said the findings were comforting, because they told them what they had long suspected. Others were disturbed.
''You've got to be angry at the whole industrial revolution that happened here," said Anthony Belsito, 62, a barber who was cutting hair at his small shop on Front Street. ''They dumped all that stuff. They just buried it in the ground."
Zilioli, 60, who said she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma two years ago, called herself ''one of the fortunate ones."
''So many kids didn't make it," she said.
MacLennan, 35, was among those who did survive. Diagnosed with sarcoma at 14, he stood in a doorway at Ashland High on Tuesday night, listening stone-faced as health officials explained the dangers posed by his childhood haunt, behind the Nyanza plant.
He said he was worried about his son's risks of developing cancer.
''I don't think it vindicates anything, it just gives you an understanding of what happened," he said. ''What could I have done differently? Nothing. I don't look at it as playing at the plant, I look at it as playing around like normal kids do. . . . I've been lucky enough to still be here."
Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com |
