CIVIL ACTION BASED ON FAULTY SCIENCE \doc\web\99\01\chemhunt.txt Dec 7, 1998 An Uncivil Axing of Reality by Michael Fumento "A Civil Action," is based on Jonathan Harr's book of the same title which has been on the New York Times best-seller list for over two years. It tells of attorney Jan Schlichtmann and his small law firm "seeking justice" for eight Woburn, Mass. families who lost members seven children and one adult--to leukemia. After an expensive and inconclusive trial in 1986, Grace settled for $8 million. Michael Fumento 4600 Washington Boulevard, Apt. 207 Arlington, VA 22201 Copyright 1998 by Michael Fumento 202-974-2406 (work) 202-223-8537 (fax) 703-875-8350 (home) mfumento@compuserve.com December 7, 1998 An Uncivil Axing of Reality by Michael Fumento Michael Pack's 1987 PBS documentary labeled business "Hollywood's Favorite Heavy." Maybe it's time for a sequel, because they just don't get any heavier--or more unfairly treated--than the crucifixion of W.R. Grace Co., coming Christmas Day to a theater near you. "A Civil Action," is based on Jonathan Harr's book of the same title which has been on the New York Times best-seller list for over two years. It tells of attorney Jan Schlichtmann and his small law firm "seeking justice" for eight Woburn, Mass. families who lost members seven children and one adult--to leukemia. After an expensive and inconclusive trial in 1986, Grace settled for $8 million. The families received less than half that after attorneys' fees and expenses, and nobody really won. But the When personal injury lawyers set about identifying the cause of their clients' illnesses, they use sophisticated methodology. First, they identify someone with deep pockets. Then they find something that "Deep Pockets" did that a jury might accept as the cause of the illnesses. Schlichtmann found Beatrice Foods, which owned a tannery in the area, and Grace, which owned a machine shop. The only alleged cause of illness mentioned in the movie is trichloroethylene (TCE), a common solvent for cleaning metals. Schlichtmann claimed that in dumping TCE onto the ground, Beatrice and Grace allowed it to ultimately migrate into two wells that served the leukemia victims. Yes, Grace employees were guilty of dumping TCE behind the small machine shop the corporation had built in Woburn in 1960. They are now probably paying tens of millions of dollars in Superfund costs (they declined to give a specific figure). An EPA official spoke to me in glowing terms of Grace's cleanup cooperation, and a local newspaper declared five years ago, "Today Grace is one of Woburn's model corporate citizens.") Such dumping, however, was an area practice begun literally 350 years earlier when a hide tanner set up shop and began treating animal skins with such chemicals as arsenic, a deadly poison and human carcinogen. Soon the area became the tanning capital of America, and probably one of its earliest toxic waste sites. In 1958 two years BEFORE Grace opened its machine shop, a city-hired engineer prepared a report saying the water where the authorities wanted to sink two wells was throughly polluted and to not dig there. The city dug anyway. Further, according to Ohio State University geologist E. Scott Bair, the whole issue of Grace's TCE reaching the leukemia victims is moot. Based on a computer model of his and one of his doctoral students, Bair says nothing from Grace's land "could have gotten to the wells in the time period required." Beatrice got off the hook during the trial because of a geologist's report finding that its contaminants could not have reached the wells. Yet Schlichtmann himself declared in an appellate brief, "Compared to the Beatrice site, which abuts the wells and is in marsh on extremely soft and porous ground, the Grace site is located on hard-packed ground on a plateau completely out of sight of the marsh and wells and eight times further away." Another company that dumped solvents and other chemicals was located The TCE connection also falls apart. Back in 1986, information on the solvent was relatively sketchy. Now we have the results of numerous rodent studies, those in which the animals are often dosed with hundreds of thousands of times the amount of chemical humans might receive. Though such studies are so sensitive that half the time they end up prompting tumor formation, NO published rodent study has ever found a TCE-leukemia connection. Similarly, controlled studies on humans exonerate TCE. In 1995, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) combined four individual several human TCE exposure studies and found no statistically significant increases for ANY type of cancer. Philip Cole, M.D., an epidemiologist at the University of Alabama, Auburn did a similar analysis with more studies and concluded the same. Three of IARC's studies looked for leukemia and found a DECREASED risk associated with TCE exposure, albeit a non-si Yet the movie script concludes by declaring, "In 1996 . . . the Massachusetts Department of Public Health made an official finding that the contaminants in the water were indeed responsible for causing the leukemia in the children." Wrong. The study found, "There appeared to be no association between the development of childhood leukemia and consumption of water" by the children, thereby eliminating Schlichtmann's causation theory. Instead, the report said water consumption by the MOTHERS, particularly during pregnancy, is "ASSOCIATED" with "the incidence of childhood leukemia." (Emphasis added). "Association" in epidemiology means there may or may not be causation. Sniffles are associated with colds; they don't cause them. The Finally, the study showed two exposures to pregnant women were stronger predictors of leukemia development in offspring breast feeding and dental x-rays during pregnancy. Both were associated with a 10-fold increased risk! Is this study truly vindication for a book and movie asserting that W.R. Grace negligently killed eight people? Only in Tinseltown. But try getting a best-selling book or hit movie with a title like: "An Uncivil Corporate Witch Hunt." 30 Michael Fumento is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., where he specializes in health and science issues. W.R. Grace maintains an exhaustive web site on this subject at http://www.civil-action.com.