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Years back, when I went to college, there was an area in New Jersey that was referred to as cancer alley. There had been a lot of industry dumping into rivers, which was generally thought as the reason for very high cancer rates in the surrounding towns, but that may not be the case since 19 counties are affected.
When people write about moving to New Jersey should they be told of this, the way, if you purchase property some detrimental things must be divulged by the seller?
'In 2006, the last year for which complete data is available, New Jersey still had the fifth-highest incidence of cancers in the nation . . .'
I don't know. The name, 'Cancer Alley' seemed well known when I went to high school, but now it seems like a dirty little secret. Who would buy property in such areas to raise a family in if they could avoid it?
It is supposedly from all the business dumping that was done in the past, but I think there is still some stealth dumping in the Passaic River at night. I see the EPA on the water from time to time taking samples. I remember, maybe four years back, seeing tons of bubbles in the river and, later, an oil slick. It seems that whenever there is a cutback in EPA funding or an administration favorable to business the mess starts up again.
It is such dirty politics that forced Christy Whitman to resign as head of the EPA.
Maybe, if you search around the web, you can find more specific figures.
I would also like to know where the other states, which do not seem as heavily industrialized as New Jersey, show their increased cancer rates. Also, is it concentrated right near a river, the way I've been told Jersey's is?
I remember many years ago reading about Toms River being a huge cancer cluster area of the state. The Ciba Geigy plant there was producing carcinogenic chemicals and pumping them through a pipe discharging the chemicals into the Atlantic Ocean. Since reading about this the story seems to have conveniently died.
In the 70's, the Route 1 corridor was also called "Cancer Alley".
This article says NJ was in the top 5 states in the last study that was done, but this was in 2006. It goes on to say that in 2008 the national cancer rate was up by 1 percent, whereas during the same period that of NJ dropped by 3.2 percent. If it were coming down from 30 or even 15 percent higher than the rest of the nation, that would be small potatoes.
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