The OHD response is very disturbing to those families whose children have suffered and some died because of childhood cancer that has been found at a statistical rate that is staggering for such a small town as Clyde. What is particularly upsetting is that the OHD material data sheet on Benzaldehyde has pictures of muffins, cherries and shampoo rather than burning eyes and noses, dead rabbits, and children with mutations.
The Department charged with protecting the public health omits that the EPA has designated it as a hazardous substance that requires HAZMAT clean up if found in defined levels. It omits that there is an effort afoot by many groups to remove Benzaldehyde from food and cosmetics completely. It is known to cause tumors in rats, rabbits and mosquitoes and has a known link to lymphoma. The material data sheet omits that Benzaldehyde causes mutations that can result in cancerous tumors in human and that in its vapor form it is most harmful. It omits the fact that Benzaldehyde is known to cause multiple organ damage.
Because of medical ethics, it is known that there is little human exposure case data available. Given this fact, the families do not expect that the OHD would come out with a publication promoting its safety instead of using the opportunity to study their findings and do a true case study with children that have cancer and have Benzaldehyde in their attics. The OHD has made no effort to determine whether the Benzaldehyde found in the familiesattics came from flavoring additives, gelatin pudding, apples, melons, truck exhaust or even from whisky before issuing its hastily produced information sheet.
The families do not expect anyone, including the OHD, to interpret their findings in the same way their experts have interpreted them. Indeed, science is predicated on proving, disproving and explaining empirical findings. Whirlpool will be invited shortly to test the same attics in fairness to Whirlpool and so that these families can clean their attics.
What the families did expect was that the OHD and the SCHD would truly try and study the possible link between the findings of elevated Benzaldehyde and the Cancer Cluster. The families paid for the testing and it was provided by the families free of charge to the OHD and the SCHD. The families expected that the OHD would further its claimed mission of protecting the innocent citizens in a town surrounding by 14 known Whirlpool hazardous dump sites, a Whirlpool plant with unacceptable levels of PCBs and Arsenic and a population with over 30 children with cancer of which at least five have now died. The families are devastated that the OHD doesn’t want to find the truth because the truth may point to the OHD own inability to protect Clyde citizens because of political or corporate pressures.
Sources
http://nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb/documents/fs/0196.pdf
http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/a?dbs+hsdb:@term+@DOCNO+388
http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/ingredient/716926/BENZALDEHYDE/
Please contact:
Alan Mortensen at (801) 556-6867
Charles Boyk at (800) 637-8170
