Illinois residents form group to help fight for cleanup

January 27, 2008 - Like so many others in Champaign, M.D. Pelmore's basement sump pump goes into overdrive during the rainy season to keep groundwater at bay.

But every once in awhile there's something else: an unusual smell he can't quite place.

Pelmore lives steps away from the 3.5-acre site of a former coal gasification plant, now the focus of a cleanup effort by AmerenIP.

And that makes him nervous.

He built his basement over an old abandoned water well, and he's worried that contaminated groundwater or vapors might somehow find their way into his home.

He's also worried about what his children might have been exposed to years ago, when it was common for youngsters to play on the now fenced-off site.

Pelmore said he was unaware of the history of the former coal gasification site, which operated at least from 1887 until the early 1950s, until a citizens' group started publicizing the issue a couple of months ago.

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Lawsuit brought by Illinois cancer patients settled

January 25, 2008 - Racine-based Modine Manufacturing Co. announced today it has settled a lawsuit brought by two next-door neighbors with brain cancer who alleged their illnesses were caused by contamination from a Modine manufacturing plant here.

The agreement in principle settles 22 personal injury cases filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas and an alleged class action lawsuit that was filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Litigation against other named companies in the lawsuits continues.

The lawsuit contended that all three brain cancers were caused by toxic contamination of air and groundwater by the three defendant companies. The suit alleged “years of toxic chemical spills that led to contamination with known cancer-causing compounds, including vinyl chloride and trichloroethene.”

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Illinois Landfill's methane gas leaks pose worry to neighbors

January 20, 2008 - "Our lives are not our own. We live in fear and uncertainty."

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency started testing homes in Perez's neighborhood in November for methane, which can cause explosions or fires if trapped in confined areas such as basements.

The gas is seeping from the landfill at Schick and County Farm roads and has been detected underground, although not in any homes.

The dump has a history of pollution problems. The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency was aware in 1994 and 2000 that methane gas was found at unsafe levels near the perimeter.

And that's why Perez and others are asking tough questions about the state's accountability.

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W. Chicago neighbors banding together against thorium contamination

November 9, 2007 -

A new resident group has formed to agitate for disclosure and action on thorium issues in West Chicago.

The group, Protection of Lives Against Thorium, will hold its first meeting tonight.

Thorium is a radioactive element that causes cancer with long-term exposure.

"We're concerned that knowledge isn't being openly shared and efforts aren't being made to make sure everyone understands what's going on," said member Kathy Bentham, who lives near the former Kerr-McGee plant.

Thorium was spread throughout West Chicago from the factory over decades, leading to two government-supervised cleanups in the 1980s and 1990s.

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EPA tests indicate possible contamination of Illinois neighborhood wells

November 6, 2007 - EAST PEORIA - If you get your water from a private well north of East Peoria, you might test it for some industrial solvents.

Those who use the public water supply are not affected. Those with private wells within the area south of North Grossenbach Hill Road, up to one mile east of the Illinois River and north of U.S. Route 24 are encouraged to have their water tested by a private laboratory.

Contaminants that have been found in the water include carbon tetrachloride, which exceeds the groundwater quality standard, and 1,1,1-trichloroethane and 1,2-dichloroethane, which were below the groundwater quality standard. Carson said all are industrial solvents used in the area years ago but are not being discharged currently.

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Were Latinos left in the dark about thorium contamination in West Chicago neighborhood?

November 4, 2007 - Whites flee radioactive cleanup site, replaced by Hispanics. And all say they were left in the dark about thorium problem that's plagued the area for decades.

In the 17 years since she moved to her West Chicago home and raised three children, no one told Olivia Reza that much of her neighborhood had been excavated to remove cancer-causing radioactive thorium.

"It worries us," Reza said in Spanish. "We wouldn't have moved here if we knew."

The same response is echoed by dozens of people living near the shuttered Kerr-McGee factory, many of whom these days are Latino.

They say no one explained that, during ongoing cleanups that began in the 1980s, the site has been used as a temporary holding facility for contaminated dirt.

No one told them that studies have shown elevated cancer rates in the area.

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Angry West Chicago residents seek answers from EPA

October 31, 2007 - Officials who have known for five years about possible buried radioactive thorium contamination on up to 100 West Chicago properties faced the public for the first time Tuesday.

At a meeting called to discuss the issue, a dozen frustrated homeowners grilled federal Environmental Protection Agency officials about why their homes may need to be dug up for the third time in three decades.

The owners of 96 residential properties were invited to the gathering, which included representatives from the city and Tronox, the current incarnation of the company responsible for the contamination.

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Illinois residents urged to test well water

October 20, 2007 - The switch to bottled water can be a pain, Rosemarie Schilf said. But after trace levels of chemicals were found in her well water, she’d rather play it safe than sorry.

Schilf’s well, like many in the Boone County subdivision near Beaver Valley and Squaw Prairie roads, tested positive several years ago for low levels of volatile organic chemicals. For most, like the Schilfs, the water is not believed to be a health threat.

Though the first contamination was discovered back in 1999, Schilf doesn’t feel comfortable drinking from the faucet yet.

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Illinois residents wonder if contamination is the cause of cancer and other disease clusters

October 9, 2007 - A few years ago, residents of five small towns in northern and central Illinois started noticing an unusual number of multiple sclerosis cases among their friends and family.

They were healthy, in their teens to middle age, when they were diagnosed. Their immune systems began attacking their own myelin, the protective insulation around the spinal cord. The result was reduced or lost bodily function.

They weren't alone. Concerned residents have called the Will County Health Department about disease clusters as well.

"We hear that kind of stuff all the time," said health department spokesman Vic Reato. However, those claims are difficult to confirm, he said.

In DuPage and Will counties, residents have expressed concerns about MS clusters linked to crematoriums and fertilizers, and cancer clusters tied to chemical contamination of well water. The cancer clusters turned out to be neighborhoods where the disease occurred at normal levels for DuPage County, and they had no correlation to groundwater contamination, according to a 2006 report from the Illinois Department of Public Health. The MS clusters have yet to be investigated.

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Illinois Couple Leave Home Contaminated with Radioactive Thorium

September 15, 2007 - More than three weeks after learning their home was an environmental hazard, Sandy and Rich Riess are getting out.

On Aug. 22, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials informed the company that tests showed the Riess home was contaminated with Kerr-McGee thorium, causing more than 300 times the safe level of radiation.

Until Friday, Tronox lawyers hadn't responded to requests from Mark Sargis, the Riesses' attorney, to move the couple out.

Tronox representatives had said only that they needed to examine the home and create a cleanup plan -- a process that could take six weeks, Sargis said.

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EPA finds radiation levels in soil beneath a West Chicago home that are more than 300 times the federally acceptable level

August 23, 2007 - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified radiation levels in soil beneath a West Chicago home that are more than 300 times the federally acceptable level, officials said Wednesday.

Inspectors took samples on Aug. 9 from the home of Sandra Riess, whose property is about 200 yards from the former Kerr-McGee Co. plant that once produced thorium for gas lamp mantles. The plant was identified as the source of thorium found throughout the town after the plant closed in 1973.

Two weeks ago, inspectors removed bricks, mortar and soil from a hole in Riess' basement to pinpoint the source of radiation that had been found in samples taken in July.

By testing positive for high levels of radium, Riess' property falls under the agency's Superfund project that has cleaned up 676 properties in West Chicago.

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Radiation in West Chicago neighborhood

August 10, 2007 - In April, when her two St. Bernards died of bone cancer within six days of each other, Sandra Riess tried not to panic.

She already knew her property in West Chicago contained higher than usual levels of radiation from the old Kerr-McGee Co. plant that once sat less than 200 yards away. But when the area was cleaned in 1994, inspectors were prevented by the then-owner from testing the basement, where Riess' dogs frequently wandered after Riess moved in. Their deaths led her to push the EPA harder to inspect her property, she said.

On Thursday, inspectors from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency removed bricks, mortar and soil from a hole in her basement to pinpoint the source of radiation after samples taken two weeks ago showed levels nearly 50 times what the federal government considers acceptable.

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Chicago resident's home contains almost 50 times the amount of radioactivity deemed safe by the federal government

August 9, 2007 - "These levels are staggering," Sandy Riess said. "They're so extraordinary to be shocking."

But U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials say the thorium is limited to Riess' basement, and likely hasn't caused anyone harm.

EPA officials said the finding is a "new discovery" unconnected to the other 116 residents who recently learned in letters from the government that there might be buried residual thorium on their properties. The contamination may have been left over from a 1980s cleanup and missed during a second examination in the 1990s.

Kerr-McGee Co. inadvertently distributed thorium throughout West Chicago for several decades. The substance, a byproduct of a closed factory that made gaslight mantles, was used as fill for construction of many homes in West Chicago. Riess owns one of the properties originally decontaminated by Kerr-McGee in the 1980s.

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Contamination at Illinois Beach State Park

July 25, 2007 - Nearly a decade ago, the Chicago Sun-Times first exposed asbestos pollution at the park near Zion. Now, according to a letter from a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official, "significantly elevated" levels of the most toxic form of the known carcinogen have been found there.

The far north suburban beach remains safe, federal and state authorities said in interviews. But an April 24, 2007, letter from an EPA official to a federal health official in Chicago raises concerns. In the letter, Brad Bradley, a U.S. EPA project manager, cites "concerns regarding the safety of human use of the beaches."

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Early test says thorium still poisoning Chicago suburb

July 21, 2007 - If correct, the findings will be the first evidence to validate new suspicions that the cancer-causing radioactive element thorium could remain on some residential properties in West Chicago.

By Friday afternoon, Riess said she was considering moving out of her house.

“I am terrified,” she said. “I can’t even breathe right now.”

Well-chewed dog toys rested on the floor a few feet away from the sewer lid. They had belonged to Riess’ two Saint Bernards, Oscar and Siren, ages 10 and 11, who played often in the basement until recently, when they died of bone cancer within a week of each another.

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18 Sick Illinois Residents Sue Over Groundwater Contamination

June 7, 2007 - rene Suchor felt sick to her stomach seven years ago and hurried to the bathroom of her McCullom Lake home.

She made it to the kitchen before she started throwing up blood, and her husband called an ambulance after finding her passed out from blood loss. Doctors diagnosed her with advanced cirrhosis, but could not determine a cause – Suchor does not drink, and has never contracted hepatitis, the two most common causes.

Seven years and a liver transplant later, Suchor, 69, now blames groundwater contamination from three Ringwood manufacturers that a Philadelphia attorney has sued on behalf of 17 other people.

But her lawsuit, filed Thursday in a Philadelphia court, is unique among the 18 filed against the manufacturers. The other lawsuits are from people who claim that they contracted brain and nerve cancers from contaminated groundwater.

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Is Thorium Still in the Ground of West Chicago?

May 22, 2007 - Sandy Riess has watched three of her dogs die in the past six months.

Sailor, a 7-year-old Newfoundland, died in December of undetermined causes. Four months later, two Saint Bernards, Oscar and Siren, ages 10 and 11, succumbed to bone cancer within a week of each another.

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Boiling water for drinking in Chicago

May 1, 2007 -

Martha Castillion, a Chicago resident for nearly 20 years and grandmother of a 2-year-old toddler, boils her water for drinking and cooking.

“I don’t like … my kids to be contaminated,” she said.

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Illinois Residents Learn of Lead Contamination

Despite this article's headline, I'm not sure how this information will releave the resident's fears.

April 12, 2007 - ABINGDON - Phyllis Worthington said two words after she picked up the newspaper April 3.

"I said 'Oh' and another word you can't print in the newspaper when I saw they were testing for lead in my neighborhood," Worthington said as she stood in Abingdon High School's cafeteria Wednesday. More . . .

Landfill Impacts Home Owners 2 Miles Away

It looks like a benign, if not massive, bump on a flat stretch of road in DuPage County.

For 25 years, Mallard Lake landfill near Bloomingdale was where much of the area's trash was stashed.

Towering and immense, the former dump is covered with a blanket of grass. But beneath the surface, homeowners two miles away allege, was a toxic stew seeping toward and contaminating their wells.

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