High cancer rates linked to polluted pond

BOSTON – A disturbingly high number of cancer cases have been linked to a former textile dye-making plant and its waste ponds, where several people now battling cancer swam when they were children, state health officials say.

A seven-year study found that people who grew up in Ashland from the late 1960s to early ‘80s and swam in contaminated ponds were two to three times more likely to develop cancer than those who had no contact with the water. The cancer rate was nearly four times greater among people with a family history of cancer and who also swam or waded in waste lagoons and contaminated wetlands near the Nyanza Inc. dye plant, the Department of Public Health said Tuesday.

Investigators interviewed 1,387 people who were 10 to 18 years old during1965 to 1985 and lived in Ashland. The study found 73 cases of cancer and eight cancer-related deaths. About two-thirds of the cancers were diagnosed before age 35.

Although the contamination was well-known, some residents didn’t consider it a risk.

“We had reports to us that one of the things that the old Ashland high school football team used to do when they won a big game was to go jump into the lagoons,” said Suzanne Condon, state assistant commissioner of public health.

The Nyanza plant operated from 1965 to 1978 in Ashland, a town of nearly 15,000 about 22 miles west of Boston. The Nyanza site was added to the federal Superfund cleanup list in 1983.

Nyanza’s successor companies agreed to pay $13 million of the $46 million the government has spent on cleanup, said Jim Murphy of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The government has pursued no illness-related legal claims, and Murphy declined to comment on whether such cases might result from the study.