Some see link between toxins at power plant and workers' deaths
Gorge Boys' tales of cancer end without answers
By Bob Downing, Akron Beacon Journal
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The Gorge Boys are dying.
Cancer is killing the workers who spent decades toiling at the now-closed, coal-burning power plant in North Akron.
James M. McVan, who lived in Akron's Ellet neighborhood, died in early 2001 of kidney cancer. He was 52.
Six months later, Frank W. Fultz Jr., a 53-year-old Uniontown resident, died of colon cancer that had spread to his liver.
In April 2003, Wilbert E. Witherspoon of North Akron died at age 58 of multiple myeloma (an incurable cancer of plasma cells) and tumors in his spine.
Last November, Freddie L. Jackson, a resident of West Akron, died of prostate cancer. He was 51.
McVan and Fultz were buddies, as were Witherspoon and Jackson. They all worked for more than two decades at the Ohio Edison Co.'s Gorge Power Plant on the Cuyahoga River between Akron and Cuyahoga Falls. They are on a growing list of former Gorge plant workers stricken with various forms of cancer.
Growing also is a belief among some Gorge workers, their families and their friends that the cancers were caused by environmental hazards at the plant.
``We knew we had a problem when we were going to all the funerals,'' = [100.0]said Rick Zito, Local 126 president for the Utility Workers Union of America, which represents Ohio Edison employees.
By workers' accounts, there have been 25 cases of cancer among the more than 100 blue-collar men and women who at one time or another worked at the plant, which was mothballed on Oct. 31, 1991.
``There is something wrong there with all of these guys dying,'' said Wilbert Witherspoon's widow, Cheryl. ``The common factor is that all these men, including my loving husband of 24 years, worked at that plant and were exposed to so much poison and ended up dying of cancer.''
Cancer comes early
The Gorge cancer cases could be just a sad coincidence.
After all, health officials estimate that roughly 40 percent of all Americans will get some form of cancer during their lifetime.
And health experts say it's very difficult to prove a workplace link to cancer, especially from coal-burning power plants.
Dr. Devra Davis,head of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh's Cancer Institute, finds it intriguing, however, that many of the Gorge plant workers were stricken with their cancers at earlier-than-expected ages.
Gorge workers in their 40s and 50s were diagnosed with cancers more commonly found in older men.
According to federal health statistics, 66 is the average age for a diagnosis of kidney cancer, which killed McVan at at 52. Colon cancer strikes, on average, in the late 50s; Fultz died at 53. The average age for a prostate cancer diagnosis, which killed Jackson at 51, is 72.
But Davis emphasized that she would need far more information and would need to do much more analysis to draw a conclusion about the Gorge cancers.
Company denies problem
Ralph DiNicola, a spokesperson for Akron's FirstEnergy Corp., the parent company of Ohio Edison, said FirstEnergy has no record of a cancer problem at the Gorge plant and no one ever complained about such a problem when the plant was running or after it closed.
The company is ``sad about our fellow workers and retirees having cancer,'' DiNicola said, ``but we don't see anything at the Gorge plant that might have caused it.''
DiNicola described the suggestions of a connection between the old plant and the workers' cancers as ``news to everyone,'' and said FirstEnergy first heard about cancers in early February, after the Beacon Journal started interviewing former Gorge workers.
The company then talked extensively with its personnel about the Gorge plant and its operation and about the cancer connection, DiNicola said, and ``did not find anything unusual in any way.''
But Nick Vitale, union secretary for Local 126, disputes DiNicola's statement that the company just learned this year of the cancer concerns.
The cancers among the former Gorge workers were raised with company officials in mid-2001, Vitale said.
Ellen Raines, another FirstEnergy spokesperson, said the company has no record of that and if someone raised the cancer issue four years ago, that concern was not passed on to higher-ranking Ohio Edison officials.
The operation of the Gorge plant was similar to that of Ohio Edison's other coal-fired plants, DiNicola said, and there's no evidence of cancer problems at those plants or elsewhere in the industry.
Gorge was the smallest company plant and was a training ground for workers and management, he said.
FirstEnergy ``would take action if there was evidence of any kind of an issue,'' DiNicola said, ``but we can't tell if there's an issue at all. We don't think the answer is the Gorge Power Plant.''
Various factors at play
Many other factors, besides environmental hazards, must be looked at in assessing the cause of cancer. These include genetics, family history, lifestyle, exercise, smoking and diet.
DiNicola points this out and says to suggest a link between the Gorge plant and workers' cancers without assessing all those factors is unfair to Ohio Edison and is ``guilt by association.''
It is also unfair, he said, to other former Gorge plant workers who might hear about an alleged cancer link and worry about their health.
Raines said the company has identified 115 union workers who toiled at the Gorge plant from 1970 until its shutdown. The company has limited access to medical records because of privacy rules and therefore would not know about workers' cancer cases, she said.
Medical experts say that it would be almost impossible to prove a particular case of cancer came from the Gorge Power Plant and that the number of cancer cases is too small to be statistically significant.
Among the 50 laborers at the plant when it closed in 1991, there have been 11 cancer cases: Five of those people are dead.
That cancer total is likely to climb because the Gorge workers now range in age from their early 40s to their early 70s. The older people get, the more likely they are to be diagnosed with cancer.
Fourteen other cases of cancer have been identified among union men and women who once worked at the Gorge plant but were not still there when it closed.
The cancers among the Gorge workers are not the same type -- a fact that suggests there is no common cause. There are lung, colon, kidney, bladder and prostate cancers, along with multiple myeloma.
There are also cases of breathing problems, including several workers with asbestosis, a scarring of the inside of the lungs by airborne asbestos fibers.
Gorge workers openly admit to having been concerned about getting black lung disease because of the pulverized coal dust to which they were constantly exposed, and they reported breathing problems because of the asbestos in the plant.
But cancer wasn't on their radar until co-workers started dying.
Survivor sees link
Ohio Edison workers Harley Treen, of Midland, Pa., and Paul Wilson, of Randolph Township in Portage County, are two of the Gorge plant's cancer survivors.
Treen, 59, worked at the Gorge plant as a mechanic from 1969 to 1975 and then transferred to Ohio Edison's coal-fired Bruce Mansfield Power Plant in Shippingport, Pa., where he still works.
He is convinced that working in coal-fired power plants, including the Gorge, cost him his right kidney and parts of his left kidney to cancer in 1998.
``Cancer at the Gorge? It's there,'' Treen said. ``There's no doubt in my mind. And we never knew it. And now it's too late.''
Wilson, 58, worked at the Gorge plant for 22 years and still works for Ohio Edison as a storekeeper.
Coal dust and asbestos at the Gorge plant were ``bad, real bad,'' he said. ``It's an issue that worries all of us.''
But Wilson said he thinks the cluster of cancers from the Gorge plant may be little more than a bad coincidence -- a connection impossible to prove.
The cancer cases among Gorge employees haunt other, currently healthy Ohio Edison workers.
``It's a nightmare and it's something I worry about every day,'' said Bill Haid, a 57-year-old Cuyahoga Falls resident, who worked for 22 years at the Gorge plant. ``I could be next. And I have no way to know.... I wonder why them and not me. And I can't answer that. That's troubling.''
Added Thomas Mitchell, 55, of Akron, an Ohio Edison worker with 23 years at the Gorge: ``Nearly everyone who worked at the Gorge is really concerned about people dying.... Is it coincidence or is it more than that? Right now, no one knows.''
Local 126 of the Utility Workers Union asked union workers at First-Energy power plants, including the bigger and newer Sammis and Burger plants on the Ohio River, if they have experienced unusual numbers of cancer cases.
Zito, the local president, said the answer to cancer was no. In fact, heart problems, perhaps tied to stress, were more of a concern to unions at the other plants.
Workers remember hazards
Producing electricity at the Gorge plant was a filthy, back-breaking job that paid well, according to interviews with about five dozen former plant workers.
The electricity-making process was simple: Coal was burned to heat water until it turned to steam that turned turbine blades to power a generator.
Coal dust, fly ash, cyanide, fiberglass and toxic chemicals surrounded the workers and covered them with black residue.
Workers would blow their noses and the mucus would be black. They could shower and still leave black fingerprints on white-painted door frames. The coal dust was in their pores and would not wash off.
Asbestos was used throughout the plant as an insulator and fire retardant. Workers would routinely handle and move asbestos to make needed plant repairs.
Toxic metals, including small amounts of mercury, arsenic, chromium, zinc, nickel, manganese, barium, copper, cobalt and thallium, could all be found in the coal, its dust and its ash. Very small amounts of dioxin is produced when coal is burned.
Exposure to mercury, dioxin, arsenic and chromium pose the greatest cancer risks.
Burning coal creates an array of toxic gases: hydrochloric acid, hydrogen fluoride and sulfuric acid. Such acids are corrosive and can cause breathing problems.
Workers used toxic chemicals stored in 55-gallon drums to clean the plant and to remove minerals from the water that went into the two boilers.
DiNicola, the FirstEnergy spokesperson, said the toxic chemicals used at the Gorge were solvents, acids and cleaners similar to those widely used in the industry.
Over the years Ohio Edison operated the plant, he said, the company met all applicable laws and regulations.
He acknowledged that asbestos was widely used in the Gorge and power plants. But before the mid-1980s, there were few rules limiting worker exposure to asbestos and toxic chemicals.
Workers said safety precautions, such as wearing masks and respirators, didn't become practice at the Gorge plant until the mid- to late 1980s when such steps became required.
Ohio Edison checked the workers who used respirators for lung problems with twice-a-year chest X-rays and breathing tests. Blood and stool samples were also collected. Such tests ended when the Gorge plant closed.
Gorge Boys name sticks
Those who worked at the plant called themselves Gorge Boys or Gorge Guys.
They were, by most accounts, hard-working men -- and women -- who loved their jobs. They became a tight-knit group of loyal company workers, who came to work early and stayed late. They volunteered for overtime. Most never took sick days. Some skipped vacations.
The Gorge Boys regularly worked back-to-back, eight-hour shifts and even cooked and ate their meals surrounded by the coal dust, asbestos and chemicals.
After a shift, they routinely would drink a few beers together at bars in Cuyahoga Falls and North Akron. They would meet with spouses once a month for dinner at a restaurant, followed by a get-together at a worker's house.
They attended one another's family parties, weddings, graduations and First Communions.
Even today, 13 _ years after the plant closed, those Gorge workers who remain with Ohio Edison are still known as the Gorge Boys. It's an identity that has survived within the company.
James M. McVan -- 52
It was the deaths of the four men -- McVan, Fultz, Witherspoon and Jackson -- that set off the alarm bells for Gorge workers.
James McVan and Frank Fultz both had graduated from East High School. McVan had 28 years with Ohio Edison and Fultz had 29. Both had 21 years at the Gorge plant, where they worked their way up to be boiler operators.
Both men had overcome polio as youngsters, and they fought their cancers as long and as hard as they could.
McVan, the father of two, was a big supporter of Pee Wee and high school football in Ellet. He worked concessions and bingo and proudly ran the Pee Wee equipment truck for 13 years after being recruited by a neighbor.
His prize possession was a Corvette in orange and white -- Ellet colors. It was a fixture in community parades.
McVan was diagnosed with advanced kidney cancer on Jan. 31, 2000, and told he had three months to live. He lasted 11 months.
When he got sick, McVan told his co-workers that he'd be back on the job as an electrician in Ohio Edison's substations in a few weeks. He did go back for three months, although he did little work. He couldn't.
At one point, McVan had 37 visiting co-workers in his hospital room.
The kidney cancer shrank his body from 185 to 120 pounds. Though the last three months were especially rough, McVan stayed at home, wanting his wife, Pat, and not outsiders, to take care of him.
Pat used cornstarch and white towels to eliminate bed sores. She cared for him around the clock, even after she suffered a broken arm in a fall down the basement stairs.
They tried different cancer-fighting strategies.
``I read everything and I tried everything to save him,'' Pat said. ``I made him drink lots of strange things until he finally told me to stop it. And that was hard.''
Cancer destroyed McVan's hip and thigh bone. Pat said doctors found spots on her husband's lungs that they attributed to asbestos exposure.
McVan died three weeks after witnessing the birth of his first grandchild, Madison Claire Woodard, while sitting in his wheelchair.
Five Ohio Edison trucks were part of his funeral procession.
He ``never really said whether he thought his cancer came from the Gorge plant,'' his widow said. ``Jim didn't blame anyone. He just said, `I beat polio and I can beat this, too. Don't worry about it.' As far as Jim was concerned, the cancer just happened.''
Pat McVan finds the cancer cases among the Gorge Boys troubling.
``I don't want to see anyone else go through what I went through.... Obviously, you can't bring anyone back. But why have so many people had to go through such misery?''
Frank W. Fultz Jr. -- 53
Fultz, a Coast Guard veteran, was diagnosed with colon cancer in July 2000. Doctors gave him one year to live.
Fultz was a family guy, the father of two and grandfather of four. He was a big NASCAR fan. His bathroom at home was decorated with a Dale Earnhardt theme, complete with a black-and-white checkered floor.
His widow, Dottie, said that because her husband came down with cancer six months after seeing McVan stricken, that made it rougher.
But Fultz, who dug trenches and laid underground cable at Ohio Edison, never complained. His message was simple: Don't give up.
He never blamed the Gorge plant for his illness. ``That was just never brought up,'' Dottie said.
He was happy to have a job with a company that provided vacation and sick time, she said.
Dottie, who cared for her husband at their Uniontown home, would occasionally call Pat McVan ``to compare notes... and commiserate a little bit.''
Fultz had been a big man, weighing nearly 255 pounds. He shrank to 160 pounds while battling cancer. Dottie said her husband also had a spot on his lungs from asbestos.
Dottie Fultz has mixed feelings about the Gorge plant.
``It just seems awfully strange to me that everyone came down with cancer,'' Dottie said. ``It just doesn't seem right. In my heart, I want someone to blame. But I know it's impossible to prove that the Gorge plant was responsible.... Maybe something's there, but there's no way of knowing. Who can say for sure? No one.''
In June, Dottie Fultz plans to marry Carl Hunnell, a Cuyahoga Falls resident and former supervisor at the Gorge plant.
Hunnell, now retired from Ohio Edison, told the Beacon Journal that he has seen no evidence to link the cancer cases among Gorge workers to the old plant.
Wilbert E. Witherspoon -- 58
Wilbert Witherspoon died April 18, 2003, seven years after his multiple myeloma was diagnosed.
His cancer was discovered when he went to a hospital for a sprained back. Doctors said he might not live long enough to leave the hospital.
But Witherspoon, known simply as ``Spoon,'' was a fighter and staged what his wife, Cheryl, calls ``our miracle.''
He spent 31 days in the hospital after the diagnosis. Then he was sent home to endure eight months of chemotherapy.
``We were both shocked when Spoon got sick because he was always so healthy,'' Cheryl recalled. ``We both accepted it as God's will. We accepted it and learned to deal with it, even though that wasn't easy.''
When he got sick, Witherspoon was working as a stockkeeper who provided supplies to Ohio Edison's line department. He was off the job for one year. Ohio Edison marked his return to work with golf and dinner on ``Spoon Day'' at Firestone Country Club.
Witherspoon was an upbeat and good-natured man, known for his contagious laugh. He was dedicatedto his family -- his wife, a son, a daughter and two grandchildren. He was a deacon in his church, The House of the Lord in Akron, where he and Cheryl met in 1980.
He was an avid golfer, bowler and something of a pool shark, known to win a few bucks. He left his pool cue to son Wilbert Jr., known as Earl.
Witherspoon spent more than 22 years at the Gorge, starting outside on the plant's coal hill and working his way into a job removing minerals from the water for the plant's boilers. A 1983 chlorine spill at the Gorge sent him to St. Thomas Hospital in Akron with burned lungs.
While his cancer was in remission, Witherspoon ministered to others. He gave radio and church testimonials about fighting cancer and believing in the Lord.
But it was a difficult time for his wife.
``Dealing with cancer is hard, really hard,'' Cheryl said. ``You have such a helpless feeling. You can't fix it. It was just so very, very tough.''
During long talks, Witherspoon told his wife that he believed exposures to toxins at the Gorge plant were responsible for his cancer and the cancers of other Gorge workers.
Like McVan and Fultz, Witherspoon had a spot on his lungs from asbestos.
Just before he died, Spoon shared a special moment with Cheryl. They kissed twice and both said how much they loved each another. Then he was gone.
``I miss him so much,'' Cheryl said.
Freddie L. Jackson -- 51
Freddie Jackson, the father of six and grandfather of three, died on Nov. 23, 2004, of prostate cancer and its complications: chest pain and breathing problems, gallstones and swollen lymph nodes.
At first, when he was diagnosed in August 2003, Jackson did not believe that he had cancer, said Terrie, his wife of six years and an elder with the House of Restoration church in North Akron.
``We just dealt with it.... He did not give up. He waged the courageous battle,'' she said.
Jackson worked for Ohio Edison for 37 years, including more than 20 years at the Gorge plant. When his cancer was diagnosed, he was installing electric meters for Ohio Edison.
His illness, Terrie said, triggered ``a wave of concern and almost a panic'' among Ohio Edison workers.
Jackson, who was nicknamed Paw-Paw, was a quiet man who liked to read and do jigsaw puzzles. He was strong and supportive, the guy that everyone liked. He raised his children from his first marriage and was active in his labor union.
After he became ill, he was cared for at home for 18 months. His last days were spent at a hospice.
``It's so hard to see your healthy, strong husband turned into a skeleton man barely able to walk,'' Terrie said.
At the hospice, Jackson told his wife that he was convinced his cancer stemmed from the toxic chemicals he worked with at the Gorge plant.
Toward the end, he would rattle off the names of old-timers from the Gorge. ``I gotta let them know,'' he told his family.
He would get agitated, and Nick Vass, his current supervisor at Ohio Edison, and Zito, the union president, were called in to calm him down.
``The company should have had more love for them so they'd still be around,'' Terrie Jackson said. ``They lived, breathed and drank Ohio Edison. And that's OK. But Ohio Edison owes them something if their cancers came from that plant.''
Difficult to prove
That ``if'' is a big one.
David Savitz, chair of the department of epidemiology in the University of North Carolina's School of Public Health, said in a telephone interview that environmental links are almost impossible to prove.
The chance of proving connections between ``the work experience and the development of cancer is very remote,'' he said.
That is surprising to many people, he said, because workers in older power plants can be exposed to an array of cancer-causing substances.
Savitz and four other researchers studied the health problems of nearly 139,000 male workers at five utility companies across the country and reported their findings in a 2001 edition of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.
The researchers found that workers at coal-burning power plants had a higher risk for lung cancer than other types of workers, but the risk for other types of cancer appeared lower than average and ``less consistent.''
Savitz said it might be possible to make a connection between the Gorge plant and cancer cases if all the affected workers suffered from mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer triggered by exposure to asbestos for even just a month or two.
But the cancers among the Gorge workers do not include mesothelioma. Instead, they are what Savitz called ``common cancers of adulthood... .the kind of cancers that we see by the thousands.''
Savitz said that without additional study and analysis, it is impossible to say whether the numbers of different cancers among the Gorge Boys is statistically significant or greater than might normally be expected.
``All I can I say is that it is highly unlikely.... but who knows?'' Savitz said.
`Everyday cancers'
Robert Indian, chief of chronic and environmental disease surveillance at the Ohio Department of Health, said two other types of cancer -- brain cancer and leukemia -- might be indicative of a problem at the Gorge plant.
If the Gorge workers had all suffered either of those two cancers, he said, proving a link might be possible.
But, like Savitz, Indian pointed out that the Gorge workers suffered from ``a broad spectrum of everyday cancers.
``That's not to minimize the suffering and the tragedy of each and every cancer,'' he said. ``It is a tragedy for each person and their families. There is a loss and it can be a big financial burden. We're not saying it's OK.... But life isn't fair.''
Indian said about 40 percent of Americans -- 50 percent of men and 33 percent of women -- will get cancer. About one third of all Americans will die from one of the 120-plus different forms of the disease.
Cancer is now the leading cause of death of Americans under age 85.
But Treen, the former Gorge plant worker who lost a kidney to cancer, gets angry when he hears the statistics.
``My doctor told me that my cancer came from inorganic arsenic,'' Treen said. ``But he told me that no one could ever prove it or would ever prove it.''
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says power plants annually release about 60 tons of arsenic into the air, but the health risk is slight for those living nearby. The arsenic, which is found in coal in low levels, attaches itself to ash particles.
Breathing arsenic can produce a sore throat and irritated lungs. Ingesting high levels can be fatal. Low levels can cause nausea, vomiting, decreased red and white blood cell production, abnormal heart rhythm, damage to blood vessels and a sensation of pins and needles in hands and feet. Breathing or ingesting low levels of arsenic for long periods of time can cause a darkening of the skin and small warts or corns on the palms, soles and torso.
Treen, who goes by the nickname Skip, said he's been cancer-free since his surgery in 1998, although he goes through regular tests to make sure.
Discovering he had cancer was ``a big shock to both of us,'' Treen said, referring to himself and his wife, Lynda.
Working in The Lab
Macey Hardin now works in the sewer department for the city of Akron. But for 21 years, he worked at the Gorge plant. Ohio Edison laid him off in 1996.
Four years ago, Hardin, who's now 54, was diagnosed with prostate cancer. It has spread into his bones. He also suffers from asthma and breathing problems.
``It was just dangerous and we had very bad working conditions,'' he said of the Gorge. ``It was a dirty, vile place.... But we didn't care. We were young. We were rambunctious. We were renegades. We were invincible. We weren't going to die. Or get sick.''
Hardin said he worked for a time in what was called The Lab. This team handled environmental operations at the plant.
Some Gorge workers were afraid to be assigned to The Lab, he said. The Lab's tasks included demineralizing city water so it could go into the plant's boilers.
The fumes from that operation -- a greasy, fishlike smell -- frequently filled the plant, although the workers closest to the operation bore the full brunt, Hardin said.
Workers also routinely handled mercury from various instruments, he said, adding that that often included sucking mercury-tainted water out of instruments with straws and spitting the water on the plant's floor.
Hardin has an old photograph of The Lab team at the Gorge Power Plant. Six of the 11 workers in the photo were stricken with cancer, he said.
It was the asbestos exposure at the Gorge plant that particularly troubles Hardin.
Older power plants have miles of steam piping insulated with asbestos. Asbestos also was used to insulate, assemble, seal and line the piping and the equipment in giant boilers, feed-water heaters, pumps, conveyors, condensers, turbine generators and auxiliary equipment.
Everyone working in older plants risked asbestos exposure because of never-ending repairs, maintenance, overhaul and conversion.
``It was bad, real bad, in the 1970s,'' Hardin said. ``The company downplayed the risk and said there was no danger. Back then, we didn't know what it was.... Asbestos was everywhere, on everything, and everyone was always exposed to it.''
Hardin described the asbestos as routinely wafting through the Gorge plant, like a heavy snowfall. It was carried by drafts and convection to distant parts of the plant, he said.
``Some of us are not convinced that the company did as much as it could to keep us safe,'' Hardin said. ``Us Gorge Boys are dropping off, aren't we? We just want to know if it's coincidence or if there's a link back to the old Gorge plant. We're just looking for the truth.''
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