Almost Here: Long Delayed Health Study Due to Come by Summer

Winthrop residents have been long awaiting the results of a Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) study of the environmental impacts of Logan Airports on the health of residents.

The study was to be released last spring but as the spring came and went, residents in Winthrop and environmental activists began scratching their heads wondering what the hold up was.

Now, a year later, Senator Anthony Petruccelli said he has been in communication with DPH officials and they have assured him the study will be released before the summer.

“I have been informed that the latest milestone has been reached,” said Petruccelli, referring to the study’s peer review being completed. “I am patiently and anxiously awaiting the release of the health study this spring and the results that affect the communities of East Boston, Winthrop and Revere.”

The DPH’s Suzanne Condon has called the study ‘groundbreaking’ and is using a new model for studying environmental impacts that polluters like large airports pose to surrounding communities.

The study was implemented as part of Senator Anthony Petruccelli’s first piece of legislation back when he was a young state representative.

In 2008 state funding for the study was threatened but Petruccelli and Representative Carlo Basile filed legislation to make Massport pay the bill for the $200,000 needed to complete the study.

Already bits and pieces of the study were leaked to the media. Two years ago a rough cut of the MDPH study suggested Logan is making residents sick and here and in surrounding communities.

This of course came as no surprise to people living here who didn’t need a report to prove what residents have been saying all along. However, the new data obtained helped drive home the point.

State health data obtained by WBZ showed that compared with the statewide average; there are elevated rates of heart disease in Everett, Hull, Malden, Lynn, Medford and Saugus. Asthma rates are also higher in Boston, Chelsea, Everett, Lynn and Revere.

“But it’s what was found in the neighborhoods of Winthrop that really caught the attention of Suzanne Condon of the state Health Department,” WBZ reported. “And it’s this simple fact: Lung cancer rates are higher the closer you get to the airport.”

Condon, the lead investigator, told the station that smoking is probably not the cause.

But it’s the statement by Massport at the time that really had Winthrop residents peeved. A spokesperson for the Port Authority said “the city of Boston, as well as major highways, also contribute to air pollution and that may be another explanation for the elevated number of diseases in the five-mile area” and not the airport as the sole contributor.

However, Massport could not explain other diseases directly related to specific toxins in jet fuel.

In 2004 the Winthrop Transcript first reported a link between Logan and the unusually high cluster of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) cases in East Boston and Winthrop. Xenobiotic exposure, or exposure to environmental toxins found in jet fuel.

A former East Boston resident discovered the link while researching the high number of people living with MS in East Boston and Winthrop and submitted her findings to the DPH. All the people studied had two things in common–they were diagnosed with MS and lived under or near Logan’s approach and departure paths.

Robin Dolan, who has been living with MS since 1992, completed the five years of extensive scientific research into the probable cause(s) of MS in Eastie and Winthrop and hopes her study will raise the state’s awareness of the high occurrences of the disease in these areas.

While she admits that her MS study may not be the smoking gun that Logan expansion opponents believe it to be, Dolan is content with bringing the outbreak of MS in Eastie and Winthrop to the forefront.

“I have been told not to expect admittance of guilt,” she said. “I just would like awareness that MS may be caused by a state agencies (Massport). The DPH should show sincere concern for, and want to protect, the health of the citizens of Massachusetts. When I get receipt that the study was received by the DPH, even if I never hear from them, I and others will know that they know.”

Twenty- four individuals with MS from Eastie and Winthrop participated in Dolan’s study but since the completion of her research 10 more people with MS from East Bostonthat were not part of the original study have come forward, bringing the number of known cases in the area to 34.

“Given the minimum number of 34 people having MS from the areas of East Boston/Winthrop, an unequal burden of disease is in question,” she said. “Environment statistically appears to play at least a 70 percent role in the risk of development of the condition.”

“We are talking about my neighbor, my classmate, people in very close proximity to each other. For a small community to be sharing a disease that doesn’t make the Nation Institute of Health’s (NIH) top category of illnesses is odd.  If you look at the aerial view of  East Boston you will see how much is consumed by the airport and how the cases of MS surround the airport.”

According to Dolan the affects of an airport are felt seven miles in radius and the closer proximity means the greatest impact, but where the impact truly ends is uncertain.

“Bottom line we live in a very industrial world and receive an onslaught of foreign materials each and every day,” she said. “In my reading on the history of East Boston and Logan Airport it became apparent that Massport has been given leniency for decades regarding Eastie and its residents.”

As Massport goes forward with it’s plans to once again expand Logan with centerfield taxiway, Dolan is saddened by the affects it may pose.

“The airport took away the beauty of East Boston,” she said. “What I see now is that no one understood, or had the capacity to understand, that not only would their rights to enjoy living be taken away in walks or picnics or swimming or ball games, but in addition their rights to a healthy, carefree life would be as well.”