In February, Rusty Morris began to suspect there might be a cancer cluster in Keyport, New Jersey, where he grew up. His father was being treated for prostate cancer, and every time Morris talked to his mom, she seemed to mention another neighbor who had been diagnosed. When he decided to map the cases, he found at least twenty-eight people on his parents’ street had developed cancer. Across the neighborhood, there were forty-one cases. “I started asking friends I grew up with around the neighborhood,” Morris told NJ.com. “It just kept freaking snowballing.”
In April, thanks to Morris, NJ.com’s Karin Price Mueller and Steven Rodas published a special report on a potential public health crisis, noting that his neighborhood was “chillingly close” to “a shuttered dump that limited tests show has leached toxic waste and harmful chemicals into the air and water surrounding the Morris house for at least fifty years.” The piece quickly led to the discovery of more cases. “Once that first story ran, we got so many calls and Facebook messages and emails from people with cancer cases near the landfill concerned and wanting their case to be counted too,” Price Mueller told me. “We’re up to four hundred and eighty-five.”
Christopher Kelly, the vice president of content at NJ.com, told me he’s committed significant resources to the project because of the community response.
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