One has sued, and class-action litigation is planned seeking a monitoring program to identify and help residents diagnosed with disease.
By Tony Lucia
Delores B. Dondore never set foot in the beryllium-processing plant in Tuckerton, nor any other facility.
But since 1950, she has lived about half a mile from the facility, which has gone through several changes in ownership in that time and now is owned by NGK Metals Corp.
She was diagnosed with chronic beryllium disease a year ago.
Since then, she and her husband Richard C. Dondore, have filed a suit seeking damages against NGK Metals and it predecessors in the Eastern District U.S. District Court in Philadelphia.
Her illness also seems to suggest that – no matter the precautions that were or were not taken by plant owners over the years some amount of beryllium dust escaped into the area beyond the facility.
A lawsuit now is being readied to seek a testing program for neighbors who never worked in the plant, and have never had the testing provided for workers.
Indeed, a study undertaken by the Pennsylvania Department of Health and funded by the National Institutes of Health in 1959 found more cases of beryllium disease in the neighborhood of the plant than among those who actually worked there.
A prior study, published in 1957 by Drs. George W. Chamberlin, W. Paul Jennings and Jan Lieben, separately found that of 20 Reading-area individuals with beryllium disease at the time, four worked at the plant, five had contact with contaminated clothing from the plant workers, two lived in the immediate neighborhood, and the other nine lived four or more miles away, suggesting widespread contamination.
As part of the 1959 study, researchers also randomly sampled tissue from the lungs of 20 individuals from the Tuckerton/Muhlenberg Township area who had died in a nearby hospital, which was not identified in the study.
Of these 20 individuals, all but one, a 3 years-old child, contained higher concentrations of beryllium than those autopsied in a control group – a hospital 70 miles away.
Also, air sampling taken at 20 sites throughout the area found that concentrations of beryllium in the air were “on many occasions” higher than the government’s recommended limit.
It’s uncertain how many cases of chronic beryllium disease have been found among neighbors since those studies.
The Dondores’ daughter, Linda Dondore, who lives with her parents, said she had gone door to door in the community, conducting an informal survey on chronic beryllium disease.
She said she found dozens of individuals suffering from the disease, and many others who hadn’t been diagnosed but had symptoms of the disease.
Ruben Honik, a lawyer with the Philadelphia firm of Golomb and Honik who is representing the Dondores, said his firm had identified numerous cases of chronic beryllium disease in the community around the plant and said it is planning class action litigation.
He said the object of that action would be the establishment of a monitoring program to identify and aid those in the Muhlenberg Township area who may already have or may contract chronic beryllium disease.
Many more residents who had no workplace exposure to beryllium are beginning to be identified not only in the Reading area but throughout the nation, Honik said.
“In part, the reason we’re seeing them now is that the worst industrial hygiene these plants had was from the 40′s to the 70′s,” Honik said. “Hygiene changed fairly dramatically in the 70′s. But mainly in the 80′s.”
“Particulate matter that used to come out from these plants changed when they tightened hygiene through things like stack emissions, the way they sealed in the factory, changes in the ways workers would be required to shower and change clothes at the facility”.
(For instance, in the late 1950′s the company instituted a policy under which clothing worn in the plant was collected before workers left and cleaned in a special facility.)
“By the 80′s”, Honik said, “most plants realized the airborne risks and began to improve hygiene. You may not see many cases in 20 years, but we’re now seeing the results of poor hygiene of the past.”
Honik said that due to a wealth of medical and industrial studies on the effects of beryllium conducted over the last 40 years, there is now no question that an individual does not have to be in the workplace to contract chronic beryllium disease.
In fact, Honik who represents Mary L. Russo (see related story, page C2), a worker at the plant in 1947-48, said it’s also possible she could have contracted the disease from living within a 4 mile radius of the NGK plant for many years.
Russo recalled that a large, uncovered pile of dust was kept outside on the plant property, then owned by Beryllium Corporation of America.
At that time, beryllium ore was processed at the plant, and Russo said she believed the pile contained byproducts of that process.
“Substantial quantities of beryllium dust were put into the environment,” Honik said.
“Airborne sampling ascertained there was beryllium in the general environment outside the plant, and certainly these homes in the area were bombarded for years with quantities of beryllium.”
Delores Dondore was not able to be interviewed for this article. But Linda Dondore said her mother is taking it as well as can be expected.
“My mom’s a fighter,” she said. “She just wishes that the owners and stockholders (of NGK and prior plant owners) could get inside her body so they’s know what it feels like.”
Linda Dondore said she too has been tested for chronic beryllium disease.
“The doctor’s exact words were, you are negative now. If you feel any of the symptoms, you know what to do.” she recalled.
“I guess now I’m still really angry because I was really naive,” Dondore said. “I guess the whole community is. I’m infuriated that today, it still goes on.”
There’s no reason to me that any business should be killing its workers, let alone residents.
“There’s no excuse for it, not with the technology that’s out there today.”
