Residents Clamor for DDT Clinic Results : Health: Officials have not linked ailments to toxics from nearby waste sites. But residents remain apprehensive and fearful.

Almost a year after it opened, the nation’s first clinic analyzing health effects related to low-level DDT exposure has become embroiled in a conflict of causes with some of the very people who asked for it.

They complain that the doctors refuse to divulge their findings, even though they have preliminary results. They criticize the clinic for testing only for DDT, and not for the chemical soup of other toxins that have been found in the neighborhood. They want answers, and treatment, for the little girl who wakes up vomiting each morning, for the middle-aged gardener who is the fifth person in the neighborhood to develop bladder cancer.

Community leaders say the neighborhood doesn’t trust the clinic and its purpose--and the doctors and social workers agree. Only 12% of the 2,500 residents living on and around West 204th Street near two toxic sites have shown up for DDT testing.

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The federally funded clinic, which provides free physical exams and blood tests for DDT opened in January at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, more than a year after the discovery of DDT contaminated soil and reports of other toxic chemicals at the two sites.

The Del Amo waste pit, between Normandie and Vermont above 204th Street, was part of a synthetic rubber plant in the 1940s that closed in 1972. Just west of that sits the former Montrose DDT plant, which was dismantled in 1982 and became an EPA Superfund site. Various contaminants associated with both sites were found in soil and ground water.

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In the spring of 1994, an excavation of two nearby backyards dredged up boulder-sized chunks of DDT in the soil. Later, air monitoring samples of the area found benzene, ethylbenzene, styrene, toluene, and other hydrocarbons, although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says the levels are not high enough to present a danger. Source of those contaminants: unknown.

Months later, 33 families voluntarily relocated and are awaiting an excavation and cleanup. Some of those who moved have reported that their symptoms have subsided.

Others, such as the Solis family, stayed behind.

Each morning for the past six months, when 10-year-old Sandra Solis wakes up for school, she doubles over with stomach pains and runs to the bathroom.

Her mother, Aurora, took Sandra to a pediatrician, who found nothing out of the ordinary. Then Aurora’s son Carlos, 17, began complaining of daily headaches, and daughter Julia, 6, developed a rash on her hands. Aurora had been experiencing breathing problems and joint pain, especially at the ankles. The family lives a few hundred yards from the two toxic sites.

The entire family, along with about 300 other neighborhood residents, have been examined by the clinic’s doctors and medical assistants from UC Irvine and UCLA Medical Center and tested for the presence of DDT. The Solises are still waiting for the results.

Not that the results will necessarily help. Even if they do have high levels of DDT in their blood, does that mean the DDT caused it? Might another chemical have cause it? Or something different? And even if it was one of the toxins, treatment for environmental disease is still experimental, for which the clinic is not funded.

Common Symptoms

Although preliminary results are in, researchers are careful not to voice any conclusions yet. A report releasing their findings will be published next year.

Common symptoms seen at the clinic range from nausea, dizziness, headaches and joint pain to eye irritation, skin rashes, breathing problems and sinus congestion. But doctors say those symptoms do not necessarily point to an environmental link.

“The problem is that most environmental medicine conditions are common medical problems or are nonspecific,” said Dr. Constantine Gean, UC Irvine associate clinical professor. “So we need to determine whether these symptoms are overrepresented in this particular population. And we don’t know that for sure, yet.”

While high-level, long term exposure to DDT among agricultural workers has produced liver problems, infertility and cancer, the majority of people in this community may have a lower exposure to multiple chemicals. Gean says that is much harder to diagnose.

Long-Term Exposure

“If you drank a whole gallon of gasoline all at once, you would certainly die,” Gean explains. “But what if you drank a drop every day, for three years, what would the effect be? That is what we’re here to find out. While we have encountered a few people with cancer, there is no slam dunk correlation.”

Don’t tell that to Paul Kidwell.

He believes that five cases of bladder cancer within a four block radius is more than enough proof for a slam dunk. The 57-year-old gardener, who was the first person at the clinic when it opened, became convinced that chemicals were damaging his body after he saw blood in his urine. Gean examined Kidwell and found a tumor the size of a silver dollar in his bladder. After it was removed in February, Kidwell found another tumor in his mouth.

“And I started to think, if I had cancer in my bladder and cancer in my mouth, where else do I have cancer?” said Kidwell, who has lived about 200 feet west of the waste pits since 1977.

Of the four other cases of bladder cancer, Kidwell says one person has died and two others have lost their bladder. He complains that the doctors are being too cautious in their evaluations, too skeptical about the symptoms.

“I’m not sure what the game is, but those cancer cases have got to be some indication that it’s the neighborhood,” he said. “And they’re acting like, ‘Gee, I don’t know.’ ”

‘Iffy-Talk’

A few neighborhood residents praise the clinic’s efforts to get to the bottom of the problem. But community leader Cynthia Babich, who was instrumental in starting up the clinic, wants the doctors to stop the “iffy-talk.” Impatient and frustrated, Babich believes that the clinic should have enough data to make some conclusions by now.

Babich also complains that the clinic is only testing for DDT, while other toxic chemicals seeping into the air and water are being ignored.

“We haven’t dismissed the other chemicals,” says UCLA’s Dr. Jeffrey Tipton. “We just don’t have an easy resort to test them. DDT is the most obvious because they found so much of it in the neighborhood.”

Karl Lytz, an attorney for Montrose Chemical, which operated the DDT plant from 1947 to 1982, says he is confident that the clinic’s findings will be favorable to his client. He says the DDT is not present in sufficient concentrations to cause a health problem.

“We have studied former workers from the DDT plant who had prolonged exposure to DDT and never had any significant health effects,” Lytz said. “I will be extremely surprised if they find the symptoms are associated with DDT exposure.”

But Babich takes the DDT risk as a given and wants to look into possible risks of other chemicals. “The whole picture must be focused on,” she said. “The clinic was opened to test us and tell us what we’re exposed to and they’re not doing that fast enough.”

It’s an uncomfortable position for the doctors, who feel caught in the middle of a fight between the community and the businesses. On one hand are companies, which include Montrose, Dow Chemical and Shell Oil, who wait anxiously for the clinic’s findings. A medical confirmation could lead to a flood of lawsuits.

Gean admits that DDT may be a red herring, and that maybe the health problems are being caused by other toxins. Preliminary data show that only 10% of those tested have high DDT levels. According to California State Department of Health Service guidelines, DDT blood levels above 22 nanograms per milliliter are cause for concern. But if the clinic tested every person for all the chemicals that lie deep in the soil, Gean says their budget of about $500,000 would have run dry months ago.

“People need to be patient with the uncertainty,” he said. “Science is about proof, and right now we have none.”