He said participation needs to improve to make the study a strong scientific project.
“It’s just kind of discouraging,” Marsh said before a meeting with members of families of deceased workers, state officials and health experts. “There’s a fair amount of indifference. It’s kind of surprising.”
Marsh and his team are trying to determine whether a cancer cluster exists at Pratt, and if so, what may be the cause.
Pratt, a division of Hartford-based United Technologies Corp., and the state Department of Health began the study in 2002 after complaints from families of workers who had died from glioblastoma multiforme, a form of brain cancer. They documented more than three dozen such deaths among hundreds of thousands who have worked at Pratt since the early 1950s.
Glioblastoma is the most frequent brain tumor and accounts for between 12 percent and 15 percent of all brain tumors, which are projected at 18,820 this year, according to the National Cancer Institute.
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which represents employees at the jet engine manufacturer, has also urged greater participation in the study, Marsh said.
Debra Belancik, the union’s environmental health and safety coordinator, said employees are interested.
“Concerns are high,” she said. “It’s not just a North Haven issue. It’s everyone’s issue.”
Carol Shea, whose husband, John, died in 2000 at age 56, said a group she helped organize, Worked to Death, will work with the Machinists union to inform workers about the study.
“There’s no good reason to not participate,” she said.
Participants agree to be interviewed and consent to the release of medical records and genetic information.
Shea, who attended the meeting Wednesday, also said she is pleased with the direction the study is headed.
“I’m much happier with this than ages ago,” she said. “They’re really looking into a lot more what we want.”
Last month, the state Supreme Court unanimously rejected a wrongful death claim by families who sued Pratt over the cancer deaths, saying that the plaintiffs’ window to seek damages had already closed.
The company employs about 12,000 workers in Cheshire, East Hartford and Middletown. The study also will look at those who worked in former Pratt & Whitney plants in North Haven, Rocky Hill, Southington and Manchester.
Marsh said the study is on track for release of preliminary information at the end of 2007. Researchers are about done with the identification phase of the study, determining that the records of 257,000 who have worked at Pratt since 1952.
In addition, researchers have compiled 319,000 records in a “job dictionary” that lists job classifications, said Nurtan Esmen of the University of Illinois. The records are expected to help researchers pinpoint manufacturing processes that may have contributed to workplace illness and death.
To give an example of the scope of the project, even a 30-second review of each job classification represents more than 2,600 hours of work, Esmen said.
Source: The Advocate