Book Explores Toms River's Toxic History With Industrial Pollution

Toms River may not seem like a prime example of a town struggling with industrial pollution. 

But, over 60 years ago, the Jersey Shore town became home to Ciba-Geigy's chemical plant. In 1971, industrial waste was dumped at the nearby Reich Farm. Both were labeled as Superfund sites, believed to have caused increased instances of cancer in township children. 

"The town itself is a town like so many others," said Dan Fagin, who explores the township's dark history with pollution and its health effects in his new book, "Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation."

Fagin will discuss the recently released book, and its highly anticipated account of Ciba-Geigy's decades-long impact on Toms River, when he appears at the Toms River branch of the Ocean County Library on Thursday, April 4 at 7 p.m. The appearance also will give him a chance to interact further with locals. 

"I'm looking forward to talking a little bit about why I did this book and what I'm hoping to accomplish. And I'm very much looking forward to hearing from people in Toms River," Fagin said.

Fagin, a journalism professor and director of the Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program at New York University, first wrote about the issue while working for Newsday. When a multimillion-dollar settlement was awarded to 69 Toms River families in 2001, Fagin was the environmental reporter for the New York-based paper. 

"I had always been interested in Toms River, and more importantly, I had spent a lot of my career writing about the relationship between environmental exposures and cancer," Fagin said in an interview with Toms River Patch about his book, a project seven years in the making.

In addition to painstakingly detailed research, Fagin conducted on-the-record interviews with 140 people, about half of which live in Toms River. The story of Toms River's trouble with pollution is a 50-year tale with "key heroes" who began to realize things weren't right, he notes. 

Among them are: Linda Gillick, the Ocean of Love founder whose son was diagnosed with cancer as a baby; Don Bennett, the Ocean County Observer reporter who spent years writing about the Ciba-Geigy chemical plant and, more recently, wrote historical and political pieces for Patch; and a Children's Hospital of Philadelphia nurse.

"A number of people decided that they weren't going to shut up," Fagin said. "They were going to push their government agencies to find out."

Toms River's story of industrial pollution is not unique to the seemingly typical Jersey Shore town, with its box stores, congested roads and large high schools that field some of the best athletic teams in the state. 

"There's nothing particularly unusual about Toms River," Fagin said.

Inded, what happened in Toms River has happened before - in New Jersey, around the country and globally, he notes; and it continues today. 

"It's happening right now in China and Indonesia and other places where the chemical industry is growing," Fagin said.

Recently, Fagin wrote about a Chinese city where more than 1 million residents were exposed to a carcinogen in their drinking water for five days, even though government officials were aware of the problem. 

"What's different about Toms River is that there is really egregious damage," Fagin said. "The other thing about Toms River is that that damage ultimately came to light. It doesn't always."

Fagin said he knows "it wasn't easy to talk about this" because "it wasn't the happiest time in the history of Toms River and it was painful for many and tragic for some."

"I want the people of Toms River to know that I very much appreciate the trust that they showed in me," he said.

"My great hope is that when they read the book they will see that I took this very seriously and I tried to get everything right," Fagin said. "I hope their trust in me was well-justified."

Fagin said that he hopes his chronicle of Toms River's struggle will lead to greater awareness, not only locally but globally. If something isn't right, even beyond the scope of health but in any sector of government, people need to speak up, he said. 

"We can only hope that, the more information that comes out about this and the more publicity, that we won't make the same mistakes over and over again," he said. 

'Toms River' shows that persistence is key to finding answers to the uncomfortable questions. So is questioning officials, even when they insist answers are unavailable or unknowable. 

"Don't let anybody tell you that anything is too complicated to understand. You can understand it, you just need it explained to you," Fagin said. And, if officials stonewall information requests, keep asking why. 

"We shouldn't let a public official or anyone else tell us, 'Sorry, that information is too difficult to get, besides, you wouldn't understand it anyway,'" Fagin said. 

While the people of Toms River eventually did come to demand answers and got results, the initial allure of the jobs and economic growth provided by Ciba-Geigy may have dampened the initial march for answers.

The biggest failure was of those who did the dumping, who "should have known better," Fagin said. Blame also falls upon public agencies who didn't investigate and stop the pollution. And, "the community was not completely blameless either."

But, "things started to get better in Toms River when the citizens got involved," Fagin said. "We need citizenry who are involved in making the decisions about their own health. When it reached a critical mass in Toms River, it started to get better."