By Shereen Siewert

State officials say they have no records that a review of Wausau-area cancer rates and their possible link to the city’s formerly contaminated wells was ever completed, despite decades of promises to concerned residents.

State and federal officials say Wausau’s drinking water is safe. But some residents have raised concerns about the long-term effects of past contamination and openly wonder whether exposure to toxic chemicals led to an uptick in cancer rates in the area.

Concern over Wausau’s water emerged in the late 1970s when Wausau received a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to study municipal water supplies. A subsequent investigation revealed that the city’s well water contained as many as 50 manmade chemicals including several solvents that were likely leached from an abandoned dump and from a documented 1970s spill at Wausau Chemical.

The biggest problem was trichloroethylene, an industrial degreasing agent found in products such as paint remover, rug cleaner and typewriter correction fluid. The cancer-causing chemical was detected at levels as high as 16 times higher than levels considered safe, exposing the entire city of Wausau to risk, according to the EPA.

City officials acted quickly to mitigate the risk by installing two air strippers in above-ground towers near Wausau’s water treatment plant. For every gallon of water pumped into the towers, 35 gallons of air were pumped in to force the chemicals out, dramatically reducing the level of toxicity.

Then in 1982, contamination in the city’s goundwater was discovered, which was traced to an abandoned landfill and a shallow plume at Bos Creek, and to two sites on the city’s east side: Wausau Chemical and Wausau Energy. In a 1992 assessment report, state officials said residents could have been exposed to contamination by breathing air near the stripper towers, by touching the sediments or water at Bos Creek, or by touching contaminated soil at the Wausau Chemical property.

A 1989 review of cancer rates associated with the chemicals did not reveal any significant health risks. Still, under public pressure, state health officials announced in August 2001 the case would be reopened and further studies would be completed.

Those plans were soon scuttled, according to historical media reports. A Nov. 17, 2002 Wausau Daily Herald story quotes then-Bureau of Public Health epidemiologist Henry Nehls-Lowe as saying that “bioterrorism” was a much more pressing issue than evaluating local cancer rates, pushing the cancer study down on the state’s priority list. At that time, officials promised again to review the city’s census data, cancer rates and water records.

But if the review was ever completed, it was never publicly announced and no record of such an analysis exists.

Roy Irving, chief of hazard assessment of the Bureau of Environmental and Occupational Health, said his department searched state records and did not find any confirmation the review was ever completed.

Additionally, the staff who would have been involved in this work have since left the agency, Irving said.