Father of leukemia victim vows action

Wednesday, June 6, 2001 | 10:51 a.m.

After spending every night for weeks at his son's Southern California hospital bedside, watching the 10-year-old die of childhood leukemia, Richard Jernee wants to return home to Fallon and find out what made the boy sick.

"I've met dozens of these kids in treatment," Jernee said Monday from the Ronald McDonald House near the Orange County Children's Hospital, where on Sunday Adam lost his yearlong fight against acute lymphocytic leukemia. "I don't want this to happen anymore."

In the past three years 13 children, including Adam, have been diagnosed with ALL, the most common form of childhood leukemia. A 14th child has acute myelogenous leukemia, or AML, a less common form of the disease that destroys blood cells. Adam was the first fatality.

"I think if I was there now, I would be afraid to let my child go outside or go to school or anything," Jernee said. He echoed concerned parents who attended a Monday night town meeting in Fallon. Another one is scheduled for tonight.

Nevada health officials on Monday displayed a map to those residents that shows 12 of the 14 children lived near a jet-fuel pipeline that runs through Fallon. Jet fuel, along with radiation, pesticides and viruses, is suspected as a cause of the cancers, but there has been no evidence that the fuel seeped into drinking water sources or the nearby environment, state health officials said.

State epidemiologist Dr. Randall Todd said that there is no common thread linking the stricken children, except they all have lived in Fallon.

Normally, three childhood leukemias would be expected in a population of 100,000. Fallon's population is 8,300.

Tests of the city's water supply, private wells and 58 wells at Fallon Naval Air Station did not contain any traces of jet fuel, Todd said.

State Division of Environmental Protection officials have scheduled a flight along the route of the jet fuel pipeline this week.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., asked the U.S. Department of Transportation on Tuesday to investigate the pipeline for leaks and vents, which would expand the scientific studies into the air and soils.

Reid also wrote to Dr. Alan Levine of Incline Village, who said he consulted on a similar leukemia cluster in Woburn, Mass. That industrial pollution story took 18 years to uncover and became the basis for the book and film, "A Civil Action."

The senator asked Levine, a physician and lawyer, to help state health officials who are working with federal agencies to probe the cancers. Levine is not licensed to practice medicine in Nevada, a spokeswoman for the state Board of Medical Examiners said.

This summer the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta will collect blood samples from the patients and their families, as well as families who are not affected by the cancers. The federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry will look for environmental pollution sources.

Jernee, who is a truck driver, said he "rolled into town" in July 1999. Adam came to live with him in May at the Sunridge Apartments, where three of the victims once lived. The boy was diagnosed with ALL in May 2000.

At 6 p.m. Sunday a memorial service for Adam has been scheduled in Fallon's Oats Park, family spokeswoman Rebecca Easter. People will be able to celebrate Adam's short life, she said, "with music by the Beatles, his favorite rock group, and Pepsi, because he preferred it to Coca-Cola."

Funeral services have not been set, Jernee said, but Adam will be buried in Southern California near where his mother, Pilar, lives.

"I am going back to Fallon, because I want to find out why this has happened," Jernee said. "All I want is answers, because I believe Adam is with me wherever I go."