"Man claims he got cancer at nuke plant"

The Lake County Telegraph, Tuesday, April 24, 1984

A 67 year old Windham, Ohio man is expected to be brought to court today in an ambulance to testify that he believes he contacted terminal pancreatic cancer by breathing chemical sealant fumes at the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in 1980.

Mrs. Lillian Shumaker told a four-man, four-woman civil jury Monday in Lake County Common Pleas Court her husband, David, who was once an avid outdoorsman, is "getting weaker all the time...I don't know if he can make it to court. I don't know how much a man can stand."

Attorney John Travis, in questioning Mrs. Shumaker, said Shumaker was a twenty-year cigarette smoker and also often sprayed insecticide during a part-time job.

Mrs. Shumaker said, "all I can say is David worked all his life and never had any problems...when he got the fumes it was bad...if affected all his body."

While Mrs. Shumaker testified, one of her four children sat quietly sobbing in a back bench of the courtroom.

Defendant in the lawsuit is Oliver B. Cannon & Sons, Inc., a Pennsylvania corporation no longer doing business at the nuclear plant.

The $2.5 million case is being heard before Visiting Judge J. Warren Bettis of Columbiana County.

Donald W. Robinson testified he was working with Shumaker, a carpenter foreman on a nuclear reactor in June of 1980.

Under examination under lawyer Lawrence Landskroner, Robinson said employees of the defendant sprayed a "blue mixture" on the walls of the reactor to preserve the stainless steel.

"We had to take our chances. Several times Shumaker complained that the fumes were getting to him, really getting to him", Robinson told the jury.

Robinson said that when he went to a work shanty on June 16, 1980, he found Shumaker lying on a table.

"He was gasping for air, wheezing, turning blue...I thought he was going to die," Robinson said.

Robinson said he complained to CEI (owners of the nuclear plant) about the fumes.

Gregory Nelson, in charge of the nuclear power plant operation for Cannon, an industrial painting contractor, testified Cannon would post the area where they were working and warn other workers to stay out of the area.

He said his workers wore safety equipment, including masks and protective gloves.

Nelson testified there were some complaints about the smell of the product used by Cannon, but none about toxic fumes. He said Cannon was requested to move its employees to the second shift to eliminate interface between Cannon employees and other nuclear plant workers, Cannon explained.

Nelson told the jury he did not know why Cannon's contract was terminated on the nuclear reactor.

Dr. Alan E. Kravitz, a Cleveland physician who examined Shumaker for the Ohio Industrial Commission, testified Shumaker's cancer "to a reasonable degree of probability could have caused" by the toxic fumes Shumaker inhaled on Jan. 16, 1980.

Under cross examination by Travis, Kravitz admitted he could not say to a degree of medical probability, or certainty, that Shumaker's pancreatic cancer was caused by the toxic fumes.

Travis asked Kravitz if he knew that there were no cases, in any literature, that says that "Liquid Envelope", the chemical sealant used by Cannon, causes cancer.

Kravitz replied that "no one knows what causes pancreatic cancer."

Kravitz testified that when he first saw Shumaker in January of 1981, Shumaker suffered from a lung condition that caused 35 percent disability. He said that he believed this remission was caused by the inhalation of the toxic fumes on Jan. 16, 1980.

Kravitz said he next saw Shumaker on January 4 of this year.

Kravitz testified that Shumaker who had previously weighed 165 pounds, lost 20 pounds and had cancer of the pancreas.