Mystery of NJ neighborhood with ‘crazy high percentage’ of people with cancer — including 28 on one street
A man who once lived in Keyport, New Jersey began documenting what he believed was an unusually large number of cancer diagnoses among people who lived near the street where he grew up. Over time, the list kept growing.
Rusty Morris, 46, told NJ.com in recent interviews that the number of cases he found became so large that he eventually created a map marking homes with red Xs to represent neighbors who had been diagnosed with cancer.
His own family home received one of the marks after his father was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Another house nearby had two Xs, representing Morris’s uncle and his uncle’s wife.
Altogether, Morris counted 28 homes with cancer cases on First Street alone. Across the wider borough of Keyport, located in central New Jersey about 30 miles south of Newark, he marked 41 houses.
When Alexis Mraz, an associate professor in the Department of Public Health at The College of New Jersey, reviewed the map, she said the number of cases appeared unusually high.
“That looks insane,” she told NJ.com.
Although doctors, government officials, and residents have not been able to prove a direct cause for the cancer diagnoses, many people in the community suspect a nearby landfill that shut down in 1979. Reports from local sources and environmental assessments indicate the site may have been leaking cancer-causing chemicals into nearby air, soil, and water for decades.
The landfill has reportedly been releasing contaminants for more than 50 years. Since then, the company that owns the property has faced several enforcement actions. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection has issued fines totaling nearly $900,000, including penalties last year, alleging the site was not properly sealed.
The American Cancer Society describes cancer clusters as patterns of cancer cases occurring among people who live or work in the same location. According to the organization, roughly 1,000 suspected clusters have been identified across the United States. When an area is officially designated as a cancer cluster, it typically leads to a major public health investigation to determine causes and prevent further cases.
Despite multiple studies and reports over the years, Keyport has not been formally designated as a cancer cluster.
One of the latest environmental reviews, completed in 2010 by an outside consulting firm, found that the Aeromarine landfill contained at least five carcinogens linked to cancers of the lung, breast, bladder, pancreas, prostate, and kidneys, as well as leukemia and lymphoma.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection classifies the Aeromarine property as a “legacy landfill,” meaning it dates to a time before modern environmental regulations were implemented in the 1980s.
Craig Benson, an engineering professor emeritus from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Virginia, told NJ.com that waste disposal practices in earlier decades were far less regulated.
According to Benson, hazardous materials were often dumped together with regular waste because environmental rules were minimal.
In a statement to NJ.com’s investigative reporters, the state Department of Environmental Protection said it remains focused on making sure the landfill is properly closed in order to protect both the environment and public health.
The department also said it has begun early discussions about possible next steps for the site, which may include additional health assessments.
Meanwhile, Morris continues to update his map. Recently he added the home of a friend who survived ovarian cancer at age 36, along with the home of her father, who died from lung cancer at 77 despite never smoking.
Scarlett Gomez, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, told NJ.com that the area should not have to wait for an official cancer cluster designation before action is taken.
She said the priority should simply be cleaning up the site rather than waiting to see whether more illnesses appear in the future.
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