Chapter 52 chapter 2

Anne Anderson spoke to and met with the two mothers several times.On reflection, she could not convince herself that these three cases, which occurred within a radius of less than half a mile, were mere coincidence.She talked with the people around her, and Director John Truman, but everyone just listened and nodded politely, and no one seriously considered her thoughts. After more than two years, in June 1973, another little boy in the southeast of Woburn was admitted to the Department of Pediatric Hematology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Two-and-a-half-year-old Kevin Kahn, who lives with his parents and three older siblings on Henley Road, can see Pine Street a quarter of a mile away and Anderson's house on Orange Street from the back door of his house across the swamp red brick bungalow.Director Truman gave Kevin the exact same diagnosis as Jimmy Anderson: acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Anne Anderson heard about Kevin Kahn from Ka Gray.That summer, Ka's 14-year-old son took a job delivering newspapers on Henley Road every morning.Annie remembers getting stuck on the phone saying, "What the hell is going on with all this?!" Hanging up the phone, Anne found a notebook and began writing her first patient list.She took down the children's names, addresses, ages and approximate time of illness in detail, and she wondered again what the four children had in common. "The air they're breathing is the same as the water they're drinking," Anne Anderson told lawyers years later. Looks weird, looks weird, smells weird. Worse in summer, can't drink at all. Every weekend my mother comes over from Sandmonville and I ask her to pick up some Come over with some water, about three quarts (approximately 3.5 liters - the author's note), that is the water we drink. Other times, as long as you can use the smell of coffee or orange juice to overwhelm the monsters in the water We used tap water. The water was so bad it ruined our dishwasher, the whole door was corroded and couldn't be closed, so I had to replace it with a new one. The dish basket inside was rusted too Look. The pipes under the kitchen and bathroom sinks are always leaking. All the water pipes are leaking and dripping all the time. We tend to have a problem here that we haven’t fixed before it starts breaking there.”

Just as people in other places always talk about the weather when they meet, Anne's neighbors always talk about water when they meet.And no matter how hard they try, they are as powerless over water quality as they are over the weather. When the Car Gray family moved to Woburn in 1961, the water was still fine.By the time the Andersons moved in in 1965, the taste had changed.I remember that in the first summer in Woburn, Annie asked Ka: "Did you also feel that the water smells wrong? Or is there something wrong with my own sense of taste?" It was later recalled that the change in water quality began in October 1964, when the newly drilled G well in Woburn was officially opened.Before that, there were six old wells in Woburn, distributed in the Midwest of the city, sorted by the English alphabet from A to F.With the growth of the population, the water in the original six old wells was not enough, so the relevant departments decided to dig this well on the east bank of the Apodrone River in the northeast of the city, between the J. J. Riller Tannery and the "Industrial Park". Well G.Three years later, when water supply in the summer again became a major problem for Woburn, Well H, which was only 300 feet away from Well G, also broke ground and was put into use that year.

In the summer of 1967, the Massachusetts Department of Sanitation ordered the closure of Wells G and H on the grounds that "tap water had consistently exceeded bacterial levels since the opening of the two wells."After repeated negotiations by the municipal government, the state health department finally agreed to continue using the two wells, provided that the well water must be chlorinated for a long time, that is, bleaching agent must be added. Water from wells G and H was pumped into the whole of Woburn's water supply, but mainly to the east of the city.Chlorination treatment was officially implemented in April 1968. In the spring and summer of that year, the municipal government received complaints from citizens about the water quality."The water smells exactly like pure bleach," said a fiercely worded letter.However, the engineers of the municipal government repeatedly told the residents that the quality of the water must be fine, and it is absolutely safe as drinking water.

However, the citizens believed in the conclusions drawn by their own senses, and they formed a special committee in the spring of 1969 to urge the mayor to make up his mind to permanently close the G and H wells.The petition was filed in August, and in October, when the summer water peak passed, the mayor shut down two wells.At the turn of the spring and summer of the following year, the engineers opened the well again to fetch water, and the citizens complained and petitioned again... From then on, Well G and Well H were opened and closed from time to time, falling into a seemingly endless cycle.

In September 1975, Jimmy Anderson suffered a relapse and was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital for the second time.Anne accompanied her every day in the ward, and often spent the night there.It was an unseasonably warm evening in November, and Annie stood alone at the end of the hospital corridor, looking out the window at the twilight of Boston.An old woman came out of a nearby ward with a desolate look on her face.She also stood in front of the window, staring out of the window, murmuring to Anne or herself, "Just now a child died of leukemia." Annie didn't answer, and didn't even move her eyes.She was so tired and exhausted.Her own Jimmy was dying of leukemia, leaving her no time for other people's feelings, sympathy or tears.

The old woman didn't notice Anne's indifference, and continued to babble: a little boy is actually just a baby.Without any warning, suddenly fell ill.I heard that his family lived in Woburn, and his name was Riley. In October 1976, Anne Anderson heard from the Reverend Bruce Younger of Trinity Episcopal Church that Donna Cannon's 4-year-old son, Robbie, had been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia by the New England Medical Center. Dongna's family lives in the north of the city, and the water quality there is not good, but it is much better than in the east of the city.Dongna's family has always been poor, and she couldn't afford ready-made milk, juice and other beverages, so Dongna bought big bags and tubes of milk powder and concentrated juice, etc., and mixed it with water to feed her son when she went home.Sometimes the strange smell in the water was too strong, and the child refused to eat it, so Dongna put it on the stove to heat it up to remove the smell.Robbie's physique has been poor since he was a child, not to mention his troubles, and his family still owes a lot of medical expenses.Her husband Karl was away from home for three days and a half at first, and then he came back only once in ten and a half months, and he and Dongna left soon after.