Rusty Morris, who once called Keyport, NJ, home, has been tracking an unsettling trend among his former neighbors: an alarming number of cancer diagnoses along the street where he spent his childhood. “The numbers were snowballing,” Morris shared, painting a stark picture of the escalating situation.

In conversations with NJ.com, Morris, now 46, described how he meticulously documented the rising cases, eventually resorting to creating a map to better visualize the situation. On this map, he marked each affected household with a red X, a visual testament to the growing health crisis.

The map reflects the painful reality for Morris’s own family, with an X marking his parents’ home due to his father’s battle with prostate cancer. Just down the road, another house bears two X’s, signifying both his uncle and his uncle’s wife grappling with the disease.

In total, Morris marked 28 red X’s along First Street, illustrating a chilling pattern within the close-knit community. Expanding his scope to the broader Keyport borough, the count rose to 41, underscoring the widespread nature of the issue.

Dr. Alexis Mraz, an associate professor in the Department of Public Health at The College of New Jersey, expressed her concern upon viewing the map. “That looks like a crazy high percentage [of cancer patients],” she remarked, echoing the shock and disbelief of many who encounter these staggering figures.

“That looks insane,” she said. 

While doctors, local civil servants, state and federal officials, and residents can’t say definitively what’s behind the cancer cases and whether or not they’re connected, many point to the nearby dump that was closed in 1979 — and that’s has been oozing carcinogenic chemicals into the surrounding air, water and soil for at least 50 years, per local reports and multiple environment assessments.

Because of potential toxic exposures, it’s very possible that Morris’s map is an undercount. 

“There are likely more cancer cases,” Mraz said. “I think it’s definitely worth looking into.”

NJ.com reporters cite multiple medical experts from around the country who agree that the site needs more — and urgent — study, and that there’s mounting evidence of a potential “cancer cluster.”

The 50-acre plot that eventually became a landfill started in the early 20th century as a small aircraft hub, and bears this legacy in its current name: Aeromarine Industrial Park. In 1962, it transitioned into a dumping site, until it was shut down. 

But in the decades since, the company that owns the property has been cited several times — to the tune of almost $900,000 from New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection as recently as last year — for allegedly failing to seal it off properly.

The American Cancer Society defines cancer clusters as “patterns of cancer cases” in “people who live or work in the same area,” and estimates there are nearly 1,000 in the country. The official designation of a cancer cluster typically triggers a robust public health response aimed at curbing future diagnoses. 

But Keyport hasn’t achieved that gruesome milestone yet, despite decades of intermittent studies and reports — like the most recent one conducted in 2010 by an outside environmental consulting firm — concluding Aeromarine was replete with at least five carcinogens tied to lung, breast, bladder, pancreatic, prostate and kidney cancers, as well as leukemia and lymphoma.

The Aeromarine site is a “legacy landfill,” per the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, because it dates back before the 1980s, when more comprehensive environmental protections were put in place.

Craig Benson, an emeritus professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Virginia, told NJ.com that legal waste disposal back then was “a Wild Wild West.”

“Everything just went in a hole in the ground. There were no rules. Hazardous waste went right in with everything else.”

In a statement to the investigative reporters at NJ.com, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection said it was “committed to ensuring proper closure of the landfill to protect the environment and public health.”

The department added that it “has begun initial discussions to determine next steps” for the site, which could involve more public health assessments.

In the meantime, Rusty Morris keeps adding X’s to his map, including a friend who survived ovarian cancer at 36, and her father, who never smoked but died at 77 of lung cancer.

Dr. Scarlett Gomez, a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California in San Francisco, told NJ.com that it shouldn’t matter if the Keyport site has been officially classified a cancer cluster or not — it should just be cleaned up.

“Why do we need to wait to see if it’s going to cause disease down the road?”