As of this past week, the Nassau County Department of Health has received over three times the number of cancer surveys back than they did when the original mailing was sent out over the summer.

When there was a cancer cluster scare in Levittown in June, Nassau County Legislator Dennis Dunne began working with the legislature, 1 in 9 Breast Cancer Coalition and the state and county departments of health to develop a survey to find out exactly how prevalent cancer is in Levittown.

The survey was originally mailed to 14,000 homes in the 11756 zip code. Out of those 14,000 surveys mailed, only 1,038 were returned. Out of those, 503 had some form of cancer- 256 had breast cancer. Because of the disappointing number of responses with the first mailing Dunne organized a campaign to develop a new survey, which would be more clear that everyone- whether they had cancer or not- was to return. He then decided people would respond better if the surveys were hand-delivered and got together approximately 100 community members to deliver the new surveys door to door.

Although the final results are not in, because residents have until Feb. 28 to return the surveys and they have to be correlated by the state department of health, the county department of health has some preliminary numbers from the new surveys. As of Tuesday, 3,737 of the new surveys were returned. Of those, 631 have cancer and 3,106 do not.

Dunne said that what this means for Levittown is, "The sky is not falling. We are not any different than any other community, thank God." He added, "Cancer is a tremendous concern but we're not sticking out like a sore thumb and that is what we wanted to make sure of."

Although the rate of cancer is not as high as it may have originally appeared, Dunne said that it is enough to make him glad that he has ordered the mammography machine to come to Levittown every other week. Appointments are also being set up for men to have prostate cancer screenings. These programs are geared to enhance early detection which may help the prognosis of those people with cancer. Dunne said, "It [the number of cancer cases] is enough to concern me so I am going to do what has to be done."

The cutoff date to return the surveys is Feb. 28. Residents are asked to return their surveys if they have not already done so. Dunne explained, "The more numbers the better the scientific research is." This week there were 1,000 additional surveys printed up for anyone who may have misplaced theirs. Anyone who needs a new survey can call Dunne's office at 571-6215. Dunne said, "I'm pleading with people, if they do have it [the survey] please stick it in the mail."

The Nassau County Department of Health is currently gathering the surveys and they will be sending them to the New York State Department of Health. Dunne hopes to have a fair assessment of the results from the state department of health by the middle of May.