NDCA

‘It’s in the water:’ Local doctor believes diseases afflicting Zavalla-area residents are being caused by toxins or pollutants

By CHRISTINE S. DIAMOND
The Lufkin Daily News

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Two children in two years time develop the same rare brain cancer. Numerous cases of other forms of cancer, thyroid conditions and fibromyalgia syndrome appear to plague the people of Zavalla and other communities surrounding Sam Rayburn Reservoir.

Is it merely a small-town coincidence, a statistical fluke as suggested by Dr. Sid Roberts, director of the Arthur Temple Sr. Regional Cancer Center in Lufkin, and earlier cancer cluster investigations that found nothing unusual?

Or, is it an indication of a poison in the environment that is causing so many people to manifest similar illnesses?

“It’s in the water,” said Dr. Alexander Orlov, a Lufkin-based doctor who steadfastly agrees with the Zavalla community’s first instinctive suspicion toward the common denominator — the water.

Orlov practices what is called “functional medicine” in which doctors try to determine the underlying cause of illnesses. Often, the cause is toxins, heavy metals or persistent organic pollutants in the environment that have stockpiled in a patient’s body, he said. Once rid of these agents, the body’s natural healing systems recover, he said.

To reassure the concerns of panicked parents expressed to the school superintendent, the school board and the city council, a regimen of tests were conducted on the city’s treated and pre-treated water. The tests, taken Nov. 27, are currently being assessed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Zavalla draws its water from a different aquifer than Lufkin, the Yegua-Jackson minor aquifer which has a recharge zone running east-to-west across Angelina County, according to the Texas Water Development Board Web site. Recharge zones refer to the site where rainwater quickly infiltrates through the soil into the sandy underground water storage zones known as an aquifer — sometimes hundreds of miles north of the wells, as in the case of Lufkin’s water.

Residents at the city council cancer Q&A last month claimed occurrences of brain cancer in children and male adults began decades ago. Residents discussed a realm of causes other than water. Most recently, however, city secretary Donna Marshall said folks are now tying the tumors, thyroid issues and other health concerns with the break-up of space shuttle Columbia over East Texas.

Orlov disagrees.

“It is tempting to find an event to blame,” he said.

One rather recent event isn’t likely to be the driver of such pervasive, ongoing symptoms and diseases, he said. Nor is Zavalla the only community affected, he said.

The water

From the time he opened his practice in Lufkin 15 years ago, Orlov said he began noticing an epidemic of cancer and fibromyalgia cases in the rural communities surrounding Sam Rayburn Reservoir.

At first, Orlov said he attributed it to being characteristic of a rural community where people are less educated about diet and the prevalence of smoking — agreeing with Roberts, who maintains it is the prevalence of smoking in Angelina and surrounding counties that accounts for record lung cancer rates.

“Before you address the toxins, you have to address the nutritional deficiency,” Orlov said. “We are a nation of overfed, undernourished people.”

After several years, however, Orlov began studying the relationship between human health and environmental health. And he took a second look at his patients and where they lived.

“What is it that is harming them?” he asked. “I believe our drinking water is polluted.”

Whether it is the lake or the groundwater, Orlov is convinced the causes for these health issues are in the water.

“I am 100 percent convinced it is in the water,” he said.

Possibly, he said, the contaminants were originally airborne and flushed back to earth by the rain which recharges the aquifers and fills the rivers that feed the lake. Or, the toxins may have originated from an industry upriver, like the paper mill, and washed downstream, finally settling in the lake or old river bed. The one thing he sees these communities having in common is the water. What it is in the water, Orlov says, he hasn’t figured out yet.

Usually when concerns about water arise, the first thing people think of is consumption for drinking and food. However, Orlov says bathing, showering and swimming in the water all provide a faster and more concentrated route of entry to the body as water is absorbed through the skin and bypassing the GI tract.

Orlov says he encourages all his patients to filter their water, showers included.

Canaries in the mine

So then, why doessn’t everyone exposed to the water become ill?

Health is a multi-faceted issue that includes one’s environment, diet and genetic makeup, he said. Simply put, not all people are physiologically able to process the toxins absorbed or ingested into their body in the same manner, he said.

There are those “stout” individuals, Orlov said, who are known to drink, smoke and eat unhealthy but live long healthy lives. Then there are those whose bodies choke up at the slightest exposure to toxins. This is because those in the latter group lack the ability to process out the bad stuff, which means the heavy metals and other poisons accumulate in the body where they wreak all kinds of havoc.

Like canaries once lowered into the coal mines to test for healthy oxygen levels, he said, people prone to flare-ups of fibromyalgia symptoms could be a modern-day litmus test for the presence of poisons in the environment,

Heavy metals usually don’t appear in regular blood or urine sample unless the person was recently exposed, Orlov said. He uses a test that draws the metals out by introducing them to a molecule that attaches to the heavy metal molecules and carries them out of the person’s system.

Through similar methods, most toxins can be purged from a person’s system, he said. By removing the toxins and preventing their re-entry, with filters in this case, people have options in how to treat their chronic illness, he said.

Treatments like this are options to pills that only treat the symptom, acting as “a Band-aid,” he said.

“I consider it to be my duty as a physician to address these topics because I think it is the only meaningful way for people to improve their health,” Orlov said.

After practicing “orthodox medicine” for 10 years, Orlov said he realized improving a person’s health was impossible without addressing the cause.

“We are a product of our environment. You have to address the underlying illness which is based in the environment and toxicology,” he said.

The community needs to take action in determining what toxin is responsible for the illnesses and where the toxin is originating, Orlov said.

“I really believe that we are in the midst of a health care crisis; it is because we only address symptoms,” he said. “I believe in the next few years there will be a paradigm shift in the way we practice medicine.”

When and how that happens will be up to the industry that drives medicine, not the patients or the physicians, he said.

Orlov says he plans to attend the special community action group meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday at Zavalla City Hall. Roberts said he will be unable to attend.