Boston GLOBE EDITORIAL

Disease cluster mystery

October 14, 2007

FOR MORE than 20 years, health officials have known about a puzzling concentration of the neurodegenerative illness known as Lou Gehrig’s disease in the southeastern Massachusetts town of Middleborough. In the coming months, a study financed by the federal government and conducted by state environmental health scientists might answer the riddle of whether toxic waste from two Superfund sites in the town has caused the rare and usually fatal disease, which normally strikes just two of 100,000 people.

The state is also working to create a registry to keep track of the disease. In collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Environmental Health Tracking Program, such registries can build up the databases that researchers need to track diseases with suspected environmental causes. Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton of New York and Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah have called for a $100 million increase in the CDC program’s budget to help the tracking program establish itself nationwide. Congress should approve the funding.

Besides being a potential site for a casino operated by the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, Middleborough was home to a metal plating plant and a chemical plant. Their industrial waste became Superfund sites that still have not been entirely cleaned up.

The two best-known victims of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) have been Gehrig, the baseball Hall of Famer who died of it, and the physicist Stephen Hawking, who has defied the odds by surviving with the disease for decades. Most of those afflicted die within two to four years. The disease deprives patients of the ability to control motion, speech, and finally breathing, although their minds remain clear. Besides environmental factors, scientists are also exploring genes and viruses as possible causes.

Researchers have studied other ALS clusters. Three men who played football for the San Francisco 49ers in 1964 were diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s. A possible cause was a fertilizer with high levels of the heavy metal cadmium that was used on the team’s practice field. Residents of the western Pacific island of Guam have also had abnormally high rates of the disease. A possible trigger there was an edible bean, the cycad.

The CDC program for tracking environmental links to diseases was spurred by a 2001 Pew Environmental Health Commission report calling for such an effort. The program offers the prospect of integrating, under uniform data standards, the toxic monitoring and health surveillance efforts of a myriad of state agencies. Especially in the case of low-incidence diseases like Lou Gehrig’s, such a nationwide tracking system could be of great benefit to scientists in identifying concentrations and pointing to causes. Congress should give the project the support it needs. 

Genetics vs. pollution debated in 11 children’s cases of rare retinoblastoma

By Kerry Cavanaugh, Staff Writer, L.A. Daily News
Article Last Updated: 04/12/2008 01:03:02 AM PDT

Researchers are at odds over whether 11 cases of a rare eye cancer found in West Valley children could be linked to pollution from the nearby Santa Susana Field Lab.

Last year, state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Los Angeles, asked the California Department of Public Health to investigate the possibility of a cancer cluster after she learned that nine children in the area had been diagnosed with retinoblastoma – an aggressive eye cancer.

Department of Public Health analysts found 11 cases of retinoblastoma over eight years within 10 miles of the field lab.

While conceding that the incidence was slightly higher than expected, the agency report found “no statistically significant excess of retinoblastoma” and suggested that the cases were caused by genetics, not environmental issues.

But epidemiologist Hal Morgenstern, who has studied cancer rates around the field lab, said the state analysis was too broad to rule out pollution as a possible cause.

“What was done by the state really didn’t address the concerns the parents had,” Morgenstern said.

“I don’t think you can dismiss possible environmental factors, and I don’t think you can dismiss time and spatial clustering.”

Professor Morgenstern heads the epidemiology program at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. In a state study in the 1990s, he found higher rates of some cancers among Santa Susana Field Lab workers.

In a federal study released in 2007, he found higher rates of some cancers in the community within two miles of the lab.

Morgenstern was contacted several years ago by a group of West Valley mothers whose children had retinoblastoma, and he consulted with the state Department of Public Health for its analysis of a possible retinoblastoma cluster.

The Mothers for Retinoblastoma Awareness said they couldn’t comment about the recent studies.

The rare, fast-growing eye cancer is found in children younger than 5 and can begin growing while a child is still in the womb. Often it isn’t detected until it has grown so large that the eye must be removed.

Some 250 children in the United States and Canada are diagnosed with retinoblastoma each year. Nationally, statisticians expect 11 cases per million children under age 5.

Yet the Department of Public Health study found 11 cases of retinoblastoma among 30,000 children within 10 miles of the lab.

The study covered an 18-year period, although all retinoblastoma cases occurred between 1998 and 2005. The children lived in Canoga Park, Woodland Hills and Simi Valley.

Analysts anticipated 7.5 incidents of retinoblastoma, based on state statistics, but the Department of Public Health’s Dr. Donald Lyman said the 11 cases were not a statistically significant excess.

Morgenstern said the study covered too large an area and too long a time period, diluting significance of the fact that all the retinoblastoma cases occurred within eight years and a concentrated area.

“If there were some clusterings in space and time, they would probably be obscured in this analysis,” he said.

In a letter to Kuehl, Lyman defended the radius chosen for the study: “A smaller radius around the (Santa Susana Field Lab) would have excluded key neighborhoods where the concerned families reside.” He also defended the time period selected.

Kuehl said she was disappointed with the state study.

“They intentionally made the study so broad that you couldn’t show a cluster and neglected the time period,” Kuehl said.

Rather than call for a new analysis, Kuehl said she is considering holding a hearing to determine whether oversight is needed on how the Department of Public Health and California Cancer Registry conduct studies of cancer clusters.

EPA Science Investigated

House committee probe of industry bias in agency review reaches former ACS president

Cheryl Hogue and Jeff Johnson

The chemical industry’s ability to determine how science is used to shape the national debate over product safety is being investigated by a key House committee.

“Our committee intends to determine what influence the chemical industry yields over the scientific community and whether that influence is proper,” said Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, in a statement releasing an April 2 letter to the American Chemistry Council (ACC). The letter seeks a long list of documents from the U.S. chemical industry’s primary lobbying arm.

In mid-March, Dingell’s committee also asked the Environmental Protection Agency for related documents and raised similar concerns that agency science is biased in the chemical industry’s favor. Both requests demand the information within two weeks from the dates of the letters.

The genesis of the congressional investigations is ACC’s successful demand that EPA retroactively remove the views of the chairwoman who had overseen a peer review assessment on a family of flame retardants. The agency struck the chairwoman’s views after the report had been published. The investigation, however, goes beyond this apparent influencing of EPA.

Among the requested data from ACC are “all records of payments and communications” between former American Chemical Society president William F. Carroll and ACC. Carroll served as ACS president in 2005 and, as a member of the three-year presidential succession, was a member of the society’s board of directors in 2004–06.

The Energy & Commerce Committee is particularly concerned about “cross-pollination” between Carroll’s role as the head of a society of chemical professionals while at the same time serving as a chief industry proponent for the vinyl industry, a committee staff member says.

Carroll has worked for Occidental Chemical continuously for nearly 30 years and is currently the company’s vice president for chlorovinyl issues. He was identified in the House committee letter as an executive with the Vinyl Institute, an industry group allied with ACC. But Carroll strongly denies this: “I was never an executive with the institute. Our company is a member, but I have never worked for them,” he says.

Carroll has had a long relationship with ACC, however, and was acting managing director of ACC’s chlorine division for six months in 2006. And in 1994–96, he was a staff member of the Chlorine Chemistry Council, an ACC subsidiary. Carroll says he was never on the payroll of ACC or the chlorine council.

The committee is also seeking information on nine scientists with industry contacts who served on EPA review panels, as well as information on a law office and a public relations firm.

Additionally, the committee is exploring industry and science ties through information it is seeking about ACC’s relationship to the International Society for Regulatory Toxicology & Pharmacology and its journal, Regulatory Toxicology & Pharmacology, which is owned and published by Elsevier. The society, the committee staff member says, is funded by several corporations and associations, including ACC.

Environmental and public health advocates have been critical of the journal. Jennifer Sass, a toxicologist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, says that in studies the journal publishes, previously reported toxic or adverse health effects from chemical exposure are downplayed, dismissed, or simply not mentioned. The journal includes mainly mathematical models and meta analyses of other published studies, she adds, and its editorial board includes attorneys who represent corporations.

Dingell asked ACC for records of any payments to journal officials, but Gio B. Gori, editor of the journal, tells C&EN he has never received money from ACC and is paid for his editing work by Elsevier. “I don’t know why they’re investigating us,” he says. “We have nothing to hide.”

At the heart of the investigation is Deborah C. Rice, a former EPA scientist and currently a toxicologist with the state of Maine, who chaired an EPA external peer review panel set up to conduct a toxicological review of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). The review of this group of flame retardants began in 2002. The European Union and several U.S. states have banned penta-BDE and octa-BDE. The main BDE found in commerce in the U.S. is deca-BDE, which is incorporated into plastics in the housings of television sets and other electric and electronic equipment, as well as upholstery for furniture and other items.

The peer review panel examined EPA’s draft assessment of BDEs, which includes agency expert judgments on how much exposure to each BDE is safe. These judgments can have far-ranging regulatory effects.

EPA places its peer-reviewed judgments on safe doses of chemicals and the scientific justification behind them in a database called the Integrated Risk Information System, which is available on the Web. EPA, other federal agencies, state environmental departments, and even regulators in foreign countries rely on the database. For instance, they often depend on the database’s safe daily dose numbers to decide how much cleanup a polluter must do at a contaminated site.

Rice is a world-class toxicologist, according to several toxicologists interviewed by C&EN, some of whom are associated with EPA and did not wish to comment publicly. She was a toxicologist with Health Canada and the U.S. EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment, which is conducting the PBDE review.

Rice declined to comment to C&EN, as did EPA officials.

Rice was selected for the peer review panel in 2006 and was one of five reviewers. The panel met in February 2007 and issued its assessment in mid-March, when EPA posted the report on its website.

On May 3, 2007, ACC wrote to George M. Gray, EPA assistant administrator for R&D, complaining about “the appearance that [the] peer review panel’s leadership might lack the impartiality and objectivity necessary to conduct a fair and impartial review of the data.” Rice, the letter says, had testified before the Maine State Legislature on behalf of a state agency, the Center for Disease Control & Prevention, where she works. There, she advocated a phaseout of deca-BDE.

Rice simply conveyed the policy position of her employer to state lawmakers, says Sonya Lunder, senior analyst with the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit advocacy and research organization.

In a Jan. 8, 2008, letter to ACC, Gray announced that the agency had removed all of Rice’s comments from the final peer review report. The agency had redacted her comments from the report and reposted it to the website.

In his Jan. 8 letter, Gray said his letter was a follow-up to a June 15, 2007, meeting with ACC to discuss Rice’s involvement. Gray wrote in his letter that EPA made the changes because “one of the panel members had a potential conflict of interest.”

At ACC’s urging, Gray said he had also reviewed initial and final comments of other panel reviewers to determine if the chairwoman had influenced their views. His review found “minor additions” from reviewers but provided no evidence that Rice had “significantly influenced the other panelists.”

Rice “has no conflict of interest that I’m aware of,” says Merrill Goozner, director of the Integrity in Science project at the watchdog group Center for Science in the Public Interest. Under federal laws and policies for advisory panels, conflicts of interest have to do with advisers’ potential financial gain or loss from their recommendations.

Goozner’s group and environmental organizations regularly write letters to EPA contending that external peer reviewers have financial conflicts of interest. “ACC has every right to write a letter to EPA, just like we do,” he tells C&EN. It is the agency’s job, Goozner says, to investigate the situation and determine if a reviewer indeed has a conflict.

EPA, however, “made the wrong decision” in Rice’s case, Goozner says.

“Apparently, EPA didn’t want to hear from this person because industry disagreed with her conclusions,” says David Michaels, a professor of environmental and occupational health at George Washington University.

Michaels, former Department of Energy assistant secretary for environment, safety, and health, says the removal of Rice from the panel is consistent with other actions the Bush Administration has taken to stack advisory groups with scientists favorable to its views and to silence opponents.

Lunder and other scientists interviewed by C&EN warn of the chilling effect Gray’s actions may have on other scientists asked to take part in peer reviews. They note that Rice had already been vetted and selected by EPA and the contractor that put together the panel.

“Peer reviewers should be free to say whatever they think,” Lunder says, “and to have retroactive retaliation by removing your name sends a message that if you say something unpopular or out of line with EPA, your views may get dropped. It challenges the whole principle of review by an unbiased panel without fear of retribution.”

In a statement released earlier this month, ACC said its “strong support for science” and “an independent peer review process” led it to raise concerns with EPA about Rice’s membership on the PBDE panel. “We believe EPA acted appropriately and consistently with the rules governing membership in scientific review panels,” the industry group said.

“ACC will work with the Energy & Commerce Committee to provide it with the requested materials pertaining to this matter,” the statement said.

The final toxicological human health assessment of PBDE is expected this month. It is now being examined by the White House’s Office of Management & Budget, according to EPA officials. An official familiar with the draft said Rice’s toxicological studies are cited in the assessment although her views on the draft had been struck.

CDC Under Seige

April 20, 2008

The Huffington Post

By Deirdre Imus

When American scholar Warren Bennis said, “Bureaucracies are beautiful mechanisms for the evasion of responsibilities and guilt,” he might well have been speaking of the current state of affairs inside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Once revered around the world, hardly a month passes without another news report questioning the credibility, scientific independence, and integrity of the nation’s premier health agency.

Over the past four years headlines frequently chronicle a disturbing litany of allegations charging top CDC officials with wasting money on questionable research priorities, public relations stunts, distorting or ignoring health concerns raised by their own scientists, and retaliation against those who object to the censorship of scientific findings.

The past three years have been particularly unpleasant for CDC Director, Dr. Julie Gerberding, but apparently not as bad as she and her managers are making it for many CDC scientists.

In 2005, alarmed at the rapid decline in morale and concerned for the credibility of the agency, five former CDC directors sent Dr. Gerberding a letter complaining that the agency’s politicization was jeopardizing its national and international reputation.

You would think criticisms like this would result in a re-evaluation by top CDC officials, but apparently not. The frustration of long time officials was raised again in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) article, “Exodus, Morale Shake CDC” (Sept. 10, 2006). The article quotes Dr. Stephen Cochi, an advisor in the CDC’s Global Immunization Division, who said, “The capacity of the CDC to [tackle public health problems] has seriously eroded in a very short time…The American people need to be concerned.”

As troubling and often embarrassing revelations continued to plague the CDC, some believed the agency is simply an example of bureaucratic incompetence. Others, inside and out, suggest something far worse. Accusations about manipulation of research data, suppression of safety information, even suggestions of scientific fraud has created a “crisis in confidence” among CDC officials, resulting in scientists leveling harsh criticisms regarding the agency’s priorities and asking if its actions, or inactions, are actually putting the public’s health at risk.

Chief among the complaints from scientists and citizen’s groups has been the way the agency continually disputes, downplays or ignores scientific findings, often from some of their own researchers, and fails to draw any conclusions, or “links,” between environmental/industrial pollution and chronic diseases affecting the American public, particularly children.

These criticisms have been voiced for several decades. An example of how the agency can design a study so that it fails to link disease and pollution can be found in the way the CDC investigated the cancer clusters in Fallon, Nevada and Sierra Vista, Arizona. In a 2006 article published in The Tucson Weekly, the CDC’s “foot-dragging” and unscientific methods used to investigate the clusters raised serious questions about the study’s integrity and the agency’s credibility and commitment to protecting the public’s health. In describing the CDC’s slow reaction to the life and death situations, it is not difficult to see how many would level accusations of “cover-up” to describe the “faulty manner” in which the agency responded to the cluster investigations.

The CDC itself admits the agency repeatedly fails to identify, or connect, environmental chemicals to these clusters. Quoting from the CDC website, “From 1961 to 1982, CDC investigated 108 reported cancer clusters in 29 states and 5 foreign countries…The studies were begun in hopes of identifying a viral cause of cancer clusters. During these investigations, however no clear cause was determined for any of the reported clusters.”

Two of the latest in a long list of reported controversies dogging the beleaguered agency involves the delayed disclosure of a 400-page study conducted in the Great Lakes region and the demotion of the study’s chief scientist, Christopher De Rosa, a director of the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) since 1992.

Released in early February by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit journalism organization, the study found exposures to PCB’s, lead, mercury, dioxin, pesticides and other toxins may have caused “low birth weights, elevated rates of infant mortality and premature births, and elevated death rates from breast cancer, colon cancer and lung cancer.”

In an article accompanying the study, “Great Lakes Danger Zone,” reporter Sheila Kaplan, interviewed Canadian biologist Dr. Michael Gilbertson, one of the study’s reviewers. Dr. Gilbertson explained, “The whole problem with all this kind of work is wrapped up in that word ‘injury.’ If you have injury, that implies liability. Liability, of course, implies damages…The governments, frankly, in both countries [US and Canada] are so heavily aligned with, particularly, the chemical industry, that the word amongst the bureaucracies is that they really do not want any evidence of effect or injury to be allowed out there.”

In response to the CDC’s handling of the report, Michigan Representatives John Dingell, Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Bart Stupack, Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee launched a congressional investigation charging the agency with a “Cover-Up.” In a statement released on February 28th 2008, Chairman Dingell wrote, “If the administration has willfully withheld a report from the public, it raises questions about whether they are putting the public health at risk and about the scientific integrity of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

The release of the Great Lakes study comes on the heels of new accusations charging top CDC officials with down playing cancer risks posed by formaldehyde exposure found in the 144,000 trailers purchased by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

In a February 8, 2008 article in the AJC, “CDC under investigation over Katrina cancer risk,” investigative journalist Alison Young reported the House Committee on Science and Technology has begun investigating “disturbing allegations” of improper suppression of “critical information” and “also looking into whether the Atlanta scientist who sought to make the risks public has been the subject of retaliation by the agency.” This individual would be the same CDC scientist leading the Great Lakes study, Dr. Christopher De Rosa.

The article cites a letter sent to Director Gerberding from the Committee’s chairman and two other subcommittee chairmen stating, “The agency’s conduct has called into question its ability to investigate public health hazards accurately and appropriately in the future.” Again, suggestions that liability, rather than the health of the people living in the trailers, seemed to be the primary concern of FEMA and CDC officials.

Cleaning up toxic chemicals in the environment can cost businesses a great deal of money. Liability for the diseases caused by these chemicals can cost business even more money. Today’s political climate, inside the CDC and out, is not interested in holding corporations accountable for anything, even allowing toxic pollutants to poison our children. This would explain why we have a nation of sick kids and why only a few in government seem interested in doing anything about it.

And if the suppression of safety data and intimidation of agency scientists raising health concerns were not bad enough, the CDC also stands accused of hyping certain health threats and terrifying the public in the hope of benefiting from the “fear” campaigns. Sandwiched between the Great Lakes and FEMA trailer “cover-up” reports, another article by the AJC asks “Did CDC hype TB case as a fund-raising ploy?” (March 13, 2008).

The article chronicles the hysteria created over 31-year-old Atlanta attorney, Andrew Speaker, a man CDC officials diagnosed with XDR TB five months after an agency “strategy” session focused on obtaining more funding for the rare and deadly form of TB.

According to the article, “The handling of the Speaker case was so unusual that it has raised questions among other TB experts, including whether CDC publicized Speaker’s case in a quest for more money.”

While the CDC’s Media Relations Director Glen Nowak maintains “the agency’s actions were justified,” the agency “has refused for nearly seven months to release documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) about any role the agency’s XDR TB funding strategy played in its handling of the Speaker case.” As it turns out, Speaker didn’t even have the deadly XDR TB. All that hype and the young man had a different, “more treatable” form of TB all along.

It’s a little disturbing that the world’s leading health agency would misdiagnose the type of tuberculosis this man has. Makes you wonder how often situations like this are sensationalized way out of proportion and sending the public into a panic. Anyone remember monkeypox? When was the last time you heard about that? And what has become of that deadly bird flu that dominated the news for about a year? Ever notice how the urgent predictions of impending disaster disappear after the CDC gets a big boost in funding from congress to combat these diseases?

We know every year the CDC and health officials claim 36,000 people die from influenza. This little piece of propaganda is spread annually by medical reporters on all the morning and nightly news programs. But does anyone ever ask these so-called “experts” to prove this statistic? No…talk show hosts and medical reporters just regurgitate the “talking points” with no interest in accuracy.

For anyone interested, investigative journalist Kelly O’Meara actually did ask “how does the CDC arrive at its numbers of deaths related to influenza?” In an article for the Washington Times Insight Magazine, CDC spokesman Curtis Allen admited the 36,000 deaths “are not ‘real’ numbers” and are actually nothing more that a computer generated guess. “There are a couple problems with determining the number of deaths related to the flu because most people don’t die from the influenza…We don’t know exactly how many people get the flu each year because it’s not a reportable disease and most physicians don’t do the test [nasal swab] to indicate whether it’s influenza.”

In a follow up article “A Shot In the Dark – Part I,” using the CDC’s own data, O’Meara found “The greatest number of actual inluenza deaths recorded since 1979 were 3,006 in 1981.”

I found both these stories with a simple Google search, something medical reporters and their interviewers might want to try. (Flu Secrets You Should Know 2/3/04).

Although never held accountable for these misrepresentations, top CDC officials have consistently shown themselves to be quite creative at exploiting certain health threats, like TB, influenza and bird flu, when it suits their purposes, and ignoring other health threats, like childhood cancer and autism, when it doesn’t. How do they keep getting away with this stuff?

No where has the CDC’s credibility suffered more than in the way it has responded to questions about vaccine safety, and if vaccines are associated with increased rates of autism. When you study the way the CDC has responded to the autism epidemic you will see a very similar pattern of behavior as what occurs when the CDC investigates cancer clusters. Their studies never find a “link” or an “association” because that is what they are designed to do.

For years thousands of parents have maintained their healthy, normally developing children regressed into autism following vaccinations. And for years the CDC has vehemently denied any evidence of an association. The debate has been the subject of thousands of news stories with neither side backing away from their steadfast positions.

On March 6, however, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution carried a front-page headline: FIRST AUTISM-VACCINE LINK: HOW HANNAH MADE HISTORY.

The article details an admission by the federal government, that Hannah Poling, a nine-year-old Georgia girl, was harmed by the nine vaccines she received at 19 months, after which Hannah became autistic. The leaked landmark concession was actually filed last November 9th but the decision remains sealed even though Hannah Poling’s parents have asked that the documents be made public. There’s that secrecy thing again.

The government’s concession was deemed so significant that CNN made it a lead story throughout the day. Predictably, CDC Director Gerberding rushed to the microphones to reiterate the agency’s standard talking points in response to the Poling bombshell. “The government has made absolutely no statement indicating that vaccines are a cause of autism,” said Gerberding. Apparently, this is the CDC’s story and they are sticking to it. Meanwhile there are nearly 5,000 other claims filed on behalf of children diagnosed with autism awaiting review in vaccine court.

By the end of the day, news of the concession made headlines around the world and was one of the lead stories on every nightly news program. In a report for the CBS Evening News, reporter Sharyl Attkisson uncovered nine additional cases where the government awarded compensation to vaccine-injured children who developed autism.

There has been a lot of parsing of words and the expected “spin” about this decision from the usual sources. But none of these “opinions” changes the facts. Individuals can continue to argue whether or not vaccines cause autism, but there is no arguing that the government — not a court or a judge — the government’s medical experts conceded this case having determined that vaccines DID harm little Hannah. Hannah Poling did not have autism before she received nine vaccines in one day, but soon after Hannah was diagnosed with autism. And the government’s medical experts — not a judge — said this little girl should be compensated.

Of interest is the leaking of a second decision involving Hannah Poling filed on February 21st carried in a March 19th AJC
op-ed by journalist/author David Kirby. The second concession states, “The cause for (autistic) encephalopathy in Hannah at age 19 months was underlying mitochondrial dysfunction, exacerbated by vaccine-induced fever and immune stimulation that exceeded metabolic reserves.”

Kirby clarifies several misconceptions being reported in other news reports and makes several very good points.

1. Instead of health officials expressing concern for other children who may have experienced the same reaction as Hannah, parents are “met with stonewalling, denial, and misinformation.

2. Hannah’s underlying condition was not a “rare” or “inherited” disease. Hannah was asymptomatic prior to receiving her vaccines and by all accounts developing normally.

3. The government still hasn’t released either decision.

The conflicts of interest between CDC officials and the vaccine industry are vast, appalling and were detailed by UPI in 2003. “The Vaccine Conflict” is a must read for anyone concerned about industry influence on government agencies. The article provides shocking details about how the CDC collaborates with the vaccine industry. Following a four-month investigation, UPI found:

In two cases in the past four years, vaccines endorsed by the CDC were pulled off the market after a number of infants and adults appeared to have suffered devastating side effects, and some died.

Members of the CDC’s Vaccine Advisory Committee get money from vaccine manufacturers. Relationships have included: sharing a vaccine patent; owning stock in a vaccine company; payments for research; getting money to monitor manufacturer vaccine tests; and funding academic departments.

The CDC is in the vaccine business. Under a 1980 law, the CDC currently has 28 licensing agreements with companies and one university for vaccines or vaccine-related products. It has eight ongoing projects to collaborate on new vaccines.

Those are some very serious conflicts. So when Dr. Gerberding or any official rushes to the microphones to tell us vaccines don’t cause autism we should consider the source and the implication for the agency if shown to be wrong.

If the CDC were capable of suppressing and minimizing the health risks associated in formaldehyde trailers or pollutants in the Great Lakes, why wouldn’t they do the same with vaccines and their association with autism? Why should we trust an agency to tell us the truth about a public health disaster that they may have created?

Make no mistake; I am sure there are thousands of dedicated good people of conscience and science working inside the walls of the CDC. It is regrettable that the credibility of the entire agency is being tarnished.

The bottom line is this…we cannot have a public health system that suppresses health information and deceives the public. Period! Whether it is about chemical pollution, air quality in trailers, or immunizations. This is totally unacceptable both morally and ethically. There should be a zero tolerance policy for any government official who knowingly deceives the public about the safety of products we use and give our children.

America deserves better and it is time we start to demand better as if our lives, and our children’s lives depend on it. Because the truth is…they do.

Toxin Agency Official Hollers Back

By Suemedha Sood 03/31/2008 03:00PM

John Steward, a former public health official for the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, read our two-part report on the CDC agency and took issue with a few points. Steward carried out the 2001 health consultation for Athens, Ga. resident Jill McElheney, mentioned in the piece. He’s now at Georgia State University’s Institute of Public Health. Here’s what he had to say:

The only point I want to refute is Steward’s claim that polycythemia vera couldn’t be caused by environmental exposure because it’s a genetic disorder. The disease is caused by a genetic mutation, yes, but time and time again, oncologist-hematologists familiar with the rare disease have said that environmental factors can cause the mutation. More importantly, they’ve said that the eastern Penn. clusters in question strongly suggest environmental influence — because heredity and occupational factors were ruled out. It’s also well documented that environmental factors can cause cancer, generally speaking.

A worthy investigation

Sunday, March 30, 2008

A TEAM of researchers’ attention to the possibly unusual cluster of cancers and other neurological diseases on the Eastern Shore adds to the disquieting concern that man-caused environmental pollution may have contributed to the health problems.

But as scientists, the researchers appropriately note that their interest in an anomaly doesn’t equal proof that anything unusual is going on.

What’s suspicious is what may be an extraordinary number of adults and children with multiple sclerosis (which usually only attacks in cooler climates), cancers of the brain, blood, bone and certain organs, and other neurological diseases. Medical researchers suspect that such maladies may be caused by a combination of genetic makeup and environmental factors.

Michael Shambaugh-Miller, a medical geographer at the University of Nebraska, pointedly stated during an interview with the Press-Register that the “numbers are jumping out. You shouldn’t have that number of MS cases in that area.”

The data showing the cluster of the diseases were collected by Lesley Pacey and Anna Calhoun over 12 years. Mrs. Pacey’s daughter contracted leukemia at age 4, and her grandmother suffers from a neurological disease.

Indeed, there have been at least six cases of rare childhood leukemia in Fairhope, Point Clear and Daphne since 2001. Two children have died.?he Alabama Department of Public Health has already announced it will be interviewing people in the area to determine whether the data compiled by the Fairhope mothers hold up.

In addition, researchers from the University of Arizona will be coring trees in Fairhope to see if there are unusually high levels of toxic pollutants. They have already tested some leaves from trees in the town and found higher-than-expected levels of chromium, zinc and mercury.

Commendably, Mrs. Pacey and Fairhope Councilwoman Debbie Quinn are setting up a nonprofit group to fund the research.

It’s worth noting that the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta stresses that identifying clusters of disease caused by local environmental hazards remains elusive. The federal agency has studied 100 clusters and found none that clearly were danger zones.

Still, it’s understandable that the Eastern Shore families want to know why their children and other relatives have rare diseases. Here’s hoping the studies by the researchers and the health department can give them some answers.

State admits Tallevast pollution study way off mark

By CHRISTOPHER O’DONNELL

Published Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 4:30 a.m.

MANATEE COUNTY — During the last 20 years, Tallevast residents say dozens of their neighbors have died prematurely. Others are still fighting cancer and beryllium-related health issues.

But a draft Florida Department of Health report on the community blighted by more than 200 acres of polluted ground water found just four cases of cancer.

The report could hardly be more different from a survey by residents that showed about 90 cases of cancer or beryllium-related diseases in the mainly black community.

DOH officials who met with the neighborhood group FOCUS on Monday agreed that their numbers, based on a state database and figures from a local hospital, were wildly off the mark. They also admitted they had studied the wrong ZIP code.

Although Tallevast has a post office, most Tallevast residents live in a Sarasota ZIP code.

“That’s one of the problems of dealing with a statewide database,” said Randy Merchant, a DOH administrator. “It’s hard to get a handle on what is happening in so small an area.”

The results left community leaders upset that state officials had not worked more closely with them to ensure errors like this did not happen.

“We’re angry,” said Wanda Washington, vice president of FOCUS. “We’re just not sure what road to take. No one ever came into the community to do a study. If you are doing it from behind a desk, you’re going to miss a lot.”

FOCUS’ figures on incidences of cancer came from a door-to-door survey quizzing families about their medical histories.

The community of about 80 homes sits above more than 200 acres of polluted ground water left behind by the former American Beryllium Co., which built parts for nuclear warheads for the federal government for nearly 40 years.

State officials said they will likely get an epidemiologist to conduct a similar door-to-door survey.

The cost would be about $125,000, they said.

State Rep. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, said if the DOH cannot fund it he will look for other funding sources.

“I’ve committed myself to help see that that happens so that the question can be answered and a more accurate picture developed,” Galvano said.

Residents in Tallevast have asked Lockheed Martin, the company responsible for the cleanup of the site, to pay for them to move. They have also filed several lawsuits against Lockheed and other companies that operated at the site seeking damages for health issues and falling property values.

Lockheed became the owner of the Tallevast site after the company acquired the former Loral company in 1996. It shut down the plant and sold the property, but not before discovering soil and ground-water pollution on and around the site.

In 2000, Lockheed notified county and state officials of the pollution, which included trichloroethylene, or TCE, a compound linked to liver and kidney cancer and other ailments.

Residents, who were not informed for almost four more years, continued to use well water. Their homes were switched to the county drinking water system in 2004.

FOCUS leaders said they would welcome state officials’ repeating their survey.

“We think the state will be better at it,” Washington said. “You need to put your feet on the ground and come out here and collect that information

March 16, 2008

State keeps wraps on cancer information

By CRIS BARRISH
The News Journal

Last summer, after years of complaints by neighbors of the Indian River power plant that cancer was rampant, Delaware public health officials revealed the existence of a lung cancer cluster.

Could there be more cancer clusters in Delaware, once known as the “Chemical Capital of the World” and home to industrial plants that emit some of the nation’s dirtiest air? Delaware, after all, has long had one of the highest cancer death rates in the United States.

Although public health officials say they’re trying to find out whether other cancer clusters exist, they won’t let anybody else investigate cancer in Delaware. The Division of Public Health has adopted a policy that prevents even other medical researchers from examining cancer in Delaware.

The agency recently denied a request by the University of Texas’ Anderson Cancer Center, one of the nation’s most respected hospitals, for Delaware breast cancer records. The Texas center is one of dozens across the nation that use states’ cancer records to improve knowledge about cancer causes and treatments.

The News Journal, which twice received detailed records on cancer from Delaware in recent years, requested them again after the Sussex County cluster was revealed. Public health officials refused, even though the Attorney General’s Office said the records could be released.

Delores Whildin, a Claymont-area resident concerned about pollution from the steel plant on the outskirts of her home near Ridge Road, suspects a cancer cluster exists in her neighborhood. “Every time you turn around, you hear somebody is having cancer,” she said.

The fact that the state won’t make its cancer information available to the public for small geographic areas bothers Whildin.

“It sounds like a cover-up,” she said last week. “What else could they be trying to hide?”

11-worst death rate

For Delaware, understanding cancer and devising a strategy against the disease is critical.

From 2000 through 2004, the latest period for which government statistics are available, Delaware cancer incidence and mortality were 6 percent higher than the national average. Overall, Delaware’s death rate was 11th-worst in the nation.

State officials conducted a statistical study of the Indian River area in southeastern Sussex County last summer after years of complaints by local residents that too many neighbors were getting cancer. The state found that from 2000-2004, lung cancer incidence in six ZIP codes around the power plant — the state’s worst polluter — was 10.5 percent higher than Delaware’s average and 17 percent higher than the nation’s.

The Division of Public Health is following up with a survey of residents to determine whether the high cancer rate is explained by a high rate of smokers or some other environmental factor.

The state also is conducting a study to see whether there are any other such clusters in Delaware, said Paul R. Silverman, deputy associate director for health information. Results should be available later this month, Silverman said.

But the state will no longer let reporters, hospitals or other nongovernmental agencies conduct cancer research using more detailed cancer information, contending that a victim’s privacy could be compromised. The newspaper sought the number of cancers for areas smaller than Delaware’s three counties — the smallest areas for which the agency normally reports cases.

Individual records are contained in the state’s cancer registry, which includes details of nearly 45,000 cases diagnosed in Delaware since 1980. Like every other state, Delaware collects information on every cancer patient in the state, including the type of cancer, stage of diagnosis, treatments received and whether the patient is alive or dead.

The News Journal has never sought or received patients’ identities, addresses, birth dates or Social Security numbers.

Greater access to cancer-related health information, not less, has emerged as one theme of Lt. Gov. John Carney’s campaign for governor.

Carney, who will face State Treasurer Jack Markell in the September Democratic primary, wants better screening and prevention programs and an expansion of the public’s access to data about cancer in Delaware. New reporting requirements would provide more analysis potential as well as a response plan when the data reveal problem areas such as cancer clusters.

Central to Carney’s plan is continued support of the Delaware Cancer Consortium, created by Gov. Ruth Ann Minner after The News Journal published the results of its cancer data investigation. The Consortium has been the impetus behind much of the state’s progress in addressing cancer mortality rates, which led the nation a few years ago. Carney chairs the Consortium’s Disparities Committee, which has evaluated why cancer mortality rates are higher for some racial and ethnic groups.

Markell, whose wife was diagnosed with cancer, said he wants all families to have access to quality care. He is running on a plan that promises affordable health care for every Delawarean.

Despite the research that led to the creation of the Cancer Consortium, Silverman and Dr. Jaime Rivera, public health director, are now saying they will no longer release the data, arguing that it could lead to a patient’s identification. The state might have erred by releasing detailed information to the newspaper in 2001 and 2003, Silverman said.

“We recognize we have two missions and they are at conflict with each other,” Silverman said. “One is to give the public information they need to make health decisions and the other is to protect privacy. This is a difficult balance to reach and we’re doing the best we can.”

When the newspaper’s series on high cancer mortality, late diagnosis and subpar treatment in Delaware was published in 2004, no patients or their families contacted state officials to complain that their identities were revealed. Patients identified in the newspaper stories were referred voluntarily to reporters by doctors, advocates and other victims.

The newspaper’s investigation spurred the General Assembly to spend millions of extra dollars on programs to detect and treat cancer.

Jay Cooperson, chairman of the Delaware Chapter of the Sierra Club environmental group, said he can’t understand why public health officials won’t follow the attorney general’s advice and release the information.

“It doesn’t seem to me to be any kind of invasion of privacy,” Cooperson said. “It doesn’t seem reasonable to refuse to release public health data. If there was an outbreak of cholera somewhere, the public has a right to know what are the areas of concentration for this disease.”

‘Could cold-call them’

Since the summer, the state has rejected two attempts by the newspaper for more detailed cancer information. The paper’s initial request sought data from 2000 through 2004, specifically, each patient’s census tract, cancer type, gender, race and five-year age group.

Rivera blamed that decision on a ruling by Attorney General Beau Biden’s office that the records must be considered protected health information because someone might be able to identify patients using other public records, such as voter registration files.

“We think it’s too restrictive, but we needed to follow the advice of counsel,” Rivera said.

So the newspaper revised its request, asking only for summaries of cases — known as aggregate data — for each of Delaware’s 197 cancer cases, broken down by cancer type and patient’s sex, race and age group. Biden’s office gave its consent but Rivera’s office rejected that advice, saying identities still could be discovered.

A memo Silverman wrote to Rivera outlines the state’s contention that identities of cancer victims could be discovered from the state registry.

Silverman cited the example of a 43-year-old black Hispanic woman with urinary cancer. If she is the only person of her sex, race and age group in her census tract with that form of cancer, “there is a reasonable probability that this individual could be identified using external, publicly available data,” Silverman wrote.

The likelihood of identification would increase, Silverman wrote, if her census tract had few black Hispanic women.

In a recent interview, Silverman said that someone who found out the names of the black Hispanic women in the tract using voter registration or other records might be able to identify her.

Asked how that could be done, Silverman said: “You could cold-call them.”

Biden, whose office by law must represent public health, and Minner, who appointed Rivera in 2004, would not agree to be interviewed.

Biden spokesman Jason Miller said the office “has already provided its advice on this matter to the client.”

Minner issued a statement that she has asked Rivera’s office to “continue working with the media to find a means of providing cancer information while protecting the legal rights of individuals who have cancer.”

Dr. Robert Frelick, one of Delaware’s foremost cancer experts for more than half a century, said he understand’s Rivera’s concern for patient privacy but questioned whether the public needs to worry about their medical condition being revealed without their approval.

“Somebody would have to go to a whole lot of work to figure it out,” Frelick said.

John J. Austin Jr., a former Environmental Protection Agency scientist who moved to the Rehoboth Beach area in 2004, said the public has a right to the information.

“So long as the names and addresses of the people are held private, it should be made available,” said Austin, a member of Citizens for Clean Power that has taken aim at the coal-powered electricity plant near Indian River, the area where the cancer cluster was found last year.

It’s not just the pollution from the Indian River plant that is causing worry across Delaware.

In Claymont, emissions for the steel plant include dioxins and mercury. In Delaware City, drinking-water wells have been contaminated with an industrial chemical suspected of causing cancer.

The most recent report on pollution within the state found that releases to the environment from the state’s 15 largest facilities rose to nearly 11.2 million pounds, up from 8.4 million pounds in 2005.

Austin said public access to the state’s information about cancer is critical to understanding possible health effects.

“Unless it’s in the public hands, the areas of the state with high disease incidence remains hidden and state officials have no reason to take action to solve the health problems throughout the state.”

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT IN DELAWARE

What sort of records can I request?

Most records of government agencies, including e-mail communications, are part of the public record available for all to see. Personal notes, investigative files, executive committee minutes, personnel files and parts of criminal files are among the items that can be withheld.

What information must my FOIA request include?

Requests shall adequately describe the record(s) sought. Be as precise as possible. Include names, titles, dates, places, events — anything that pins down what you’re seeking.

What can I do if my request is denied?

Ask for reconsideration of the request or send a written appeal to the Delaware Attorney General’s Office.

Delaware’s Freedom of Information Act appears in Title 29, Section 10000, of the Delaware Code. The act calls for the conduct of public business “in an open and public manner,” so that citizens can monitor decisions and have “easy access to public records in order that the society remain free and democratic.” Terms of the state’s FOIA law take up eight printed pages, supplemented by a 35-page U.S. Department of Justice policy manual developed to keep state agencies current on the latest definitions of “public body,” “open meeting” and “public record.”

The law requires public notification of meetings and allows few reasons for closed-door sessions. It also requires reasonable access to public records and reasonable copying charges and gives citizens a process to seek enforcement of the law, including lawsuits.

Residents should allow 10 working days before expecting a response from the state; FOIA requests under federal law allow up to 20 days for a response, with additional time permitted to fill large or complicated requests.

http://www.nfoic.org/foi-center/sample-letters.html” target=new>View sample FOIA letters from the Freedom of Information Center.

Sun, Mar. 16, 2008

Scientists take exception to report

By SCOTT STREATER

Star-Telegram staff writer

http://www.star-telegram.com/state_news/story/531348.html

A public health consultation that played down the risks of air pollution in Midlothian is misleading, biased and riddled with technical flaws and inaccuracies, according to reviews of the report by four scientists.

The comments were submitted this week to the Texas Department of State Health Services, which conducted the Midlothian health consultation in partnership with federal health officials.

Midlothian health consultation The report

Released in December, the consultation found dangerous chemicals such as benzene, arsenic and lead at levels exceeding the most conservative health-screening limits. But it concluded that more study is needed to determine “the extent of the public health hazard.”

The reviews

Four scientists who reviewed the 131-page report for Sal and Grace Mier, the Midlothian couple who organized a petition drive and persuaded the federal government to study pollution there, suggested that the study’s conclusions were vague for a reason.

“It appears that [state health officials] set out to prove that there were no health issues in Midlothian, Texas,” Dennis Cesarotti, an engineering technology expert at Northern Illinois University, wrote in a six-page critique.

Stuart Batterman, chairman of environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan, was even more direct in a four-page critique.

“The health consultation is biased,” wrote Batterman, who conducted research in the mid-1990s on the health effects of industrial pollution in Midlothian. “It contains overarching statements that discount all indications that emissions from local industry and environmental conditions might or do pose a health concern in the community.”

Debra Morris, a toxicologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, faulted the study for estimating exposure risks to people based on air-monitoring data instead of studying health effects in the population.

Peter deFur, an environmental consultant in Richmond, Va., said the report “attempts to marginalize or disregard data that indicate that compounds produce human health risks.”

What’s next

Federal and state health officials are working on the second part of the consultation, which will deal with the health effects from ozone, lead, particulate matter and other pollutants. That report is not expected until this year, at the earliest.

State/federal reaction

The Texas Department of State Health Services declined to answer specific criticisms, saying only that the evaluation was “intended to be an initial look at existing air-monitoring data for Midlothian,” agency spokeswoman Emily Palmer said. Jennifer Lyke, a regional representative in the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry’s Dallas office, also declined to address specific comments. But Lyke said the agency will review all the comments and consider revisions before the report is released in its final form this year.

On the Web

A copy of the consultation is available at: www.dshs.state.tx.us/epitox/midlothian/midlothian.shtml.

sstreater@star-telegram.com
SCOTT STREATER, 817-390-7657

Three pipelines bring worry to residents

By Crystal Owens   |   crystal.owens@onlineathens.com   |   Sunday, March 16, 2008

http://onlineathens.com/stories/031608/news_2008031600278.shtml

Most people don’t worry every day what’s in the air they breathe or the water they drink.

For people who live near three natural gas and petroleum pipelines in Madison County, it’s a way of life.

They become familiar with terms that only a chemist knows, such as polychlorinated biphenyls and benzene. Every cough, every sniffle, every ache and pain has the potential to send them into a panicked rush to the doctor’s office.

They have found that relying on each other – and their knowledge – can quell some of those fears and also get things done.

For three years, about a dozen residents living near the Transco, Plantation and Colonial pipelines have gathered once a month to share information and find ways to campaign for a better way of life. The group, Citizens Organized for Pipeline Safety (COPS), formed over health concerns stemming from a series of spills from the Colonial Pipeline, which transports petroleum products.

“Three pipelines go through Madison County. And the three pipelines follow each other through Georgia. Everyone of these pipelines has had a major spill in Madison County … this should be a red zone alert county,” said Richard Bennett, who lives near the Colonial pipeline.

In 2003, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency leveled one of its biggest fines ever at Colonial pipeline. The company agreed to pay a $34 million fine and an estimated $30 million for increased inspections, maintenance and monitoring along its pipelines to settle a lawsuit filed by the EPA. The fines came years after residents living near the pipeline found petroleum chemicals in their water supplies.

Five years later, residents living near the Colonial pipeline still worry that the water they drink is making them sick, even if officials don’t have any confirmed illnesses from contamination.

Donna Hauntsman, and her husband, Stan, who got involved with the residents’ plight about three years ago, have their well tested for benzene about three times a year. She admits testing should be done once a month, but at $80 a pop it’s not that easy.

The couple can see the Colonial booster station from their back yard.

“We got involved after we started reading articles about the dangers and looking into it more ourselves,” Hauntsman said. “We were just so ignorant before then. We didn’t know the facts. But now we do.”

Now residents living near the Transco pipeline in Comer are echoing the concerns of the people who live near the Colonial station.

Cat Drose, a retired Marine who moved from Florida to the area two years ago with her husband, jumped into the fight with both feet recently after reading EPD reports on what chemicals the pipeline was emitting into the air. She attended her first COPS meeting Thursday night after contacting Jill McElheney, one of the group’s charter members.

“I contacted her and said I have the time and the tenacity. I want to help. So here I am,” Drose said. “… I feel like I’m fighting for my life.”

Transco’s station in Comer is one of 44 compressor stations along the pipeline, which runs from Texas to New York. The station emits an estimated 4,827 tons of pollutants into the air each year, according to the state EPD, including 185 tons of formaldehyde.

Formaldehyde, the EPD said, has been found to cause cancer in rats and might cause cancer in humans.

The pipeline also emits 4,156 tons of nitrogen oxides, which the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says are known to cause respiratory illness.

There have been no confirmed reports of illnesses connected to these emissions, but the Northeast Health District is conducting a door-to-door survey in the area to ask if they’re experiencing any health problems.

In the last 19 years, almost 1,200 incidents involving death or serious injury were reported around pipelines in the United States, the U.S. Pipeline Safety Program said, and property surrounding the facilities have sustained more than $169 million in damage.

McElheney, who also is involved in many other projects to protect residents and the environment in Clarke and Oglethorpe counties, believes the Madison County group, though small right now, can make a difference.

“… The reason I’m out here I feel like the government does not take the environmental effects on health as (serious) as they should,” McElheney said.

Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on 031608

Part Two: Toxin Agency Uses ‘Unscientific Method’

Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry’s Questionable Approaches

By Suemedha Sood 03/18/2008

First in this two-part series is available here.

In 2005, Midlothian, Tex. residents Sal and Grace Mier petitioned the toxic substances agency to conduct a public health study of air pollution from three cement plants and one steel recycling mill. Sal, a retired epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control, says he was concerned by high rates of birth defects in the area. The Miers and many of their neighbors suspected a link between local industrial pollution and these birth defects. In Ellis County, home to Midlothian, there were 129 birth defects in 2002 and 107 in 2003, according to the Texas Dept. of State Health Services.

The agency report said most pollution levels appeared low, but that some of the carcinogenic metals and volatile organic compounds could cause elevated risks of cancer. It did not determine the sources. It also made no conclusions about risks of asthma and respiratory illnesses.

Since the Miers had questions about the quality of the science, they approached six scientists and asked them for independent reviews of the agency report. One scientist was Dr. Al Armanderiz, an environmental engineering professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Tex.

McElheney has been writing the ATSDR for seven years asking them to follow up on its incomplete public health consultation. The agency has written back to say that an air exposure pathway for benzene is not significant, though its website says the opposite. No action has been taken to investigate possible sources of benzene.

In New Orleans, the ATSDR took two years to investigate claims that government-issued trailers were toxic. Even after the Sierra Club conducted an independent study finding unsafe formaldehyde levels and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration verified those results, the ATSDR continued to look the other way.

Zavalla residents say the 150-acre unlined landfill of the Lufkin paper mill could be the source of dangerous metals migrating into their drinking water. The paper mill reported that it dumped waste containing dioxins, lead and aluminum in the landfill until November 2002. A year later, the mill was idled, and recently its owner, AbitibiBowater, announced its official closing.

Part One: Toxin Agency Looks the Other Way

Critics Claim Toxins Arm of the CDC Ignores Science in Public Health Cases

Petroleum storage facility (istockphoto)

By Suemedha Sood 03/12/2008

This is Part One of a two-part report. Part Two is available here.

National coverage of the toxic trailers housing New Orleans residents after Katrina and of the suppression of a study on environmental hazards in the Great Lakes has put the spotlight on the agency. Many public activists and citizen groups across the nation say these are just two examples of cases that demonstrate an agency pattern of political interference in public health data. The agency spokesperson Charles Green, however, said he is not aware of any problems regarding political interference in science at the agency.

In many cases, evidence shows that the agency suppressed vital public health information. Both agency officials and citizens have waved flags of possible cover-ups regarding two studies: one in the Great Lakes states and one in eastern Pennsylvania.

Last month, the nonprofit investigative journalism group, the Center for Public Integrity, obtained and published a suppressed study by the ATSDR called “Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern.” The 400-plus page report found that more than 9 million people living in 26 “areas of concern” have elevated health risks associated with exposure to dioxins, pesticides, lead, mercury, PCBs or six other toxins. These areas include the major metropolitan areas of Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee.

The study was scheduled for release in July 2007, but a few days before publication, the agency withdrew the report. Dr. Christopher De Rosa, director of ATSDR’s division of toxicology and environmental medicine, pushed for the study’s release. In an email to Dr. Howard Frumkin, the agency chief, De Rosa said suppressing the report had “the appearance of censorship of science and distribution of factual information regarding the health status of vulnerable communities.” De Rosa was demoted for “not being a team player.”

Similar events occurred in eastern Pennsylvania. Last year, the agency conducted an epidemiological study to analyze the high rates of an extremely rare form of blood cancer called polycythemia vera, or PV.

The agency released an abstract (available here) in December 2007. It found the rate of PV in three counties surrounding the Tamaqua borough at least 4.5 times higher than the national average. The national PV rate is 0.9 in 100,000, but the rate of confirmed cases in the three Pennsylvania counties is more than 4 in 100,000, in a population of 527,000. That number only represents patients registered with the National Cancer Registry, who were tested for a genetic mutation associated with PV for the study. When including data from patients who self-reported being diagnosed with PV, that would bring the rate up to roughly 15 times the national average.

Oncologist/hematologist Zev Wainberg of Santa Monica-UCLA’s Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital told The Washington Independent in a January interview that high rates of PV in such a small population would suggest an environmental cause.

This is the first piece in a two-part series. Part Two is available here.

March 12, 2008

One type of cancer is double N.J. rate

Sarcoma cases in Toms River

By LAUREN O. KIDD
TOMS RIVER BUREAU

The incidences of childhood cancer that occurred in Toms River from 2001 through 2005 were on par with what was expected to occur in a township of its size in New Jersey, but the diagnosis of one certain class of cancer — soft tissue sarcoma — was more than twice the expected rate, a state Department of Health and Senior Services analysis found.

The analysis compared the number of cases observed and how they occurred here with the number of cases expected to occur in a population of the township’s size over that period. Toms River’s population was about 93,000 in 2004, according to the U.S. Census.

Incidences of soft tissue sarcoma — defined by the National Cancer Institute as “a cancer that begins in the muscle, fat, fibrous tissue, blood vessels, or other supporting tissue of the body” — were more than double the expected rate, according to the study.

Four Toms River children were diagnosed with soft tissue sarcomas between 2004 and 2005. Three of those children are girls, which is statistically more than five times as many girls than would be expected to be diagnosed with the disease, Jerald A. Fagliano, program manager for consumer and environmental health with the Department of Health and Senior Services, told the Toms River Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster Monday.

Three of the diagnosed children also live in the section of the township that used to be known as the village of Toms River before then-Dover Township changed its name in 2006, he said.

“Chance is not the likely explanation, but it could be for that difference,” Fagliano said of the cause of the high number of soft tissue sarcomas.

Fagliano presented a summary of the study findings to the committee. A full report on the findings should be released next month, he said.

Overall, the analysis found 26 cases of childhood cancer diagnosed in Toms River residents up to the age of 19 during the five-year period between 2001 and 2005. The rate to be expected is 22.8 cases, meaning there were 1.1 times more cases in Toms River than expected, which is not statistically significant, according to Fagliano.

The study is just the latest to be launched since residents began observing a high number of children diagnosed with cancer in Toms River in the mid-1980s.

A previous study of the elevated childhood cancer levels in Toms River began in 1996 and was completed in 2001.

That study found that exposure to contaminated drinking water from United Water Toms River’s Parkway well field and to polluted air from the former Ciba-Geigy Superfund site was associated with leukemia development in young girls, but no links between environmental pollutants and leukemia development in boys or nervous system cancers in male or female children were found.

Researchers have stressed repeatedly, however, that the limited number of cases included in that study makes it impossible to draw any conclusions about causes. Both United Water Toms River’s Parkway well field and Ciba-Geigy plant were closed in the mid-1990s.

The most recent study found that the number of cases of childhood leukemia was less than what would be expected, while the number of brain and central nervous system cancers was slightly higher than expected, but not statistically significant.

Linda Gillick, chairwoman of the committee, said the data on leukemia are “great,” but the data of the elevated soft tissue sarcomas are troubling.

“We need to go and talk to the families and see if they have anything in common,” she said.

Fagliano recommended that the state continue to monitor the number of children diagnosed with cancer in Toms River. He said that so far, the state is not aware of any cases of soft tissue sarcoma diagnosed in 2006, 2007 or 2008, but he stressed that the data are preliminary.

“We are going to continue to watch,” he told the committee.

Gillick and others, though, pushed for the state to ask questions of the families of diagnosed children to find similarities in their cases.

“These parents want answers,” Gillick said.

Fagliano said that the state could gather information, but “the question is whether it will be meaningful in any way.”

Gillick noted that representatives of the state Department of Environmental Protection and federal Environmental Protection Agency and area legislators were invited to the meeting but failed to attend.

The state is in the process of starting a study into incidences of childhood cancer throughout Monmouth and Ocean counties, according to Fagliano.