David R. Baker,
San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Greg Karras has heard the talk about Chevron Corp. possibly pulling out of Richmond.

He isn’t buying it.

IMAGES

View Larger Images
GET QUOTE

Symbol Lookup
MORE BUSINESS

West Pharmaceutical to pay 16-cent dividend 02.22.10
Microsoft, Amazon cross-license patent portfolios 02.22.10
Equinix to offer $500M in senior notes 02.22.10
Karras is a senior scientist of an environmental group fighting Chevron’s plan to upgrade its Richmond refinery, which has occupied a spot on the city’s western edge for more than a century.

To him, recent hints from Chevron executives that they might leave Richmond unless they get their way ring hollow. Although they’re low right now, refinery profit margins tend to be higher in California than they are elsewhere in the country, he said. Chevron isn’t likely to sell or close the third-largest producer of gasoline in the state.

“It’s not going to happen – not to this refinery,” said Karras, with Communities for a Better Environment. “Here you’ve got the California market, a gold mine for any refinery, and a new refinery is very unlikely to be built. If it’s profitable to sell gasoline, diesel and jet fuel in California, Chevron’s not going to close the Richmond refinery.”

Negotiating tactic

Many of the people sparring with Chevron in Richmond – over the refinery expansion as well as a $20.5 million tax dispute – don’t believe the company will leave. Some consider the executives’ hints of departure a negotiating tactic. Chevron’s announcement this month that it needs to cut jobs throughout its worldwide refining operations and possibly sell some facilities didn’t change their minds.

“It seems like they’ve got something that’s working and making money,” said Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, a frequent Chevron critic.

The City Council, she said, will discuss the possibility that the refinery could change hands or close. But she doubts either will happen.

“We’re basically going to look at all the potentialities,” McLaughlin said. “But I do think that because it is a profitable refinery, this probably won’t result in a closure.”

Chevron, based 35 miles away in San Ramon, won’t say which of its refineries around the globe will close or be sold. Those details will be revealed in March.

Chevron spokesman Sean Comey said the company wants better relations with Richmond, but the city’s business environment leaves something to be desired.

“The refinery was there before the town was incorporated, and historically it had been a good place to do business,” he said. “Right now, there’s some opportunity for improvement.”

Oil companies rarely disclose profits for specific refineries, lest they give competitors too much information. But in a New York Times article last fall, the head of Chevron’s global refining operations said Richmond ranked in the “lowest tier of earnings” among the company’s refineries. “Refineries that don’t make money don’t stay open,” he warned.

And yet, California refineries typically enjoy some of the nation’s highest profit margins. The state uses unique gasoline blends designed to fight air pollution, and only a small number of refineries make those blends. Limited competition has, for most of the past decade, made California the place to be for refiners.

Refining industry profits can be tracked, roughly, by looking at the difference between the price of the oil that refineries use as raw material and the price of the products that they make, a measure known as the “crack spread.” Last year, the crack spread for West Coast refineries averaged $14.83 per barrel of oil. For refineries on the Gulf Coast, it averaged $8.18.

Demand down

These days, all refineries are hurting, in California and throughout the country. The recession has driven down the demand for gasoline, as Americans try to save money by driving less. Even with high gas prices, averaging more than $3 per gallon in California, refineries are losing money. In such a bleak environment, Chevron might contemplate closing or selling its Richmond site, said Brian Youngberg, senior energy analyst with investment company Edward Jones.

“I doubt that they would close it, but I don’t think it’s necessarily out of the realm of possibility,” he said. “I really think they’re re-looking at their entire portfolio. If they feel they need to make significant improvements in Richmond, and they’re getting pushback, they might consider it.”

Chevron is Richmond’s largest employer, with 1,250 people at the refinery and 1,350 at a research and technology center. The company’s relationship with the community has been turbulent.

In 2008, Richmond voters approved a new tax on the refinery, based on the value of the crude oil it refines. A judge ruled the tax unconstitutional in December, saving Chevron $20.5 million.

Another courtroom fight has gone badly for the company. Last summer several organizations, including Communities for a Better Environment, persuaded a judge to block the refinery’s upgrade and expansion. The company had not answered key questions about the project in its environmental impact report, the judge ruled. Settlement talks between Chevron and the plaintiffs have, so far, produced no results.

Chevron executives have not explicitly said that the company would leave Richmond. Instead, in comments to the New York Times and National Public Radio, they have suggested that if they can’t upgrade the refinery, their relationship with the city might end in “divorce.”

To Karras, those comments sound familiar.

Nearly 10 years ago, owners of another Bay Area refinery embroiled in an environmental dispute threatened to close their facility. The Tosco refinery (now owned by Tesoro Corp.) had been ordered by the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board to cut the amount of dioxin it released into the environment. Company executives said the changes would cost too much, and they threatened to shutter the facility, located near Martinez.

The board backed down. Two weeks later, Tosco announced that another company, Ultramar, had agreed to buy the refinery. The sale had to be in the works before the showdown with the water board, Karras said.

“Lo and behold, the water board granted their request,” Karras said. “It was clearly and obviously an empty threat. It clearly and obviously put pressure on the environmental agencies.”

And yet, California refineries face significant uncertainties about the future.

State rules

As part of the fight against global warming, California is developing a cap-and-trade system that would put a price on carbon dioxide emissions. The state also has adopted a “low-carbon fuel standard” that will force refiners to reduce the carbon intensity of the fuels they sell. Both will probably prove expensive for refiners.

If the entire country adopts those measures, refineries throughout the country would face similar costs. But if the federal stalemate over climate-change legislation continues and California goes it alone, refineries in the state would be at a disadvantage, said Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association, an oil industry lobbying group.

“We’ve got companies that are looking at every investment dollar, every investment and where they’re going to make it,” she said. “And I can tell you, California is not at the top of the list.”

E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/29/BUS51BNU1H.DTL#ixzz0gKZzyqwX

Up to 18 ABC staffers who worked at a Brisbane, Australia, studio have been diagnosed with breast cancer.

ANOTHER woman who worked at the ABC’s Queensland headquarters has been diagnosed with breast cancer.

The ABC abandoned its studios at Toowong, in Brisbane’s inner west, in late 2006 because of a breast cancer cluster.

Up to 18 women who worked at the site between 1994 and 2006 have developed the disease.

The cause of the cluster has not been identified.

It is understood the woman, who has not been identified, worked in the television newsroom for about seven years in the 1990s.

The ABC said in a statement the national broadcaster was saddened by the news of the latest case.

“It will offer full support to the former employee as it has with all those who worked at the Toowong site and were diagnosed with breast cancer,” a spokeswoman said.

The spokeswoman said the ABC’s response to the issue continued to be guided by an independent panel of experts.

Related Coverage
Another ABC breast cancer case
The Australian, 14 hours ago

Cancer clues in ABC cluster
Courier Mail, 8 Oct 2009

ABC cancer rate OK
Courier Mail, 25 Aug 2009

read full article

Jill U. Adams
The Los Angeles Times

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has ordered state health and environmental agencies to continue to investigate a rash of birth defects that occurred in the small San Joaquin Valley town of Kettleman City.

Five of 20 babies born in Kettleman City over a 14-month period had cleft lips or cleft palates, an unusually high rate compared with what’s considered normal. Worldwide, cleft deformities occur in about 1 in every 700 live births, according to a November study in the journal the Lancet.

Residents suspect a nearby toxic waste dump is to blame, although it’s only one of many potential causes.

Smoking, nutrient-poor diets and use of certain medicines by pregnant women have been linked to cleft deformities, as have environmental exposures such as pesticides, organic solvents used in industry and infectious diseases.

A high rate of disease within a specific locale, as is the case in Kettleman City, is called a cluster. Here’s a look at what’s known about disease clusters and how scientists go about determining cause and effect.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines a cluster as “an unusual aggregation, real or perceived, of health events that are grouped together in time and space and that is reported to a public health department.”

Sometimes clusters happen just by chance. Disease rates, after all, are averages, but the cases aren’t distributed perfectly evenly: Within a large population there will be subgroups with higher and lower rates. “It’s like flipping a coin,” says Daniel Wartenberg, an epidemiologist at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, N.J. Getting five heads in a row doesn’t mean the coin isn’t fair — and in the same way, a local cluster of some disease does not automatically mean there is an environmental cause.

Certain kinds of clusters are more easily pinned to a cause than others. Examples are clusters that involve infectious disease — such as outbreaks of illness from food contamination or the 1976 outbreak of pneumonia at an American Legion convention in a Philadelphia hotel, an infection now known as Legionnaires’ disease.

In addition, diseases resulting from workplace exposures or from adverse drug effects are often solved because it’s easier to figure out what everyone in the cluster had in common.

There are also some rare instances in which scientists can link an environmental factor in a community to a very specific disease.

For example, a 2002 study published in Toxicology Letters linked a cluster of lung cancer cases in Turkey to asbestos-containing rocks in the area, with which people built their homes.

A 1997 study, published in the journal Environmental Research, found a similar cause for a lung cancer cluster in Manville, N.J., home to the largest asbestos manufacturing plant in the U.S. People who lived in town (but had never worked at the plant) had 10 times the rate of lung cancer as residents living outside the town. Key to unraveling the mystery was the fact that the type of lung cancer involved was mesothelioma, which is a very specific and known outcome of asbestos exposure, says Dr. Beate Ritz, professor of epidemiology and environmental health at the UCLA School of Public Health.

Cluster investigations work well when you have a cause and an effect within a very short period of time, Ritz says. But more often, they are fraught with uncertainty. They’re extremely difficult with diseases that take years to develop or when many different factors can contribute to a disease. For cancers other than mesothelioma, “it’s almost hopeless,” Ritz says.

Birth defects are similarly difficult because there are so many things that might cause them.

No one disputes that the rate of birth defects in Kettleman City is higher than usual. Many doubt that they will find the cause, though.

“By the time [babies] are born, the toxin may have left the mom and never be shown,” Ritz says. “And in areas where clusters happen, there’s usually more than one thing happening: a toxic waste site, constant pesticide spraying.”

And, says Wartenberg, “we know some of the things that cause clefts, but we don’t know that much.”

Moreover, he adds, “even when the numbers are improbable, that doesn’t mean they’re impossible by chance.”

A preliminary investigation by the California Department of Public Health compared rates of birth defects in Kettleman City with those in neighboring towns for the years 1987 to 2008 and found no evidence of a common cause. The investigation will continue, says Dr. Rick Kreutzer, chief of environmental and occupational disease control at the state agency.

health@latimes.com
read full article

Carcinogens found in marine life in island of Vieques in Puerto Rico

Published on Saturday, February 21, 2009

By María Miranda Sierra
Caribbean Net News Puerto Rico Correspondent
Email: miranda@caribbeannetnews.com

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico: After gathering samples from an underwater nuclear bomb target – the USS Killen — since 1999 in the small island of Vieques in Puerto Rico, University of Georgia Ecologist James Porter thought he would find evidence of radioactive material but instead discovered that unexploded munitions in the waters around the island are leaking cancer causing matter.

These carcinogenic materials are absorbed by marine life and could very well be transferred to humans when they eat seafood, fished in the area.

In addition, data revealed that the closer corals and marine life were to unexploded bombs from the World War II vessel and the surrounding target range, the higher the rates of carcinogenic materials.

“Unexploded bombs are in the ocean for a variety of reasons – some were duds that did not explode, others were dumped in the ocean as a means of disposal,” Porter said in a written statement. “And we now know that these munitions are leaking cancer-causing materials and endangering sea life.”

Porter’s findings will be presented at the Second International Dialogue on Underwater Munitions on February 25-27 in Honolulu, Hawaii. He has been gathering data since 1999 on the eastern end of the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico – a land and sea area that was used as a naval gunnery and bombing range from 1943-2003.

In 2001, the residents of the island of Vieques which was used as a bombing range claimed over a $100 million in damages from the US Navy over claims that ammunition including depleted uranium (DU) shells caused cancer epidemic.

More than a third of the 9,000 inhabitants of Vieques have been found to be suffering from a range of serious illnesses and cancers, which doctors have linked to decades of bombing by the US and the military of other countries including the British Royal Navy.

According to official Puerto Rican figures, cancer rates on the island are soaring, with the numbers of people suffering from cancer of the breast, cervix and uterus up by 300 percent over the past 20 years.

Still, the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry made a study of their own after the Navy’s exit from Vieques which concluded that there was no evidence of any harm to the island’s residents from the Navy’s bombings there.

However, a study made by the Commonwealth’s Health Department concluded that it was highly likely that the toxic chemicals released by the Navy’s military exercises into the environment could be the main cause for the increase in illnesses such as cancer, lupus and heart conditions.

An additional study made in the bombing area by leading Puerto Rican environmental scientists Dr. Neftalí García and Jorge Fernández, showed dangerously high levels of heavy metals and other toxic chemical components related to military activities in the soil and water.

Robert L. Rabin Siegal, a member of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques Scientific said that additional studies carried out identified high concentrations of arsenic, barium, cadmium, zinc, cobalt, copper, tin, mercury, silver and lead.

“Aluminum, chromium, iron, manganese, nickel, and vanadium concentrations were found in some areas. High concentrations of nitrates, nitrites, ammonia, hydrocarbons typical of diesel fuel, and phosphates, that are formed from bomb explosions or are present in other war artifacts, were also found. The metals found in high concentrations are present in explosives, propellants, paints, conventional and uranium bullets, napalm, chaff, flares and other paraphernalia used by the Navy in Vieques,” Siegal said.

According to Siegel, metals have been found in plants, violinist crabs, fish, mussels, Thalassia and sea grass beds, and humans in Vieques, which confirm the expected processes of biomagnifications. High concentrations of mercury and lead have been found in hair samples of civilians in Vieques subcontracted by US companies like Raytheon and General Electric to work in the impact areas.

High concentrations of aluminum, antimony, arsenic, bismuth and lead have been found in hair samples of a large number of civilians in Vieques that do not work in impact areas, Siegal said. Other metals found in above normal levels are boron, cadmium, tin, manganese, mercury, silver and vanadium. Uranium in above normal concentrations has also been found in stool samples of civilians, he added.

While the Navy was still in Vieques local fishermen struggled for decades to get the Navy to stop bombing and leave the island.

“Giant military ships destroyed fish traps and bombing and other maneuvers impose severe restrictions on fishermen’s entry into some of the best fishing areas around the island. On numerous occasions fishing boats have been damaged by naval gunfire and fishermen have been severely hurt by bombs exploding close to their fishing activities,” Siegal said.

Meanwhile, Porter’s research revealed that marine life including reef-building corals, feather duster worms and sea urchins closest to the bomb and bomb fragments had the highest levels of toxicity.

“In fact, carcinogenic materials were found in concentrations up to 100,000 times over established safe limits. This danger zone covered a span of up to two meters from the bomb and its fragments,” reads the reports findings.

According to research conducted in Vieques, residents here have a 23 percent higher cancer rate than do Puerto Rican mainlanders. Porter said a future step will be “to determine the link from unexploded munitions to marine life to the dinner plate.”

While Porter believes every nation with a coastline has problems with unexploded munitions, there is a solution.

“With the creation of the Ordinance Recovery System, we now have a way to safely remove unexploded munitions,” he said.

The machine, Porter said, picks up unexploded bombs off the sea floor and delivers them safely to a lift basket for surface disposal or deep sea burial. It is operated remotely with proportional toggle switches that allow much more fine control of the delicate undersea operation than an on/off button. The system relies on an underwater hydraulic system designed by James Barton, president of Underwater Ordinance Recovery, Inc., with the technical expertise of machinists at the UGA instrument shop.

“When you remove the bomb, you remove the problem – but you’ve got to pick it up,” Porter added.

American Public Health Association (APHA)
Nation’s Health Publication
February, 2010

The Environmental Public Health Tracking Network now contains at least
some cancer data for 42 states and Washington, D.C., after federal
officials added new data and additional mapping features to the network
late last year.

Along with the new state data, the network also added data from five
cancer types: acute myeloid leukemia, breast cancer, chronic lymphocytic
leukemia, acute lymphocytic leukemia in children and acute myeloid
leukemia in children. The network’s new mapping feature allows users to
view a layer of maps showing interstate highways, rivers, lakes,
hospitals and other landscape features and overlap the geography with
disease trends.

The Environmental Public Health Tracking Network, which is coordinated
by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, merges health,
exposure and hazard information from national, state and city sources to
help link environmental causes of illness. Topics cover both
environmental hazards and health conditions, including asthma and the
flu, birth defects, well water and pesticides.
–

Canada exports majority of dangerous mineral to developing countries

Martin Mittelstaedt

The Globe and Mail

The death toll from mesothelioma, a rare cancer almost always caused by asbestos exposure, is rising rapidly in Mexico, a major market for Canada’s exports of the mineral, and could be as high as 500 a year.

The figure – an estimate by doctors at the Mexican Institute of Social Security, a government health agency – is likely to spur further controversy over Canada’s aggressive promotion of the cancer-causing material in the developing world. Concerns over asbestos were a focus of attention during Quebec Premier Jean Charest’s recent trade mission to India. He defended the mineral, which is mined in his province and supports about 700 jobs.

Guadalupe Aguilar, an occupational health expert who led the team that conducted the research, said the full impact of asbestos may be even greater because medical surveys have found that for every mesothelioma death, there are likely an additional 2.3 fatal cases of lung cancer due to inhalation of the mineral. The total number of asbestos-caused deaths in Mexico is probably around 1,500 annually, Dr. Aguilar said.

read full article

MITRA MALEK
The Miami Herald
Palm Beach Post

The Acreage has a cluster of childhood cancer cases, the head of Palm
Beach County’s Health Department said Monday, confirming some of the
worst fears of parents who called for a state investigation last year.

Eight months of uncertainty ended Monday when state health officials
confirmed that rates of brain tumors and brain cancer among children
in the semirural community are higher than normal, especially among
girls.

But based on early results of interviews with the families, it’s
unlikely that health officials will be able to pinpoint what has
caused the spike, said Dr. Alina Alonso, director of the county’s
Health Department, a division of the state health department.

“We really don’t have one thing,” Alonso said during a monthly
conference call updating legislators on the investigation, which
started in June. “From what we’re seeing now, there is nothing that
is going to say, `Aha this is the cause of the cancer.’ ”

Health officials recently completed interviews with 12 of 13 families
with children who have been diagnosed with either brain tumors or
brain cancer from 1993 through 2008, in search of commonalities. One
of the 13 families couldn’t be located because they moved.

Until the department finishes analyzing those interviews in the next
two months, the state wouldn’t conduct any environmental tests, if at
all, to look for a potential cause, said county health department
spokesman Tim O’Connor.

Even so, O’Connor added, Alonso has said that the data available so
far are enough to label the cancer cases a cluster.

Officials plan to discuss the investigation at a public meeting from
6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Feb. 9 at Seminole Ridge High School.

Residents said they were somewhat relieved to hear there is a
cluster. But they said environmental tests are imperative.

For full article:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/1458593.html

–

Layton family: ‘We are heartbroken’

By Bob Mims, Erin Alberty and Jason Bergreen

The Salt Lake Tribune

A Layton family has lost its second daughter since toxic pesticide fumes apparently wafted into their home last weekend.

Rachel Toone, 15 months, died Tuesday at Primary Children’s Medical Center. Three days earlier her 4-year-old sister, Rebecca, died at Davis Hospital after she had begun struggling to breathe in the family’s home.

“We are heartbroken,” the Toone family wrote in a press statement announcing Rachel’s death. Rachel’s health deteriorated after heart failure early Monday, the family wrote.

Authorities suspect the toxic gas phosphine sickened the family. Investigators say the gas may have entered into the family’s home after an exterminator dropped Fumitoxin aluminum phosphide pellets in burrow holes in the lawn Friday to kill small rodents known as voles.

Rebecca Toone died Saturday after she grew sick in the family’s home. Her parents and siblings also were hospitalized with flu-like symptoms the same day. They were all discharged Sunday, but Rachel fell ill again later that day.

Meanwhile, a Sandy woman, Alice Pittman, said Wednesday that she now wonders if a September 2008 Fumitoxin application by the same exterminators – Bountiful-based Bugman Pest and Lawn – may be connected to the deaths of her two Basset hound puppies. She said the poison was applied in a rodent-infested pasture abutting her fence line.

full article here

By MITRA MALEK
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

THE ACREAGE — Outrage erupted among residents and politicians Wednesday after state health officials announced they don’t plan to search for an environmental cause of The Acreage’s cancer cluster — and instead will mount a campaign to raise “awareness” about childhood brain cancer.

The announcement came from Dr. Alina Alonso, director of the Palm Beach County Health Department, who noted that brain cancer is thought to be rising across the industrialized world, with potential contributors including cell phones, microwave ovens, artificial sweeteners and genetics.

Alonso said the state’s investigation hasn’t pointed to a cause of the central Palm Beach County community’s elevated levels of childhood brain cancer and brain tumors. And she doubts it will, even after investigators wrap up the second phase of their work in mid-March.

“From what we have right now, it does not seem practical or reasonable to start searching blindly,” said Alonso, whose agency is part of the state Department of Health.

“It’s frustrating for me not to give them a cause,” Alonso said. “I can’t make up science.”

In response, some residents scoffed at what they called the department’s “complete mishandling” of the cluster, whose existence the agency confirmed this week.

“That infuriates me,” said Greg Dunsford, whose 7-year-old son had a brain tumor removed two years ago. “It’s like, ‘Hey best of luck to you.’”

Some elected leaders were equally upset.

“To ask us to accept the unknown is ridiculous and unacceptable,” said Michelle Damone, president of Indian Trail Improvement District, which governs some aspects of The Acreage. “There will be no comfort for anyone in those terms.”

Tying the Acreage cluster to a general brain-cancer rise worldwide is “speculation,” said state Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, who is running for attorney general.

“It’s unreasonable to simply say there is no known cause, when many factors could have contributed to environmental contamination in The Acreage,” he said. Among them: large groves and farms, as well as the nearby Pratt & Whitney plant, which has spilled chemicals on its property over the years.

Alonso told reporters that she has “nothing saying these cancers are a result of Pratt & Whitney.”

State Rep. Joseph Abruzzo said he was “deeply disturbed” with Alonso’s general reasoning.

“These are all hypotheses until we do a certain level of testing,” said Abruzzo, D- Wellington.

Since June, the state Health Department has been investigating whether the 32,000 to 39,000 residents of the semi-rural Acreage are experiencing higher rates of brain tumors and cancer than normal. Results released Monday confirm that they are. They show “significantly elevated” pediatric brain and central nervous system cancers, particularly for girls, in those up to 19 years old.

It’s unclear what exactly causes brain cancer, but excessive radiation is a known contributor. Brain cancer is the second most common type of cancer in children, behind leukemia.

Epidemiological experts acknowledge that a specific cause isn’t necessarily linked to a cluster — which the National Cancer Institute defines as a higher-than-expected number of cases within a certain group of people in a geographic area over a period of time.

Sharon Watkins, a state Health Department environmental epidemiologist involved with The Acreage study, wrote to a worried parent this week that a cluster “does not mean or imply that this elevation is related to one particular cause or that it must be linked to a contaminant.”

“I think that people automatically assume that any increase in cancer must be linked to an environmental cause and that is not always true nor can it be proven,” Watkins added. She wrote: “It is unlikely that all types of pediatric brain cancers have exactly the same risk factors.”

Both Watkins and Alonso said pediatric brain cancers might be elevated in other parts of the county as well, but no one would know without an investigation.

Health officials pinned assurances that well water in The Acreage is of good quality based on random samples that the state Department of Environmental Protection took at 50 wells last year. A few of those tests, however, showed elevated levels of radiation, which could have been from natural causes.

Through a spokesman, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson reiterated his call for environmental tests to start quickly and said he would “insist” that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention help state health officials “in getting to the bottom of this concentration of cancer cases.”

Alonso said she would welcome federal help but plans to put energy into public awareness and pushing for large-scale research.

“Our best way of trying to help children is to have early detection,” she said. She said the health department is not planning to take soil samples, do genetic testing or go beyond the interviews it has conducted with patients’ families.

Calling for more awareness is absurd, said Tracy Newfield, whose 15-year-old daughter had a brain tumor removed in 2005.

“We’ve been focusing on awareness for the last nine months,” Newfield said. “I don’t know where she’s been.”

The CDC isn’t expected to step in, nor does the state health department plan to ask the agency to investigate anything at this point, county health department spokesman Tim O’Connor said.

“They’ve been with us from the beginning,” O’Connor said. “They know what’s going on.”

Staff writer Stacey Singer contributed to this story.article online

d R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Environmental groups suing Chevron Corp. over the renovation of the company’s aging Richmond refinery threw their support on Tuesday behind a settlement proposal from California Attorney General Jerry Brown.

“It’s not the best of all solutions, but we feel it’s a solution that gets people back to work and protects the health of the community,” said Nile Malloy, Northern California program director for Communities for a Better Environment.

Last year, Malloy’s group and several others persuaded a judge to halt the upgrade project on the grounds that its environmental impact report didn’t answer key questions. The settlement proposal, issued by Brown last month, would allow the upgrade to resume, with restrictions.

The refinery would not be allowed to refine heavy grades of crude oil, although Malloy said the refinery would have more flexibility to use different grades than his group initially wanted. In addition, Chevron would have to replace the refinery’s boilers, install equipment to prevent flaring, improve its energy efficiency by 20 percent in the next 10 years and install solar panels capable of generating 15 megawatts of electricity.

A Chevron spokesman said Tuesday that any settlement should be handled through the courts, not in a public discussion.

“We appreciate the interest Attorney General Brown and others have expressed in the Renewal Project,” spokesman Brent Tippen said in an e-mailed statement. “We ask that they respect the ongoing confidential Court of Appeal mediation process.”

E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/03/BUO61BRHIF.DTL#ixzz0gKZHxSuT