If you missed the event in Tucson you are in luck because you can watch a video of the presentations:

“Poisoned for Profit” video (60 minutes)

Keynote speaker Alice Shabecoff is a New York Times journalist and renowned author who discussed her book “Poisoned for Profit.” Her presentation made a strong case about the immediate need for reform and she invited the audience to join the movement for a safer world for children.

NDCA’s Executive Director Terry Nordbrock, MPH, discussed the Sierra Vista AZ childhood leukemia cluster, widespread frustration regarding disease cluster response, Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) reform, and the need to shift the burden of proof onto industry that chemicals are safe before they are sold.

Pediatric Toxicologist Mark Witten, PhD, talked about his research on the effects of tungsten exposure in mice –they developed leukemia –and the need to limit exposure to tungsten.

Dendrochronologist Paul Sheppard, PhD, described how scientists can be oppressed by the legal process.

Childhood brain cancer survivor Trevor Schaefer had people crying then laughing. He talked about travelling to D.C. to meet with Senator Barbara Boxer and EPA Director Lisa Jackson about the need for better disease cluster identification and response.

The dirty truth behind the new natural gas.

Related: A V.F. video look at a town transformed by fracking.

By Christopher Bateman•
Vanity Fair

WEB EXCLUSIVE June 21, 2010

A shale-gas drilling and fracking site in Dimock, Pennsylvania.

Early on a spring morning in the town of Damascus, in northeastern Pennsylvania, the fog on the Delaware River rises to form a mist that hangs above the tree-covered hills on either side. A buzzard swoops in from the northern hills to join a flock ensconced in an evergreen on the river’s southern bank.

Stretching some 400 miles, the Delaware is one of the cleanest free-flowing rivers in the United States, home to some of the best fly-fishing in the country. More than 15 million people, including residents of New York City and Philadelphia, get their water from its pristine watershed. To regard its unspoiled beauty on a spring morning, you might be led to believe that the river is safely off limits from the destructive effects of industrialization. Unfortunately, you’d be mistaken. The Delaware is now the most endangered river in the country, according to the conservation group American Rivers.

That’s because large swaths of land—private and public—in the watershed have been leased to energy companies eager to drill for natural gas here using a controversial, poorly understood technique called hydraulic fracturing. “Fracking,” as it’s colloquially known, involves injecting millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals, many of them toxic, into the earth at high pressures to break up rock formations and release natural gas trapped inside. Sixty miles west of Damascus, the town of Dimock, population 1,400, makes all too clear the dangers posed by hydraulic fracturing. You don’t need to drive around Dimock long to notice how the rolling hills and farmland of this Appalachian town are scarred by barren, square-shaped clearings, jagged, newly constructed roads with 18-wheelers driving up and down them, and colorful freight containers labeled “residual waste.” Although there is a moratorium on drilling new wells for the time being, you can still see the occasional active drill site, manned by figures in hazmat suits and surrounded by klieg lights, trailers, and pits of toxic wastewater, the derricks towering over barns, horses, and cows in their shadows.

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The Ecologist
15th June, 2010

Research is the first attempt to quantify the higher cancer risk faced by men and women working in construction and doing shift work, but cancer charities say study is outdated?

Carcinogenic substances and demanding shift-work practices may be linked to more cancer fatalities in Britain than previously thought, according to new research.

While UK campaigns have traditionally focussed on higher profile cancer risks such as smoking and diet, a study published in the British Journal of Cancer, suggests that not enough is being done to prevent thousands of potential cases of workplace related cancer every year.

Construction and maintenance workers dealing with asbestos in fire proofing and old buildings and women working night shifts were most at risk, according to the findings.

Asbestos contributed to nearly half of the cancer deaths in the study, but other substances, such as silica found in construction, particles from diesel engine exhausts, and paints and mineral oils in painting and decorating work were all found to present a serious health risk.

Shift work risks

The study is the first attempt to quantify cases of cancer linked to occupation. It found that an estimated 8,019 cancer deaths were ‘attributable to occupation’ in 2005, approximately 5 per cent of the total cancer deaths in Britain.

The researchers also found that 54 per cent of women diagnosed with work related cancer, especially breast cancer, worked night shifts in sectors such as healthcare and aviation. Disturbance to our natural sleep patterns and fatigue problems are all associated with night shifts and may contribute to the higher cancer risk.

The study noted that in 2009 Danish courts began paying compensation to night shift workers who developed breast cancer, recognising it as an occupational disease.

The findings follow a report published by the US National Cancer Institute last month which said the cancer risk associated with environmental hazards, such as chemicals commonly found in the workplace, had been greatly underestimated.

Lead author Dr Lesley Rushton, of Imperial College London, said while carcinogen exposure levels have fallen over the years, more than one million people in the UK are still thought to be exposed to cancer-causing substances in their workplace.

The study pointed out the risk of low-level exposure and said that for many of the carcinogens a major contribution to the burden was made by a large number of workers exposed at ‘low levels and low risk’, for which our quantitative risk estimates are inevitably uncertain.

‘Our study has highlighted the fact that many workers may potentially be exposed to several carcinogens and that these may affect multiple cancer sites,’ said the study.

Study outdated

However, cancer charities say the study may be outdated as chemical exposure in the workplace would have been ‘considerably higher’ in the years from which the study drew its data in comparison to today’s levels.

Dr Joanna Owens, Cancer Research UK’s science information manager, also said the link between shift work and breast cancer was still uncertain.

‘When it comes to shift work and breast cancer, it’s still not known whether it can actually cause the disease, or whether shift workers are more prone to other things that increase their risk. Known breast cancer risks include lack of exercise, being overweight and drinking alcohol,’ she said.

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Useful links
Study in full: Occupation and cancer in Britain

High Country News
By Jen Jackson

Here in the West, uranium mining continues its wobbly resurgence. In recent years, it has sputtered through the peaks and valleys of pricing to once again climb in importance and output. The graph-line of this revival seems to correspond with the vicissitudes of our love-hate relationship with fossil fuels.

In 2003, a time of cheap oil, there were only 321 uranium miners working in the West, producing 779 tons of uranium that year. In 2008, there were over 1,500, who produced about 1,500 tons. In 2006, the Pandora mine south of Moab, where I live, reopened with just 10 employees. This year, it has 57. Recently, however, it lost one. Hunter Diehl, a 28-year-old Moab man, died in the mine this May, crushed by rock falling from the mine’s ceiling. It was the first uranium mining death in the country since 1998, and the first since uranium’s fickle resurgence.

If uranium makes a strong comeback, what other such tragedies lie ahead? With the epic oil spill in the Gulf causing many to question our current energy policies and to begin viewing nuclear power in a more favorable light, the uranium industry’s slow resurgence may turn into another spike in growth. But at what cost?

With other extractive industries, we tend to see the tragedies boldly splashed across the front page of the newspaper — the massive oil spills, deaths on the natural gas rigs, or the dozens of coal miners killed in collapses and explosions. We can’t avoid a general awareness of some of the true costs of fossil fuels-based energy production. But many of the costs of nuclear power — beyond the Three Mile Island tragedy now fading in our memories — have been more insidious.

Cancer deaths do not occur suddenly, inside a mine. Instead, they happen slowly and at a remove from the time and place of exposure. The deaths occur at home or in the hospital, surrounded by grieving loved ones rather than reporters with TV cameras. The family mourns, but the nation goes on about its business; nobody makes speeches. Mining disasters are horrible, but uranium takes an even more deadly toll. And it’s not just the miners who are affected. It’s also the families that live near the mine or the mill.

South of the Pandora mine, in Monticello, Utah, a uranium-processing mill operated through World War II until 1960. Children at the time would play in the tailings piles and drink water from the millponds. People living in the shadow of the mill knew not to hang laundry on windy days because their linens would turn yellow from the mill’s dust. Now, 600 cases of cancer — a number that is growing each year — have been confirmed among current and former Monticello residents. The town has a population of just under 2,000. The Utah Department of Health has finally labeled what is occurring in Monticello as a cancer cluster that does not appear to be a random occurrence.

If 600 mine workers died in a single day, the nation would be abuzz. People would be outraged and collectively grieving. Instead, news of the Monticello cancer cluster hasn’t reached much beyond Utah’s borders.

Nor do most of uranium’s environmental impacts occur publicly, suddenly or explosively, as was the case with the massive BP spill in the Gulf. Rather, like cancer, the effects are slow and insidious. One doesn’t see uranium-covered aquatic life nearly paralyzed by the weight of its residue. We don’t witness death washing up on the Colorado River’s shores. Instead, uranium’s equivalent of the oil spill — the Atlas Mill’s uranium tailings site — accumulates over decades. Eventually, we find 16 million tons of still-radioactive uranium tailings piled up on the banks of the river, leaching tens of thousands of gallons of deadly soup into the life-giving river. But all of this happens beneath the horizon of our perceptions. It happens with the relentless force of erosion rather than the immediate shock of an earthquake.

The death of the Pandora miner last month was sudden and tragic. Many in Moab are mourning Diehl’s loss. Yet perhaps we can take this tragedy as a shout in the darkness, alerting us to the otherwise whispery warnings that surround us amid this current uranium renaissance.

Jen Jackson is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). She writes in Moab, Utah.

full article

By M. Diane McCormick,
The Patriot-News

View of the gas station on the corner of Progress Ave. and Union Deposit that is the source of gas that has leaked into the soil.
Photo: JOHN C. WHITEHEAD, The Patriot-News.

Susquehanna Township, Penn–Step into the basement of Candace and Tom Orr’s home in the 400 block of Alden Street in Susquehanna Township, and the smell of gasoline hits the nose.

It dissipates immediately, but two reminders remain: a large air filter, and a fan pumping air through a chute and out a bathroom window.

There’s also a roaring filter in the dining room.

“Try to watch TV with that on, or even think,” said Tom Orr.

Photo: JOHN C. WHITEHEAD, The Patriot-News
Candace Orr of Susquehanna Township stands next to fan ventilating gas fumes inside her home.

The Orrs are among a cluster of residents in homes behind a former Exxon gas station at Progress Avenue and Union Deposit Road questioning why the state Department of Environmental Protection failed to enforce cleanup of a 17-year-old storage tank leak that left the ground so saturated with gas that one house showed “explosive” readings of combustible gases.

“What we have now is a situation for 17 years that we’ve had gasoline in the soil, and a history of nobody even telling anyone,” said Orr.

According to DEP documents and interviews with those involved, when the agency ordered the gas station to remove the tanks, inspectors never ensured that soil saturated with gasoline was properly cleaned. The problem remained unnoticed until sewer workers last year were forced to stop a line replacement project after workers were overcome by fumes.

Seven homes so far — five in the 400 block of Redwood Street and two in the 400 block of Alden Street — are being monitored by DEP for gasoline vapors emanating from the soil.

Paul S. Palanzo has owned the gas station, branded until recently to sell Exxon products, at Progress Avenue and Union Deposit Road since 1990, according to Dauphin County property records.

Palanzo, who has signed a DEP consent order regarding the cleanup, declined to talk to The Patriot-News.

Under a December consent order with DEP, Palanzo must study ground and in-home air quality at seven properties – four have granted access, Repetz said — on Redwood and Alden streets. DEP has told homeowners that Palanzo’s report is expected by the end of June, and the agency will schedule a meeting with them by early July “to discuss the standings and where it’s going,” said DEP spokesman John Repetz.

According to DEP records, on Feb. 11, 1993, the agency investigated diesel fuel odors and found three unregistered storage tanks lacking leak detection or corrosion prevention testing systems. There were 12 tanks in all at the station.

DEP’s consent order lists nine “closed” tanks, but the agency could not specify which were removed. State officials in March 1993 saw three tanks dug up at the site, some with visible holes, and two from soil saturated with diesel.

In November 1996, Palanzo filed a remediation plan to vent fumes to the surface. In 1998, Palanzo told DEP the vapor extraction system “was being gradually installed and was expected to take a few more months” before becoming operational.

But after Palanzo reported slow progress in 1998, DEP “did not go back and tell him, per se,” to finish the job because its underground storage tank program focuses on groundwater contamination, Repetz said.

“Mr. Palanzo had a plan in place to complete the remediation,” Repetz said. “We took our limited resources and then turned them to more pressing needs. Everybody was on public water, and there were no complaints (of fumes).”

The remediation system was never completed — something DEP didn’t find out about until on April 22, 2009, sewer workers rediscovered the problem.

The Susquehanna Township Sewer Authority was forced to stop sewer upgrades in the 400 block of Redwood Street because workers found petroleum in a manhole and “impacted soil.”

“This whole area fumed unbelievably,” said Alice Frambach, whose home has an exterior sewer hookup and not a new lateral because upgrades haven’t resumed.

Township officials contacted DEP immediately, said solicitor Bruce Foreman.

“Lo and behold, when we contacted them, they told us they had a many-year-old file, which we didn’t know, and there had been a documented leak or maybe two from a tank at that station,” Foreman said.

DEP did review the situation to determine “how it got from point A to point B,” Repetz said, but he didn’t say that lessons learned are applied to current practices.

“The important thing is to figure out where we stand right now and what’s going to be done moving forward to protect the environment and the health of the public,” he said.

A call to the air quality tester, Tuckey Restoration, was not returned, and geologist Gary Calvert said he’s ethically bound from discussing investigations.

Tom Orr said testers found “high hits” of benzene in the basement and family room of the Alden Street home he and his wife have owned since 1987.

Benzene, Orr said, is “pretty scary stuff.”

Katherine Baker, associate professor of environmental microbiology at Penn State Harrisburg, said benzene occurs naturally in gasoline – making it “integral to a gasoline economy” – and is known to cause cancer.

Opportunistic benzene follows a path of least resistance, Baker said, and it can build up in basements. Finding the source in order to vent benzene directly out of a home “is like a giant game of blind man’s bluff,” she said.

“The other big problem is that after 17 years, there’s not a single big spot,” she said. “There’s a single big smear.”

Orr said the geologist studying the case has put three test wells in his yard and told him that the fuel could have gone several directions via a fault line.

Township and state officials should have told residents about the original incident and when the problem resurfaced, Orr said. He said he first learned around November that his home could be affected.

“Nobody has ever, ever contacted me or anyone else, to the best of my knowledge, saying we have a problem,” he said.

Susquehanna Township Manager Gary Myers, who met with DEP after the 2009 discovery, said DEP took responsibility for administration, communication, and enforcement.

Environmental watchdog Clean Water Action said that 99.5 percent of Pennsylvania’s leaking tanks have been cleaned, but 3,368 remain. Enforcement dollars have declined for 10 years, from the Ridge through the Rendell administrations, said Brady Russell, eastern Pennsylvania director.

“It is a really big deal,” said Russell. “It isn’t just the big cut last year. Folks want an environmental protection arm of the government to follow up. We just don’t give it the resources.”

Frank Lynch, president of the township commissioners, said he first learned about the problem in April 2009, and the township will lean on DEP to finish the job.

“We’re going to be on this situation like a laser beam,” Lynch said. “Even if we don’t have the authority to remediate or the expertise, we have the obligation to our residents that the agencies that do have these obligations make sure our families and residents are safe.”

In the meantime, Orr was preparing for the geologist’s return to his property.

“He’s coming back to dig more wells,” he said.

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MARILYNN MARCHIONE
AP Medical Writer

June 14, 2010

We fret about airport scanners, power lines, cell phones and even microwaves. It’s true that we get too much radiation. But it’s not from those sources ˜ it’s from too many medical tests.

Americans get the most medical radiation in the world, even more than folks in other rich countries. The U.S. accounts for half of the most advanced procedures that use radiation, and the average American’s dose has grown sixfold over the last couple of decades.

Too much radiation raises the risk of cancer. That risk is growing because people in everyday situations are getting imaging tests far too often. Like the New Hampshire teen who was about to get a CT scan to check for kidney stones until a radiologist, Dr. Steven Birnbaum, discovered he’d already had 14 of these powerful X-rays for previous episodes. Adding up the total dose, “I was horrified” at the cancer risk it posed, Birnbaum said.

After his own daughter, Molly, was given too many scans following a car accident, Birnbaum took action: He asked the two hospitals where he works to watch for any patients who had had 10 or more CT scans, or patients under 40 who had had five ˜ clearly dangerous amounts. They found 50 people over a three-year period, including a young woman with 31 abdominal scans.

When other radiologists tell him they’ve never found such a case, Birnbaum replies: “That tells me you haven’t looked.”

Of the many ways Americans are overtested and overtreated, imaging is one of the most common and insidious. CT scans ˜ “super X-rays” that give fast, extremely detailed images ˜ have soared in use over the last decade, often replacing tests that don’t require radiation, such as ultrasound and MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging.

Radiation is a hidden danger ˜ you don’t feel it when you get it, and any damage usually doesn’t show up for years. Taken individually, tests that use radiation pose little risk. Over time, though, the dose accumulates.

Doctors don’t keep track of radiation given their patients ˜ they order a test, not a dose. Except for mammograms, there are no federal rules on radiation dose. Children and young women, who are most vulnerable to radiation harm, sometimes get too much at busy imaging centers that don’t adjust doses for each patient’s size.

That may soon change. In interviews with The Associated Press, U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials described steps in the works, including possibly requiring device makers to print the radiation dose on each X-ray or other image so patients and doctors can see how much was given.

The FDA also is pushing industry and doctors to set standard doses for common tests such as CT scans.

“We are considering requirements and guidelines for record-keeping of dose and other technical parameters of the imaging exam,” said Sean Boyd, chief of the FDA’s diagnostic devices branch.

A near-term goal: developing a “radiation medical record” to track dose from cradle to grave.

“One of the ways we could improve care is if we had a running sort of Geiger counter” that a doctor checked before ordering a test, said Dr. Prashant Kaul of Duke University.

He led an eye-opening study that found that U.S. heart attack patients get the radiation equivalent of 850 chest X-rays over the first few days they are in the hospital ˜ much of it for repeat tests that may not have been needed.

How much radiation is risky?

It’s hard to say. The best guess is based on the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident and studies of Japanese atomic bomb survivors who had excess cancer risk after exposures of 50 to 150 millisieverts (a measure of dose) of radiation.

A chest or abdominal CT scan involves 10 to 20 millisieverts, versus 0.01 to 0.1 for an ordinary chest X-ray, less than 1 for a mammogram, and as little as 0.005 for a dental X-ray. Natural radiation from the sun and soil accounts for about 2 millisieverts a year.

A big study last year estimated that 4 million Americans get more than 20 millisieverts a year from medical imaging. Two percent of people in the study had high exposure ˜ 20 to 50 millisieverts.

Another study by Columbia University researchers, published in 2007, estimated that in a few decades, as many as 2 percent of all cancers in the U.S. might be due to radiation from CT scans given now. Since previous studies suggest that a third of all tests are unnecessary, 20 million adults and more than 1 million children are needlessly being put at risk, they concluded.

Just because a scan didn’t find anything wrong doesn’t mean a test wasn’t needed. Scans are useful for many diagnoses. But many studies suggest people are getting too much imaging now. For example, Mayo Clinic researchers reviewed the medical records of 251 people given heart scans in 2007 and found that only a quarter of them were clearly appropriate.

Reasons for overuse:

˜Accuracy and ease of use. Scans have become a crutch for doctors afraid of using exams and judgment to make a diagnosis. Some think a picture tells more than it does. Imaging that shows arthritis in a knee or back problems doesn’t reveal how to make it better, said Dr. Richard Baron, a primary care doctor in Philadelphia.

“Physical therapy for an orthopedic injury is always the first choice,” yet doctors rush to order tests, he said. “The question you should be asking when you do sophisticated imaging is, ‘Is there something I can fix with an operation?’”

˜Malpractice fear. A missed heart attack or a burst appendix could be devastating for a patient ˜ and mean a lawsuit.

“I have great sympathy for the ER physicians because of the responsibility placed in their hands with strangers that come in off the street,” said Louis Wagner, chief physicist at the University of Texas in Houston. “They have to make a decision that could mean life or death for a patient, and the fastest way to find out is CT.”

˜Patient pressure. People urge doctors to “do something” to figure out what’s wrong, and “often, doctors feel that the way to demonstrate that they’re doing something is to order tests,” said Dr. Christopher Cassady, a radiologist at Texas Childrens Hospital and the American Academy of Pediatrics’ expert on this topic.

At his hospital, doctors first do an ultrasound on suspected appendicitis cases instead of rushing into a CT scan. Ultrasounds require no radiation.

˜Health care chaos. One doctor may not know that another has ordered the same test. If a patient is referred to a specialist, “it’s often easier for him to order another study than to figure out how to get the one that was done somewhere else,” Baron said.

˜Insurance issues. X-rays often are required by insurers to prove health, or for students to study abroad.

˜Availability. Rural hospitals may not have an ultrasound technologist on duty in the wee hours, but imaging machines are always there.

˜Treatment choice. A quick fix for chest pain ˜ artery-opening angioplasty ˜ requires far more imaging and radiation than bypass surgery does. The same is true of “virtual colonoscopy” instead of the standard version.

Which tests are overused? A scientific group, the International Commission on Radiological Protection, cites routine chest X-rays when people are admitted to a hospital or before surgery; imaging tests on car crash victims who don’t show signs of head or abdominal injuries; and low-back X-rays in older people with degenerative, but stable, spine conditions.

Even when tests are justified, they often include more views than needed and too much radiation. Top offender: chest CT scans looking for clogged arteries and heart problems. Cardiologists are increasingly aware of this risk and are seeking solutions.

At Columbia University, a study on dummies by Dr. Andrew Jeffrey Einstein found two dose-modifying techniques could lower the needed radiation dose by 90 percent without harming image quality.

Another cardiologist and radiation safety expert, Dr. Gilbert Raff, showed the same in real life. A study he led of nearly 5,000 patients at 15 imaging centers in Michigan found that radiation dose could be cut by two-thirds with no loss of quality.

What should patients do?

“You should question everything ˜ what’s the dose, why am I getting it? You should be an informed consumer,” said Dr. Fred Mettler, radiology chief in the New Mexico Veterans Administration health care system. He led a study of health effects after the Chernobyl accident and is a U.S. representative to the United Nations on radiation safety.

He advised challenging “big ticket” tests like CT scans that deliver a lot of radiation to the chest and abdomen ˜ places where cancer is likely to develop. “You shouldn’t get too excited about feet and knee X-rays,” Mettler said.

Questions to ask about radiation scans:

˜Is it truly needed? How will it change my care?

˜Have you or another doctor done this test on me before?

˜Are there alternatives like ultrasound or MRI?

˜How many scans will be done? Could one or two be enough?

˜Will the dose be adjusted for my gender, age and size? Will lead shields be used to keep radiation away from places it can do harm?

˜Do you have a financial stake in the machines that will be used?

˜Can I have a copy of the image and information on the dose?

Mettler suggests bringing a blank CD or thumb drive with you.

“You should have all of your stuff digitally on something,” he said. “I keep mine on my laptop.”

___

Online:

Consumer information: www.radiologyinfo.org

Pensacola News Journal

A study of air quality in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties calculated elevated cancer risks based on cumulative lifetime exposure to air pollutants in four areas.

Here are the areas of highest risk attributed to nearby industries.

1. Northeastern Santa Rosa County along County Road 191 centered on Florida Gas Transmission Co.’s operation.

Maximum risk: An additional 48 cases of cancer per 1 million people. But because the area is nearly entirely forested and rural, the study indicates there may be no one who has the chronic, lifetime exposure necessary to hit that risk level.
Related

* Editorial series, part 5: A Call to Action
* Editorial series, part 5: Sins of the past will haunt our future

Pollutant: Primarily formaldehyde emissions from a natural gas compressor station that operates natural gas-fired combustion engines. (A spokesman said improvements had cut those emissions by 15 percent.)

2. Northwestern Santa Rosa County centered on the Quantum Resources Management (formerly Exxon-St. Regis) petroleum and natural gas extraction operation about two miles west of Jay.

Maximum risk: An additional 23 cancer cases per 1 million people, but the area is surrounded by forested, rural land so exposure is assumed to be minimal.

Pollutants: Formaldehyde and toluene emissions from the petroleum/natural gas extraction operation. (Company officials said process improvements had cut formaldehyde, carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions.)

Update: Quantum Resources halted production from the Jay field in December. In June Gov. Charlie Crist signed legislation providing tax incentives designed to restart production.

3. Pace community surrounding the Sterling Fibers plant.

Maximum risk: An additional 36 to 45 cancer cases per 1 million people.

Pollutant: Acrylonitrile emissions from acrylic fiber manufacturing. (Company officials said emissions of acrylonitrile were cut to zero in 2006. They also noted two studies of acrylonitrile that dispute findings that the chemical increases cancer rates among employees exposed to it.)

4. Cantonment community near the International Paper Co. plant.

Maximum risk: An additional 5.4 cancer cases per 1 million people.

Pollutants: Methanol and acetaldehyde used as chemical solvents in the pulping operation. (An IP spokeswoman said controls added in 2001 and 2004, plus a production change and mill reconfiguration in 2007, have reduced emissions, including methanol.)

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By FIONA MACRAE
Daily Mail, UK

8th June 2010

Dental X-rays given to millions of Britons every year may dramatically increase the risk of thyroid cancer, scientists warned last night.

Researchers found that patients who had been X-rayed by their dentist at least ten times were more likely to develop the disease.

They have now warned that X-rays should not be given at check-ups or when registering new patients – despite these practices being common in many dental surgeries.

Regular dental check-ups are important to maintain healthy gums and teeth, but scientists have found a link between dental x-rays and thyroid cancer

How the dental X-rays work when a patient visits the dentist for a check up
With rates of thyroid cancer more than doubling in 30 years, the scientists said that the potential dangers of dental X-rays were often overlooked.
Researcher Dr Anjum Memon, of Brighton and Sussex Medical School, said: ‘Our study highlights the concern that, like chest or other upper body Xrays, dental X-rays should be prescribed when the patient has a specific clinical need, and not as part of routine check-up or when registering with a dentist.’

Dental leaders recommended that patients protect their thyroid – a hormone-releasing gland at the base of the neck – by wearing lightweight lead collars or bibs when being X-rayed.

The researchers asked 313 thyroid cancer patients and a similar number of healthy volunteers how many dental Xrays they had undergone.

After factoring in any hospital X-rays participants had had, they found that men and women who had had up to four dental X-rays were more than twice as likely to have developed the disease than those who had never had any.

Between five and nine X-rays and their risk rose more than four-fold, the journal Acta Oncologica reports.

In most danger were those who had had ten or more X-rays – their risk was 5.4 times that of someone who had never been X-rayed in the dentist’s chair.

The researchers relied on patients’ recollections, rather than dental records, but said that despite this, the finding was significant.

Dr Memon added that the results were supported by previous reports of increased risk of thyroid cancer in dentists, dental assistants and X-ray workers, suggesting that multiple low-dose exposures may be harmful.
Dr Memon, who carried out the research with experts from Cambridge and Kuwait universities, said: ‘It is important that our study is repeated with information from dental records including frequency of X-rays, age and dose at exposure.

‘If the results are confirmed, then the use of X-rays as a necessary part of evaluation for new patients, and routine periodic dental radiography, at six to 12 months interval, particularly for children and adolescents, will need to be reconsidered, as will a greater use of lead collar protection.’

But British dentists pointed out that the study was carried out in Kuwait, where rates of thyroid cancer are much higher than in the UK, and said the researchers did not know what sort of X-ray equipment had been used.
Dr Nigel Carter, chief executive of the British Dental Health Foundation, said: ‘The number of X-rays being taken in dental practice in the UK has greatly reduced in recent years and the dosages from modern equipment are extremely low.

‘Dental X-rays have a valuable role in the diagnosis of dental disease.’

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Incidence of lung cancer worldwide, with green indicating low levels and red showing high levels.

By Elizabeth Landau
CNN.com Health Writer/Producer

By 2030, there will be more than 13 million deaths from cancer around the world and nearly 21 million diagnosed cases annually, according to a new report from the World Health Organization.

About 12.7 million new cancer cases and 7.6 million cancer deaths occurred in 2008, says GLOBOCAN 2008, the World Health Organization’s new online resource for cancer globally. The map above, from the Web site, shows the incidence of lung cancer worldwide, with green indicating low levels and red showing high levels.

Less developed regions of the world have higher cancer incidence and mortality, the WHO said. Lung cancer is the most commonly diagnosed type of cancer, with 1.61 million cases in 2008. Breast cancer, with 1.38 million cases, and colorectal cancers, with 1.23 million cases, are the second and third most common.

Lung cancer is also the most common cause of cancer death, with 1.38 million reported. Stomach cancer, with 0.74 million, and live cancers with 0.69 million, follow.

WHO noted that cancer is not exclusive to high-resource countries, and it is not rare anywhere in the world. But there are regional patterns – in developing regions, cervix and liver cancers are more common; developed regions have a higher burden of prostate and colorectal cancers.

You can view more maps of various kinds of cancer worldwide here.

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Demolition of Naperville research facility provides little solace to cancer victims’ families

June 02, 2010|
By Gerry Smith,
Chicago Tribune reporter

The former setting of a medical mystery is now a pile of rubble. But for Gayle Palmer, the final chapter has yet to be written.

In recent weeks, BP demolished Building 503 of its Naperville research campus where at least six former chemical researchers of what was then Amoco Corp. — including Palmer’s husband, David — developed a deadly form of brain cancer in the 1980s and 1990s.

Researchers who conducted a three-year study of the cancer cluster concluded those six cases of glioma probably were workplace-related. Yet the scientists never could identify the source of the workers’ ailments.

The demolition of Building 503 gave little solace to Palmer and other victims’ relatives who still have unanswered questions about a mystery that was never solved.

“We still don’t know what happened,” Palmer said. “If we had a definitive idea of the source, it might have brought closure, but we never did get that.”

Once, the 39 labs and offices on the third floor of Building 503 were a beehive of researchers looking for new chemical products and polymers. But after an alarming number of employees at the Naperville research campus were diagnosed with brain tumors — some cancerous, some benign
— Amoco appointed university researchers to look into the matter.

The six employees who died of cancer all were long-term chemical researchers working in Building 503. Five of the six men worked on the third floor, which was later evacuated. At least 13 other tumors, all benign, showed no pattern that suggested a link to the job, the researchers said.

At least two dozen lawsuits were filed on behalf of employees who contracted other types of cancer after working for Amoco at the Naperville facility.

BP spokeswoman Valerie Corr said the company decided to raze Building 503 because it had been underused since BP divested its chemical business in 2005. She said the building also required upgrades the company deemed too expensive. She said BP is considering turning the location into green space.

But Ed Paschke, who developed a benign brain tumor while testing chemicals for three decades at the research center, saw the demolition as a long-awaited mea culpa from the company.

“BP is finally getting rid of the problem they never admitted they had,” said Paschke, who had his tumor surgically removed and received a settlement from the company. “They are concluding the building is not safe.”

Paschke said safety precautions at the research facility in the ’70s and ’80s were “extremely poor.” Paschke said he routinely stored mustard gas and worked near leaking solvents — all without proper ventilation.

“Those kinds of things were just rampant,” he said.

Long after the cancer cluster was discovered, BP’s Naperville research campus remained controversial in the community.

Three years ago, District 200 residents protested the decision to build a middle school near the research campus, contending the site was unsafe because it was once the setting of a cancer cluster. But the site received clearance from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, and district officials moved forward with their plans.

Meanwhile, relatives of former employees say Building 503 was a symbol of the potential hazards that faced chemical engineers.

“Anytime I hear anyone going into chemical engineering, I think, ‘Be careful,’” Palmer said.

David Palmer worked at the Naperville research center for 22 years. He was diagnosed with a malignant intracranial tumor in 1989 and died at age 55 in 1997, survived by his wife and three daughters. In 2000, BP Amoco PLC agreed to pay $2.75 million to David Palmer’s heirs.

But Marios Karayannis, an attorney who represented his father and other former Amoco workers who developed tumors at the Naperville research campus, said researchers knew the risks they were taking.

“Did they know they were dealing with nasty chemicals? Yeah, they did,” he said. “But if my father were here today and you asked him, ‘Would you still have worked at Amoco and done the research?’ His answer would be ‘Yes.’”

Collette Baranowski, of Naperville, said she would get mixed emotions when she drove past the glass-and-brown-brick buildings of the Naperville research campus along the Reagan Memorial Tollway.

Though she has fond memories of working at Amoco for nearly 25 years as a research assistant, her uncle Walter Kus, developed deadly glioma while working there. He died in 1998.

Baranowski said she prefers to focus on the relationships she made there.

“When I think of working there, I think of the wonderful people that I worked with,” she said. “It’s sad that some of them got brain tumors and what it did to them. I feel horrible for their families. It just wasn’t right.”

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