by STUART WATSON / NewsChannel 36

MOUNT HERMON, N.C. — “An entire community is being wiped out by cancer.”

That’s the way the e-mail to the Newschannel 36 I-Team began.

Needless to say, it got our attention.

To understand what’s behind the letter, you have to go back decades to a toxic waste incinerator in the North Carolina foothills labeled a “public health hazard” by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a part of the Centers for Disease Control.

But demonstrating a link between a long-dead incinerator and neighbors suffering cancer today is all but impossible, particularly since no one has conducted any follow-up studies.

The community is called Mount Hermon. It lies east of Hudson, North Carolina off of US 321 in the pastures and foothills between the furniture-producing region of Hickory and the county seat of Caldwell County, Lenoir. Mount Hermon gets its name from the community’s Methodist Church. In the Bible, Mount Hermon was a holy place. In North Carolina, this place seems cursed.

“There is no brew out of hell that would come up with what they did,” says L.C. Coonce, a retired high school chemistry teacher who fought the incinerator until it closed.

For nearly a dozen years, from 1977-1989, a company called CSI or Caldwell Systems Inc. operated the incinerator on county property on a ridge line known to locals as Mount Lick. From those heights the incinerator spewed smoke and chemicals untreated onto the people living below.

To this day Coonce sums up his version of the mindset that brought the plant bluntly: “Here’s a bunch of hillbillies. We’ll just dump this stuff on them. They’re not really important people anyway.”

Coonce put pencil to paper and calculated that the operators of the incinerator were pumping toxic liquids into the incinerator at a rate faster than it could burn them all. The result, he says, is that the plant did not completely burn the chemicals – instead it vaporized them.

“Instead of pouring it into the river they were pouring it into the air,” he says.
Coonce’s father and others went door to door in the community around the mountain when the incinerator was operating, collecting their own health survey and mapping homes where people were sick by sticking push-pins in a map. The illnesses were color coded. The black pins were cancers.

The CDC’s report concluded the rate of cancer in Caldwell County was no greater than similar communities. But the report documented other illnesses, including respiratory illness. Now neighbors of the old incinerator say someone should come back and take a second look.

“Of course the furniture people supported it,” Coonce says of the CSI incinerator.
He found himself in the minority in Caldwell County fighting the plant. The incinerator gave furniture manufacturers a place to get rid of solvents, paint and lacquer dust. And to many people in the community, furniture-making meant a steady paycheck.

But along the way the waste stream pouring into the CSI incinerator expanded far beyond furniture byproducts to include torpedo fuel from the United States Navy.
According to the CDC’s report, the torpedo fuel amounted to as much as 10 percent of the overall waste stream.

“Imagine carrying naval weapons’ waste from Japan to Caldwell County,” says Coonce.
In 1989, the CSI incinerator caught fire for the second time and exploded, forcing an evacuation of hundreds of people living nearby. Only then did a judge agree to shut it down.

“People knew there was a problem,” says Coonce.

And now – more than 20 years later – there are still problems.

“They found a tumor and it’s malignant,” says 79-year old Franklin Haas, his head wrapped in a bandage from recent surgery. Haas, his son Randy, Randy’s daughter and granddaughter – four generations of the family – run the Mount Hermon grocery store.

It’s hard to recognize Haas from his 50th wedding anniversary photo. His throat and face are swollen and puffy. He says his eyelids became so swollen it took surgery to keep them open. Doctor after doctor found it difficult to diagnose.

“She finally said, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong,’” says Haas.

After about two years and 14 doctors, Haas says he got a name for the tumors on his head: Cutaneous Angio Sarcoma, a rare cancer that spread through along the blood vessels on his scalp.

The Haas family’s Mount Hermon grocery store sits just down the hill from where the incinerator once belched smoke. And just behind the store, Haas built the home he has lived in for decades.

“For a while there was soot that would settle on the grass,” he says. “You’d wake up with the smell – it was a terrible smell.”

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry reported that neighbors of the incinerator, “…inhaled hazardous substances” and “…had dermal contact” with the same hazardous waste – on their skin.

By the time Franklin Haas’ cancer was diagnosed, it had spread.

He speaks in measured tones, drawing no hasty conclusions about the incinerator and his own cancer. But he can’t help but wonder.

“That’s always been in mind y’know wondering if it would harm you or your family down the road.”

He is not alone. At his family store, now run by his son Randy, neighbors and family members point house by house to people who live and die with cancer.

Lately Randy Haas has noticed a red rash on his ankle, behind his knee and on his back.
“So I’m going to have to probably have this diagnosed to see what it is and it may be the same thing [his father has],” he says.

Randy and others recall health workers telling them that chemical exposure could have health implications years later.

“It’s like a dormant seed,” he says. “And sure enough…it’s blossoming now.”

“It’s clear to me we have a cancer cluster and a neurological cluster,” says Coonce, the retired chemistry teacher.

But even if a health agency could verify and map out clusters of cancer or neurological disorders, it’s hard to prove the incinerator caused them. It’s actually nearly impossible since no agency is counting.

“The government hasn’t done anything,” says Coonce. “It’s a time bomb and it’s a slow explosion but it is happening.”

He says Mount Hermon got dumped on first because neighbors didn’t count. Now when it comes to health agencies collecting numbers to prove or disprove clusters of disease, well, they don’t count.

by STUART WATSON / NewsChannel 36

WCNC.com

Posted on April 29, 2011 at 11:10 PM

Updated Saturday, Apr 30 at 10:08 AM

MOUNT HERMON, N.C. — “An entire community is being wiped out by cancer.”

That’s the way the e-mail to the Newschannel 36 I-Team began.

Needless to say, it got our attention.

To understand what’s behind the letter, you have to go back decades to a toxic waste incinerator in the North Carolina foothills labeled a “public health hazard” by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a part of the Centers for Disease Control. But demonstrating a link between a long-dead incinerator and neighbors suffering cancer today is all but impossible, particularly since no one has conducted any follow-up studies.

The community is called Mount Hermon. It lies east of Hudson, North Carolina off of US 321 in the pastures and foothills between the furniture-producing region of Hickory and the county seat of Caldwell County, Lenoir. Mount Hermon gets its name from the community’s Methodist Church. In the Bible, Mount Hermon was a holy place. In North Carolina, this place seems cursed.

“There is no brew out of hell that would come up with what they did,” says L.C. Coonce, a retired high school chemistry teacher who fought the incinerator until it closed.

For nearly a dozen years, from 1977-1989, a company called CSI or Caldwell Systems Inc. operated the incinerator on county property on a ridge line known to locals as Mount Lick. From those heights the incinerator spewed smoke and chemicals untreated onto the people living below.

To this day Coonce sums up his version of the mindset that brought the plant bluntly: “Here’s a bunch of hillbillies. We’ll just dump this stuff on them. They’re not really important people anyway.”

Coonce put pencil to paper and calculated that the operators of the incinerator were pumping toxic liquids into the incinerator at a rate faster than it could burn them all. The result, he says, is that the plant did not completely burn the chemicals – instead it vaporized them.

“Instead of pouring it into the river they were pouring it into the air,” he says.

Coonce’s father and others went door to door in the community around the mountain when the incinerator was operating, collecting their own health survey and mapping homes where people were sick by sticking push-pins in a map. The illnesses were color coded. The black pins were cancers.

The CDC’s report concluded the rate of cancer in Caldwell County was no greater than similar communities. But the report documented other illnesses, including respiratory illness. Now neighbors of the old incinerator say someone should come back and take a second look.

“Of course the furniture people supported it,” Coonce says of the CSI incinerator.

He found himself in the minority in Caldwell County fighting the plant. The incinerator gave furniture manufacturers a place to get rid of solvents, paint and lacquer dust. And to many people in the community, furniture-making meant a steady paycheck.

But along the way the waste stream pouring into the CSI incinerator expanded far beyond furniture byproducts to include torpedo fuel from the United States Navy.

According to the CDC’s report, the torpedo fuel amounted to as much as 10 percent of the overall waste stream.

“Imagine carrying naval weapons’ waste from Japan to Caldwell County,” says Coonce.

In 1989, the CSI incinerator caught fire for the second time and exploded, forcing an evacuation of hundreds of people living nearby. Only then did a judge agree to shut it down.

“People knew there was a problem,” says Coonce.

And now – more than 20 years later – there are still problems.

“They found a tumor and it’s malignant,” says 79-year old Franklin Haas, his head wrapped in a bandage from recent surgery. Haas, his son Randy, Randy’s daughter and granddaughter – four generations of the family – run the Mount Hermon grocery store.

It’s hard to recognize Haas from his 50th wedding anniversary photo. His throat and face are swollen and puffy. He says his eyelids became so swollen it took surgery to keep them open. Doctor after doctor found it difficult to diagnose.

“She finally said, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong,’” says Haas.

After about two years and 14 doctors, Haas says he got a name for the tumors on his head: Cutaneous Angio Sarcoma, a rare cancer that spread through along the blood vessels on his scalp.

The Haas family’s Mount Hermon grocery store sits just down the hill from where the incinerator once belched smoke. And just behind the store, Haas built the home he has lived in for decades.

“For a while there was soot that would settle on the grass,” he says. “You’d wake up with the smell – it was a terrible smell.”

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry reported that neighbors of the incinerator, “…inhaled hazardous substances” and “…had dermal contact” with the same hazardous waste – on their skin.

By the time Franklin Haas’ cancer was diagnosed, it had spread.

He speaks in measured tones, drawing no hasty conclusions about the incinerator and his own cancer. But he can’t help but wonder.

“That’s always been in mind y’know wondering if it would harm you or your family down the road.”

He is not alone. At his family store, now run by his son Randy, neighbors and family members point house by house to people who live and die with cancer.

Lately Randy Haas has noticed a red rash on his ankle, behind his knee and on his back.

“So I’m going to have to probably have this diagnosed to see what it is and it may be the same thing [his father has],” he says.

Randy and others recall health workers telling them that chemical exposure could have health implications years later.

“It’s like a dormant seed,” he says. “And sure enough…it’s blossoming now.”

“It’s clear to me we have a cancer cluster and a neurological cluster,” says Coonce, the retired chemistry teacher.

But even if a health agency could verify and map out clusters of cancer or neurological disorders, it’s hard to prove the incinerator caused them. It’s actually nearly impossible since no agency is counting.

“The government hasn’t done anything,” says Coonce. “It’s a time bomb and it’s a slow explosion but it is happening.”

He says Mount Hermon got dumped on first because neighbors didn’t count. Now when it comes to health agencies collecting numbers to prove or disprove clusters of disease, well, they don’t count. by STUART WATSON / NewsChannel 36
Bio | Email | Follow: @stuartwatson36

WCNC.com

Posted on April 29, 2011 at 11:10 PM

Updated Saturday, Apr 30 at 10:08 AM

MOUNT HERMON, N.C. — “An entire community is being wiped out by cancer.”

That’s the way the e-mail to the Newschannel 36 I-Team began.

Needless to say, it got our attention.

To understand what’s behind the letter, you have to go back decades to a toxic waste incinerator in the North Carolina foothills labeled a “public health hazard” by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a part of the Centers for Disease Control. But demonstrating a link between a long-dead incinerator and neighbors suffering cancer today is all but impossible, particularly since no one has conducted any follow-up studies.

The community is called Mount Hermon. It lies east of Hudson, North Carolina off of US 321 in the pastures and foothills between the furniture-producing region of Hickory and the county seat of Caldwell County, Lenoir. Mount Hermon gets its name from the community’s Methodist Church. In the Bible, Mount Hermon was a holy place. In North Carolina, this place seems cursed.

“There is no brew out of hell that would come up with what they did,” says L.C. Coonce, a retired high school chemistry teacher who fought the incinerator until it closed.

For nearly a dozen years, from 1977-1989, a company called CSI or Caldwell Systems Inc. operated the incinerator on county property on a ridge line known to locals as Mount Lick. From those heights the incinerator spewed smoke and chemicals untreated onto the people living below.

To this day Coonce sums up his version of the mindset that brought the plant bluntly: “Here’s a bunch of hillbillies. We’ll just dump this stuff on them. They’re not really important people anyway.”

Coonce put pencil to paper and calculated that the operators of the incinerator were pumping toxic liquids into the incinerator at a rate faster than it could burn them all. The result, he says, is that the plant did not completely burn the chemicals – instead it vaporized them.

“Instead of pouring it into the river they were pouring it into the air,” he says.

Coonce’s father and others went door to door in the community around the mountain when the incinerator was operating, collecting their own health survey and mapping homes where people were sick by sticking push-pins in a map. The illnesses were color coded. The black pins were cancers.

The CDC’s report concluded the rate of cancer in Caldwell County was no greater than similar communities. But the report documented other illnesses, including respiratory illness. Now neighbors of the old incinerator say someone should come back and take a second look.

“Of course the furniture people supported it,” Coonce says of the CSI incinerator.

He found himself in the minority in Caldwell County fighting the plant. The incinerator gave furniture manufacturers a place to get rid of solvents, paint and lacquer dust. And to many people in the community, furniture-making meant a steady paycheck.

But along the way the waste stream pouring into the CSI incinerator expanded far beyond furniture byproducts to include torpedo fuel from the United States Navy.

According to the CDC’s report, the torpedo fuel amounted to as much as 10 percent of the overall waste stream.

“Imagine carrying naval weapons’ waste from Japan to Caldwell County,” says Coonce.

In 1989, the CSI incinerator caught fire for the second time and exploded, forcing an evacuation of hundreds of people living nearby. Only then did a judge agree to shut it down.

“People knew there was a problem,” says Coonce.

And now – more than 20 years later – there are still problems.

“They found a tumor and it’s malignant,” says 79-year old Franklin Haas, his head wrapped in a bandage from recent surgery. Haas, his son Randy, Randy’s daughter and granddaughter – four generations of the family – run the Mount Hermon grocery store.

It’s hard to recognize Haas from his 50th wedding anniversary photo. His throat and face are swollen and puffy. He says his eyelids became so swollen it took surgery to keep them open. Doctor after doctor found it difficult to diagnose.

“She finally said, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong,’” says Haas.

After about two years and 14 doctors, Haas says he got a name for the tumors on his head: Cutaneous Angio Sarcoma, a rare cancer that spread through along the blood vessels on his scalp.

The Haas family’s Mount Hermon grocery store sits just down the hill from where the incinerator once belched smoke. And just behind the store, Haas built the home he has lived in for decades.

“For a while there was soot that would settle on the grass,” he says. “You’d wake up with the smell – it was a terrible smell.”

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry reported that neighbors of the incinerator, “…inhaled hazardous substances” and “…had dermal contact” with the same hazardous waste – on their skin.

By the time Franklin Haas’ cancer was diagnosed, it had spread.

He speaks in measured tones, drawing no hasty conclusions about the incinerator and his own cancer. But he can’t help but wonder.

“That’s always been in mind y’know wondering if it would harm you or your family down the road.”

He is not alone. At his family store, now run by his son Randy, neighbors and family members point house by house to people who live and die with cancer.

Lately Randy Haas has noticed a red rash on his ankle, behind his knee and on his back.

“So I’m going to have to probably have this diagnosed to see what it is and it may be the same thing [his father has],” he says.

Randy and others recall health workers telling them that chemical exposure could have health implications years later.

“It’s like a dormant seed,” he says. “And sure enough…it’s blossoming now.”

“It’s clear to me we have a cancer cluster and a neurological cluster,” says Coonce, the retired chemistry teacher.

But even if a health agency could verify and map out clusters of cancer or neurological disorders, it’s hard to prove the incinerator caused them. It’s actually nearly impossible since no agency is counting.

“The government hasn’t done anything,” says Coonce. “It’s a time bomb and it’s a slow explosion but it is happening.”

He says Mount Hermon got dumped on first because neighbors didn’t count. Now when it comes to health agencies collecting numbers to prove or disprove clusters of disease, well, they don’t count.

WCNC News

BY MATTHEW D. LAPLANTE
The Salt Lake Tribune

First published Apr 23 2011

Ling Seager is dead.

So is Jim Sproul, who sat next to her in an office in the Utah National Guard’s Joint Language Training Center. And so is Chris Jensen, who sat beside Sproul.

Across from Seager sat Mike Chen; he survived a brain tumor. A few feet away was Mark Hepper; he’s dying.

Megan Cate, Scott Forman, Jackie Leedy, Andy Swatsenbarg — all of them worked in the same small office. All of them are sick. None of them knows why.

Utah National Guard leaders say it’s just a “weird coincidence” that so many people who worked in the same office at the center have died or become debilitatingly ill. Their investigation into environmental conditions at the facility, located at a sprawling industrial park in northern Utah, concluded that the office was safe for its workers — even as engineers continue to remove toxic chemicals from the ground surrounding the building in the middle of an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site.

Swatsenbarg, a career Army officer who fell ill in 2007, isn’t impressed with the military’s self-examination.

“So the National Guard checked itself out and says everything is fine? Well, that’s a big surprise,” he says. “I wonder if Procter & Gamble could get away with that. Or how about Dow Chemicals or DuPont?”

Swatsenbarg and other veterans of the language center say they simply want to know that a serious effort has been made to ascertain whether their sicknesses are linked to their service. And that, they say, will take an investigation from someone outside of the Guard.

read full article

Ill man blames pollution

MATT HUGHES mhughes@timesleader.com
The Times Leader

In February, Chuck Menichini, 58, of Pittston, was diagnosed with large B-cell lymphoma. His physician told him the cancer has an environmental cause, typically exposure to the chemical benzene.

When you get a diagnosis like this, it’s natural to ask why; what did I do to cause this? And when a physician tells you the disease might have an environmental cause, you start asking bigger questions.

Menichini went looking for a cause, and he thinks he has found it.

Menichini lives at the end of Carroll Street, a few hundred yards from where the Butler Mine Tunnel drains into the Susquehanna River. He believes that industrial waste dumped into the mines below Pittston that spewed from the tunnel, an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund cleanup site in 1979 and again in 1985, played a role in causing his cancer and the cancers of many of his neighbors.

In short, he thinks contaminants in the Butler Mine Tunnel have created a cancer cluster in Pittston.

Collecting data
Menichini and his family have been collecting information from neighbors, particularly on Mill Street and Carroll Street. He has documented about 80 cancer cases so far, and found what he considers alarming coincidences.

He has found three cases of brain cancer, three or four cases of esophagus cancer within a block radius, and on one block, cancer struck in 14 of 16 houses.

Menichini isn’t a scientist; he’s a plumber, but an accusation like his from a man in his situation demands consideration, and because of it, state and federal agencies and the area’s representatives in Harrisburg and Washington are taking another look at the Butler Mine Tunnel.

One of the first to listen was state Sen. John Yudichak.

Yudichak, D-Plymouth Township, met with Menichini’s family then contacted the state Department of Health to request a survey of cancer rates in greater Pittston.

He also met with Bob Durkin of the Northeast Regional Cancer Institute, which has offices in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, about the possibility of conducting a more refined study of cancer in and around Menichini’s neighborhood.

He said he will introduce legislation to better coordinate government response in investigating alleged cancer clusters.

“We want to look at streamlining the process to better the response when there’s a concentrated cluster like that, in terms of the federal, state, local and county response,” Yudichak said.

Cancer clusters
Cancer clusters themselves are difficult to explain scientifically in community settings. In industrial settings, where workers are exposed to a particular substance on a daily basis and develop a particular variety of cancer in elevated rates, the link between carcinogen and cancer is much more clear than in a community setting, where exposure may be more temporary, lower, and more difficult to isolate from other risk factors.

Dr. Michael J. Thun of the American Cancer Society and Thomas Sinks of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote that more than 1,000 suspected cancer clusters are reported to state health departments every year. But they said statistical testing confirms elevated cancer rates in only 5 to 15 percent of cases, and even in these cases, results are rarely definitive.

Pa. agency review
At Yudichak’s request, the Department of Health reviewed reports of cancer between 1992 and 2008 within the 18640 zip code, which includes Pittston, Pittston Township, Port Griffith and part of Jenkins Township.

The survey found elevated rates of colorectal, pancreatic, lung and thyroid cancer in the area, but with the exception of pancreatic cancer, those cancers are found in elevated rates across the region. .

A letter from acting Deputy Secretary for Health Planning and Assessment Martin Raniowski to Yudichak also pointed out that “the observed number of lymphomas (raised as a particular concern in this community) is the same as expected based on statewide rates.”

Dr. Samuel Lesko, an epidemiologist with the Northeast Regional Cancer Institute, reviewed the letter to Yudichak.

“Looking at the cancer data, my first reaction is that those high cancer rates are on par with general cancer in the community,” Lesko said. “That doesn’t immediately start flashing lights saying there’s a problem.”

Though he added that “given the underlying history of that Butler Tunnel, it may be reasonable to look at if there may be an environmental cause. I think that is a question that is worth revisiting.”

EPA’s viewpoint
The Environmental Protection Agency has also taken another look at the Superfund site, but the agency doesn’t feel there’s a problem.

“We feel that the conditions at the site are not detrimental to human health,” said Mitch Cron, the EPA’s project manager for the Butler Mine Tunnel, adding that “the water coming out of that tunnel into the river doesn’t have contamination above drinking water standards.”

And because the EPA does not feel the tunnel presents an imminent public health threat, it doesn’t plan any additional testing in Pittston.

The number and quantities of chemicals dumped into the mines below Pittston according to the EPA’s own 2009 review of the Butler Mine Tunnel site are alarming. Testing of the oily carbon discharge that spewed from the tunnel in 1985 revealed the presence of 16 hazardous substances, and the EPA believes between 1.5 and 2.7 million gallons of waste were dumped into mines that drain into the Butler Tunnel via a borehole off State Route 315 in the 1970s.

That waste included between 330,000 and 490,000 gallons of oil and as much as 100,000 gallons of liquid cyanide, and the EPA believes between 50,000 and 90,000 gallons of it remains pooled in mines below Pittston.

The EPA also concluded, however, that those substances aren’t regularly flowing through the tunnel, though they could spill out in a flood, and because Pittston residents do not drink well water or water from the river, living near the tunnel isn’t a health risk.

The EPA also conducted remedial air-quality tests in 1979, 1982 and 1986, Cron said, and the EPA does not believe there is any present danger from mine vapors.

Those answers did not satisfy the Menichini family.

In Menichini’s years as a plumber he often found himself in basements sopping with “flood mud.”

“What about all the mines that collapsed into the sewer system,” Menichini said. “I was in houses with that. What was I touching?”

The Menichinis want the EPA to analyze soil samples in Pittston, something the EPA doesn’t feel is necessary. EPA officials met with the Menichinis on Tuesday about their concerns.

“It pretty much made me sick to my stomach that they didn’t test any of the soil or anything else, and that they don’t feel it needs to be investigated,” Chris Menichini, Chuck’s son, said of that meeting. “The EPA is supposed to be out there for us and our own protection and it doesn’t seem like they’re interested in protecting us.”

Chris Menichini said if the EPA won’t listen, he will have to seek help elsewhere in proving the family’s suspicions.

Barletta involved
Another of those who is listening to the Menichinis is U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Hazleton, who has been working with Yudichak’s office in determining an appropriate government response.

Barletta last week sent a letter to Administrator Lisa Jackson of the EPA asking the agency to again “investigate the potential environmental hazard and to provide me with a level of risk for my constituents” and “more specifically, does the Superfund site pose a hazard to Pittston? Do dangerous chemicals exist beneath the city and what steps have been taken to remedy the problem?”

Legal advocate Erin Brockovich has also responded. Shortly after testifying about Superfund sites and cancer clusters before a Senate committee on that issue two weeks ago, she responded to an e-mail message from Chuck’s wife, Barbara Menichini.

Brockovich asked to share information from the Menichinis with other attorneys and with the area’s representatives in Congress, and said she would look into the situation and possibly set up a community meeting.

“I am sure that none of this information brings you any comfort,” Brockovich wrote, “but I wanted to share with you that the problem is very large and that we are working towards some solutions… I will wait to hear back from you and will begin looking into this Superfund site. What a mess and what a shame.”

The Menichinis are glad someone is listening.

“If I have to go down to Capitol Hill or wherever else I will,” Chris Menichini said, adding, “We just lost two people in the last couple weeks that live in the area from cancer.”

In my son the CDC found arsenic, barium, cesium, cobalt, lead, manganese, molybdenum, thallium, tungsten, uranium, DDE, Dieldrin, oxychlordane, transnonachlor, dimethyldithiophosphate, diethylthiophosphate, diethylthiophosphate, 16 kinds of PCBs, benzene, ethylbenzene, xylene and styrene.

The CDC considered the contaminants measured in the children to be “normal.”

None of these chemicals meets my idea of normal!

Blog post
by Terry Nordbrock

Cobalt-tungsten carbide powders and hard metals is a candidate
substance listed on the NOT YET RELEASED 12th Report on Carcinogens
(RoC). The National Toxicology Program (NTP) is required by law to
update their RoC every two years, but the last time they released a
report was in 2005. For more, see
<http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/?objectid=72016262-BDB7-CEBA-FA60E922B18C2540>

Tungsten had not previously been understood to be harmful to human
health but was found in high concentrations in the bodies of people
living in Fallon NV during the CDC biomonitoring study of the
childhood leukemia cluster there.

Mark Witten, PhD, a University of Arizona pediatric toxicologist, and
Paul Sheppard, PhD, a University of Arizona dendrochronologist (tree
ring scientist), had been studying JP-8 jet fuel as a possible cause
of the astonishing 16-fold increase in childhood leukemia incidence.
In Dr. Witten’s lab they had been unable to induce leukemic symptoms
by exposing mice to JP-8 jet fuel, so he turned his attention to
tungsten as an interesting hypothesis.

Mark Witten has been amazed at his success inducing leukemic symptoms
in mice exposed to tungsten, especially when co-exposed to a virus
such as respiratory synctial virus (RSV). This strategy was
suggested by the “two-hit” model for childhood leukemia causation, in
which the first exposure occurs before birth and leaves genetic
damage detectable on a Guthrie card, the blood spot samples taken
from newborns to screen for metabolic diseases. The second “hit”,
which could be an environmental contaminant or just a simple common
virus, occurs after birth and only affects those children (or mouse
pups) already carrying the genetic mutation.

Funding for these studies came from the research funding made
available by Senator Harry Reid, in which the Fallon families had
input into researcher selection.

The NTP background documents reviewed to determine whether
cobalt-tungsten is a carcinogen includes extensive reporting on the
Fallon cluster, especially the work of Drs. Sheppard and Witten.
This is an important “win” for the value of studying disease clusters
as well as the value of conducting human biomonitoring to advance our
understanding of disease causation and prevention strategies.

But before we get too excited, the stated basis for nomination into
the RoC is “Recent human cancer studies on the hard metal
manufacturing industry showing an association between exposure to
hard metals (cobalt tungsten-carbide) and lung cancer.” I find it
fascinating to watch our scientific understanding grow, but I still
wish it were faster!

Ironically, tungsten had been recently used as a safer substitute for
lead in bullets and other munitions. And, apparently, in medical
devices used to treat breast cancer…