Environment issues unlikely, state says

By TOM HENRY

BLADE STAFF WRITER
PORT CLINTON – Port Clinton’s rate of pancreatic cancer is 90 percent higher than what the Ohio Department of Health believes it should be for a city its size.

And its rate of lung and bronchus cancers is 50 percent higher too, according to a new state report that was issued Monday.

But state health officials said that is more likely the result of excessive smoking, not exposure to industrial chemicals or environmental pollutants.

The state agency issued its findings after crunching data of 503 Port Clinton cancer cases diagnosed between 1996 and 2007, the most comprehensive and latest years on record. The study was done at the request of the Ottawa County Department of Health, following concerns by area residents who believed a cancer cluster with an environmental trigger existed.

That is not the case, according to Holly Sobotka, chief of the state health department’s chronic disease and behavioral epidemiology section.

She acknowledged the number of cases of pancreatic and lung/bronchus cancers were statistically higher than chance alone, but said the leading risk factor for both of those is smoking. Neither of those is usually caused by environmental pollutants, although radon and asbestos exposure typically account for a certain number of lung/bronchus cancers, Ms. Sobotka said.

“There’s nothing environmentally tying them together,” she said.

There are more than 200 types of cancer, each with different risk factors, she said.

A city of Port Clinton’s size would be expected to have 11 pancreatic cancer and 61 lung/bronchus cases within the 11-year study period.

Port Clinton had 21 pancreatic cancer cases and 91 lung/bronchus cases, Ms. Sobotka said.

She said the state health department’s investigation probably is over unless more evidence surfaces at the county level. Ottawa County health officials probably will enhance anti-smoking messages, she said.

“I think the percentages can be misleading,” Ms. Sobotka said. “The findings look a lot more alarming just because you’re dealing with a small number of cases.”

Contact Tom Henry at:
thenry@theblade.com
or 419-724-6079.

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She describes nightmare of Love Canal

Lois Gibbs speaks at the Needmor Fund on a tour stop with the Center for Health, Environment and Justice.

( THE BLADE/ANDY MORRISON )
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By TOM HENRY
BLADE STAFF WRITER

Lois Gibbs, former Niagara Falls housewife-turned-activist who was at the center of the Love Canal controversy of the late 1970s that led to an overhaul of national pollution laws, made a stop in downtown Toledo Friday to generate support for area activists.
The stop is part of an Ohio tour for Ms. Gibbs and members of her Center for Health, Environment and Justice group in northern Virginia that she founded after being among the Love Canal evacuees.
“People are willing to get involved. They just don’t know how to do it,” Ms. Gibbs told a group of 20 people at the Needmor Fund on South St. Clair Street.
She recalled the events that led her, at age 27, to give up a comfortable suburban life in an “American-dream community” for a decades-long fight of what she perceives as injustices across the national landscape, many of them pollution-related.
The same woman who admittedly became a government agitator was feted by Lucas County commissioners with a proclamation for “effective grass-roots environmental activism.” It was presented to Ms. Gibbs by Lucas County Administrator Peter Ujvagi, who said he has admired her tenacity.
Love Canal was a planned community in eastern Niagara Falls where dozens of homes and a school were built in the late 1950s after the city had purchased the land from the Hooker Chemical Co. for $1 in 1953.
Myriad health problems, including birth defects and miscarriages, occurred because the homes were built too close to a canal that had been turned into a municipal and chemical dump. It leaked hazardous industrial chemicals, including cancer-causing benzene, resulting in an evacuation of dozens of families. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on its Web site calls it “one of the most appalling environmental tragedies in American history.”

The Love Canal saga also led to congressional passage of the U.S. EPA’s Superfund Act. That law is intended to make polluters pay for their messes even if that means reimbursing the government over many years. Sites designated for cleanup under the Superfund Act are considered many of the nation’s worst toxic dumps.
Ms. Gibbs has visited Ohio on other occasions, including a rally she led in the late 1990s when residents of Marion, Ohio, raised questions about the leukemia cluster at the former River Valley Middle School complex. It eventually was replaced.
She is an aficionado of Toledo politics, occasionally checking in on the career of former Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner. She has been in the area for various functions in recent years, including a three-day visit in 2007 in which she stopped off at Warren AME Church, visited residents of Wauseon, delivered a lecture at Maumee Valley Country Day School, met with some people in Toledo’s central city, and visited residents of Harbor View, the town near Oregon that claims to be Ohio’s smallest village.
The fund-raiser she attended yesterday was for her center and an offshoot of it, called Ohioans for Health, Environment and Justice.
Contact Tom Henry at:
thenry@theblade.com
or 419-724-6079.

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Sunday, May 23, 2010 2:58 AM

BY SPENCER HUNT

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

In researching whether there is a link between cancer cases and C8, an industrial chemical found in Washington County drinking water, Dr. Edward Emmett had no problem getting detailed information from the Ohio Department of Health.

“There is a process,” said Emmett, an environmental-health researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. “It is a little bit slow, but we didn’t come across any particular barriers.”

Others have. About once or twice a year, state officials deny cancer-data requests from the public in the name of patient privacy.

Last year, when a group of Sandusky County parents asked for records that Ohio Department of Health officials used to investigate a cluster of cancer cases among children in and around Clyde, the agency refused.

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The parents wanted to see a map the state had created showing, at the street level, where the children lived.

“I pushed real hard. I twisted arms. I went to my friend (U.S. Sen.) Sherrod Brown and said ‘Hey, you’re going to have to intervene here,’” said Warren Brown, a Sandusky County administrator.

His daughter Alexa, 11, died in August of a brain tumor.

“They did release a map, but not in the detail we were hoping for,” Warren Brown said.

After weeks of arguing, the department provided the group with a map that outlined neighborhoods where cancers were reported.

Health Department officials also balked at a Dispatch request for a complete set of data showing Franklin County brain-cancer cases by ZIP codes. The newspaper requested the data to examine an unusual case involving a rare, deadly brain cancer diagnosed in two East Side girls, who were neighbors.

Health Department officials ultimately released nearly all the requested records. An analysis of the data did not find an unusual number of childhood cancer cases in the county.

Health officials said public requests for detailed data from the state cancer registry are often rejected for fear that the information could be used to identify patients and violate their privacy, which is protected under federal law.

“If we seem like sticklers on this, it’s because it’s our responsibility,” said Bob Campbell, deputy director of the state’s Center for Public Health Statistics.

Campbell said the state instead tries to provide data that would not identify patients.

Since 2005, an agency panel has reviewed and granted 31 requests for cancer data made by university researchers and other government officials. Researchers must promise not to reveal patients’ identities or share raw data with the public. They also must promise to destroy the data by a specific date.

That panel does not handle public requests for data. Instead, Campbell’s office reviews them case by case.

Ohio’s policy is similar to those used by other states, said William Carpenter, a cancer epidemiologist with the University of North Carolina’s School of Public Health who works with and evaluates cancer data kept by states. He said officials are often too restrictive.

“If I request any identifier smaller than the state level, I have to specify why I need that,” Carpenter said. “Right now, it’s just so much trouble to get the data, it almost renders it not worth it.”

Emmett said he had hoped to use the cancer data he obtained to see whether there was an unusually high cancer rate among residents in the Little Hocking Water District. DuPont used C8 at a nearby plant to make Teflon.

The chemical had been detected in drinking water.

Emmett said he gave up his research in 2008 because many of the Washington County addresses provided by the state were too vague for him to determine whether they were in the water district.

Columbus Public Health officials said they had no trouble getting detailed Franklin County cancer data from the state to help in an investigation of the rare brain cancer diagnosed in the two East Side girls. They also had to agree to not reveal patient identities or share the data with the public.

Tying cancer cases to pollution or other environmental sources is difficult. State officials have never named a cause of any suspected cancer cluster.

Brown said he thinks that the state lacks the resources to conduct a thorough investigation in Clyde and that a public review of its data might help. He said he can’t believe that a map of cases by ZIP code would constitute an invasion of privacy.

“We’re talking about a cancer cluster, not tracking people down and bothering them,” Brown said.

shunt@dispatch.com
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CLYDE — Warren and Wendy Brown are in Washington, D.C., this week to make sure money is being appropriated for childhood cancer research.

“We’ve attempted to make contact with the Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations committee members,” Warren Brown said several days before he left.

The Browns’ daughter, Alexa, died in August at age 11. Brown had been fighting medulloblastoma — a common brain tumor in children that also can affect the spine. She was diagnosed in May 2006, when she was 8.

Alexa was one of 38 children in the Eastern Sandusky County cancer cluster investigation, which is being investigated. She was the third in the cluster to fall victim to the disease. Medulloblastoma also claimed the life of a 6-year-old boy, Kole Keller, in April 2007. Shila Donnersbach, 20, was the second death in the cluster in December 2007. She was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma at age 18.

Several days before the Browns left for D.C., they had three confirmed meetings with committee members, and the other 12 members either declined or hadn’t given a response.

“We’ll still be knocking on their doors and dropping off a letter from Sen. Sherrod Brown and a DVD on childhood cancer,” he said. “Hopefully someone will look at this and realize this is a population that has been affected. I’m hoping doors will open, and we’ll have to stay.”

Brown says the emphasis of this trip is to make sure money is being appropriated to children with cancer and their families through the Caroline Pryce Walker Conquer Childhood Cancer Act of 2008. According to the Web site curesearch.org, the act promises to significantly increase federal investment into childhood cancer research. The act is named in memory of Caroline Pryce Walker, who is the daughter of Congresswoman Deborah Pryce R-OH, who succumbed to neuroblastoma in 1999 at age 9. The bill authorizes $30 million annually over five years.

During their trip to D.C., the Brown’s will be delivering some letters that fifth- and sixth-graders from Green Springs Elementary wrote in support of research.

A 51-page progress report from the Ohio Department of Health, Sandusky County Health Department and Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, which was released Oct. 30, states, “However, it is possible that a cause may never be known for the higher-than-expected number of childhood cancer diagnoses in Eastern Sandusky County.”

State and local agencies will continue to work together, and additional information gathered in the investigation will be shared with the community as it becomes available.

Brown said representatives of the ODH and Ohio EPA met with the affected families to present the information in the report.

“I don’t expect concrete answers,” Brown said, noting he’s beyond frustration. “My biggest concern is money on the federal level (to be available for research).”

The report also gave a detailed history of Whirlpool Corp., Clyde Division and Vickery Environmental Inc., and the emissions they give off and the hazardous waste that has been generated. The report also detailed information on dumps and landfill areas around Clyde and Green Creek Township.

Dina Pierce, spokeswoman for the Ohio EPA, said the investigation now includes a portion of Ottawa and Erie Counties.

“We are continuing air monitoring until the end of the year, along with an analysis on water quality monitoring (from samples this past summer),” she said, noting hopefully by next spring the water monitoring will be finished.

“This is our top priority,” Pierce said, noting the bodies of water tested were the two Clyde reservoirs Raccoon and Beavercreek, along with Buck, South, Green, Pickerel and Strong creeks. But, if everything checks out at normal levels, there’s not much more the EPA can do, though they’ll still be involved.

Sandusky County Health Commissioner David Pollick said they’ve done radiation testing in area schools, which also included Fremont, and will be doing so in the homes of the children affected. However, in the schools, there were no significant findings, Pollick said.

Robert Jennings, spokesman of the Ohio Department of Health, said they also are continuing their research on reproductive outcomes, which includes low birth weights and mortality rates among other factors.read article online

Pollutants near Clyde not a factor, state says

By TOM HENRY
BLADE STAFF WRITER

State environmental and health officials acknowledged yesterday they are no closer to determining the cause of the childhood cancer cluster in the vicinity of Clyde, Ohio, and conceded in a new report it “is possible that a cause may never be known.”

The report, discussed privately Monday with families of area cancer victims who have been part of the ongoing study, listed trace amounts of pollutants that have been detected and provided an inventory of what has been gleaned from file reviews of major industries, such as the Whirlpool Corp. and Vickery Environmental Inc.

But it showed nothing out of kilter. Pollutants in water wells, public water supplies, air, and soil were found at levels within U.S. Environmental Protection Agency safety guidelines.

In fact, the Clyde area’s numbers for air pollutants so far in 2009 are below those in more industrialized areas such as Cleveland, East Toledo, and Cincinnati, said Dina Pierce, a spokesman for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. “Most of our work is now concluded,” she said.

The report can be accessed at www.epa.ohio.gov/pic/clyde.aspx. A copy is available at the Clyde Public Library.

The Ohio EPA will continue taking air samples through the end of the year and will produce a report based on water sampling from area streams this year, she said.

The Ohio Department of Health, with assistance from the Sandusky County Health Department, has scoured health records, radiation sources, industry practices, spills, and other potential sources.

The two health agencies likewise have hit a roadblock.

“We may never find a smoking gun,” said Robert Jennings, the state health department’s public affairs director.

He said it is continuing with research into the area’s birth weights, infant mortality, and other reproductive outcomes.

Officials have ruled out many possible causes, which they said has some value.

But they remain baffled.

“They’re running out of places to look,” said Dave Hisey, whose son Tanner, 11, is among the area children being treated for cancer. The boy got his latest chemotherapy treatment injected through his spine yesterday at Mercy St. Vincent Medical Center in Toledo.

“I’m hopeful, but I’m pretty frustrated. It tends to get to you,” said Mr. Hisey, manager of a Clyde grocery store.

Warren Brown, Sandusky County clerk of courts, said he and his wife, Wendy, will meet with U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) and U.S. Rep. Bob Latta (R., Bowling Green) in Washington next week.

The couple, who live in Clyde, will make presentations to key officials and aides involved with appropriations committees. The Browns want to get the federal government to release more money for childhood cancer research.

The couple lost their 11-year-old daughter, Alexa, to cancer in August.
“We have a whole bunch of [new] data. But they’re no closer to determining the cause,” Mr. Brown said of the new report.

He said he believes the agencies have done their best but “have an extremely difficult uphill battle.”

“Unfortunately, I just don’t feel there will ever be a smoking gun in this case,” Mr. Brown said.

Contact Tom Henry at:
thenry@theblade.com
or 419-724-6079.

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By JACOB LAMMERS | Saturday January 19 2008

By Ryan Justin Fox

Dayton Daily News (OH)

November 16, 2007

DAYTON – Environmental officials broke the news to close to a hundred

residents at Kiser Middle School Thursday that Chrysler Corporation

agreed to clean up only a portion of residences with contaminated

groundwater seeping up in their homes.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said that it will use available

taxpayer funds to cover the other 200 potentially-contaminated homes in

the eastern portion of the McCook Field neighborhood.

EPA officials found dangerously-high levels of trichloroethylene (TCE)

in homes and schools in the immediate vicinity of Behr Dayton Thermal

Products plant at 1600 Webster Street last year.

Environmental officials said that the chemical – which used to be used

as a degreaser and a cleaner – seeped into soil and groundwater after a

spill and is now vaporizing into harmful air in residences.

…

For the entire article, see

http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2007/11/16/ddn111607epaweb.html