CBS Minnesota, WCCO-TV

MINNEAPOLIS , Minn. – Residents of a St. Paul neighborhood with higher than average cancer cases are wondering if it could be linked to nearby hazardous waste sites.

 

When Denise Gulner of St. Paul looks down her block, she knows of her neighbors’ struggles.

“We’ve got a house here that’s prostate cancer,” she said. “This one was cervical, this one was kidney.”

And the nearby grassy hill covers a story buried beneath.

From 1973 to 1984, a no-longer-existing company called Ecolotech operated out of the building and inside, the business reclaimed recycled waste from circuit boards of old computers.

But it was something outside of the building that had caught neighbor Kathy Zieman’s attention.

“I noticed some green ooze,” she said. “It might have been oil or something else coming out of the building.”

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) got involved and found dozens of corroded and mislabeled barrels. Of the 30,000 gallons, many held hazardous material called metal-plating waste.

Steve Schoff, who works for the MPCA as the Superfund Program Project Manager, said the business was illegally storing and processing this waste.

At the time, the MPCA considered it one of the state’s worst hazardous waste sites. Ecolotech then got the Superfund title in 1984, meaning government dollars would be used to clean up the toxic materials.
Gulner remembers the process taking two years to complete.

“There were all these big dump trucks and then the guys came with the hazmat suits,” Gulner said.

Soon after that, she saw many of her neighbors get sick. In the eight homes on the block, 17 cancer cases have been recorded since the Superfund site has shut down – at least one in every home and some diagnosed in their 30?s and 40?s.

Gulner is one of them. She was diagnosed with breast cancer at 33.

“It’s just too many people to be just a coincidence,” she said.

John Soler has spent years studying different cancer clusters with the Minnesota Department of Health’s Cancer Surveillance System.

He disagrees with Gulner and said there probably isn’t a connection. Soler understands hazardous waste sites will capture the public’s attention, but stressed that conditions such as race, diet and reproductive habits are looked at first.

“The man-made environmental pollutants are probably a lot more important in society’s mind than they actually are in reality,” Soler said.

He says another important factor to consider is the type of cancer in each home. In the case of this St. Paul neighborhood, there are 10 types. Breast cancer, bone cancer and brain cancer are the most common.

“When you have different cancers, it usually means different causes,” Soler said.

Soler points out that this part of St. Paul would have been on city water at the time, so beyond perhaps kids playing in the puddles of liquid or it mixing with rainwater in the street, the risk of exposure would have been low.

The neighborhood does have cancer numbers that are 8.8 percent higher than the state average.

“We know that 50 percent of Minnesotans will be diagnosed at some point in their lives with cancer, and that’s not randomly distributed,” Soler said. “So, you will see on one block what seems to a lot of cancers, and on the next block over you will see what seem to be no cancers, or very few cancers. And we see that all over the state.”

The state delisted Ecolotech as a Superfund site in 1988, and said it’s no longer considered a danger.

Currently, Minnesota has about 75 active Superfund sites. The list is always being updated as sites are added, while more than 170 places are no longer considered a health risk.

Checking out what’s in your neighborhood is easy. The MPCA has an online database to search for Superfund sites. View it by clicking here and scrolling down to the Superfund site in the Activity Type drop down menu.

CBS Minnesota, WCCO-TV

Also: Fridley Cancer Cluster Facebook page

By KATIE MOISSE (@katiemoisse) and LINSEY DAVIS
ABC News

Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has launched her own investigation into the mysterious illness causing facial tics and verbal outbursts among 15 teenagers in Le Roy, N.Y.

Most of the teens have been diagnosed with conversion disorder — a psychological condition that causes physical symptoms like jerky tics, convulsions and even paralysis. But Brockovich suspects groundwater contamination from a chemical spill from more than 40 years ago may be behind the Tourette-like symptoms.

“They have not ruled everything out yet,” Brockovich told USA Today. “The community asked us to help, and this is what we do.”

Don Miller, whose 16-year-old daughter, Katie, still suffers from debilitating tics, said his sister contacted Brockovich for help.

“We’re just trying to eliminate everything, and she wants to eliminate that it’s the environment,” said Miller. “It’s a possibility and she wants to either prove it is or it isn’t something in the environment.”

Brockovich, who famously linked a cluster of cancer cases in California to contaminated drinking water prompting an Oscar-winning movie starring Julia Roberts, said a derailed train spilled cyanide and trichloroethene within about three miles of Le Roy High School in 1970. All 15 of the affected teenagers — 14 girls and one boy — attended the school when they started showing symptoms last fall.

“When I read reports like this that the New York Department of Health and state agencies were well-aware of the spill and you don’t do water testing or vapor extraction tests, you don’t have an all-clear,” Brockovich told USA Today.

An investigation by the New York Department of Health found “no evidence of environmental or infection as the cause of the girls’ illness,” according to department spokesman Jeffrey Hammond. “The school is served by a public water system. … An environmental exposure would affect many people.”

Doctors also ruled out Pandas — a neurological disorder linked to streptococcal infections — and the Guardasil HPV vaccine, which many of the girls did not receive, Hammond said.

The school was tested for volatile organic compounds by an independent company. But “people are free to pursue additional environmental testing,” Hammond said.

Twelve of the teens — all of them girls — have been diagnosed with conversion disorder in which the emotional response to a stressful situation can manifest itself as physical symptoms. Three new suspected cases are still being examined. Women are more likely to get conversion disorder than men, and teens are at a higher risk than adults. But some parents want a second opinion.

“We don’t really agree with it,” Miller said of the diagnosis. “Down the road, who knows. But for them to give that diagnosis, they have to rule everything else out. And they haven’t done that.”

The National Institutes of Health has offered to help solve the puzzle. Dr. Mark Hallett, chief of the NIH Medical Neurology Branch, said the cluster of cases offers a unique research opportunity.

“We have offered our help but have not been asked for yet,” said Hallett, adding that he has not yet seen any of the teens. “One of the difficulties in this is that there hasn’t been a lot of attention to this problem or very much research into it, which has made it somewhat of a mysterious disorder.”

read full article, watch videos

By Associated Press,

LEROY, N.Y. — A dozen western New York high school girls have developed involuntary tics and other symptoms, and a doctor said Friday that at least 10 of them are suffering from a psychological condition usually brought on by stress or a frightening condition.

Parents became concerned there might have been environmental contamination or an infection at LeRoy High School when the girls all started showing symptoms like unexplained pain and involuntary muscle motion last fall.

But air quality and other tests conducted by local health officials ruled out mold, chemicals and other sources of the girls’ problems.

That helped Dr. Laszlo Mechtler and another neurologist treating 10 of the girls conclude that the cause is conversion disorder, a condition that causes real symptoms but has no physical cause.

It’s diagnosed, he said, when physical examinations, lab tests and scans, including the brain, reveal no organic problem behind symptoms that include vocal and physical tics, seizures, passing out, headaches and anxiety.

Mechtler likened it to the dizziness, vomiting and aches of an actor with stage fright.

“The physical symptoms they’re having are real. The patient isn’t faking it,” he said.

read full article Washington Post, 1/20/2012

Veronica Villafañe | Managing Editor
Intersections South LA

Councilwoman Jan Perry today joined local residents and members of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) in a press conference to celebrate the imminent closure of Palace Plating, the chrome plating facility that City officials found responsible for releasing toxic chemicals into the environment surrounding 28th Street Elementary School.

“It’s an industrial use facility that was grandfathered in, that never should’ve been grandfathered in an area where people are actually living or going to school,” says Perry. “We had a cancer cluster here. They were putting people’s health at risk.”

Martha Sánchez, middle, with her children, Gonzalo and Catherine Romero.

That’s what Martha Sánchez set out to prove eight years ago, when her children, who were attending 28th Street Elementary School, right across the street from the plant, started getting sick. Parents complained to health officials, city inspectors and their elected officials. Finally, they took their case to court.

It was a lengthy and difficult battle, but now parents, teachers and students are relieved that a judge ordered Palace Plating, which has been in the area for over 40 years, to permanently shut down by December 31.

“We have to change the way companies like this one operate,” declares Martha. “About ten teachers have died from cancer in the past few years.” Among them she points out Adrian Guillén, who died from pancreatic and Leticia Herrera, from lung cancer.

“We should change the cancer awareness pink ribbon to green – so people start using green technology and not allow for companies to use cancer causing toxic chemicals.”

Two of Martha’s children, Gonzalo, 17 and Catherine, 12, were among the 28th Street Elementary students who suffered from the air and ground contamination.

“I would get sick really easily. My nose was bleeding every night and I would vomit almost every day,” remembers Catherine.

Her brother Gonzalo, who says he also experienced a series of health problems, beams with pride about his mom’s accomplishment. “She’s awesome. She’s my role model. She’s an example that if you fight for a cause, anything’s possible.”

Sánchez is relieved the plant’s closing, but she’s still concerned for her children’s health. “They’re healthy now, but I’m worried about their health in the future. After all, they were exposed to the chemicals.”

Among the hazardous chemicals being released by the plant: chromium, which was found in the City’s sanitary sewer system, tetrachloroethylene, a cleaning solvent that was impacting the air quality in and around the 28th Street Elementary School, and cadmium and chromic acid.

In a settlement with the City of L.A. earlier this month, Palace Plating agreed to remediate all contamination, cease its business operations by December 31, 2011, remove all on-site hazardous waste and pay $750,000 to LAUSD in restitution for costs associated with contamination at the 28th Street Elementary School.

Read full article and see photos.

Al Huang’s Blog, NRDC

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

– Frederick Douglass (1855)

After a nine-year struggle, today Sheila Holt-Orsted and her family can finally put to rest their long battle for environmental justice in Dickson, Tennessee as their environmental and civil rights lawsuits against the City and County of Dickson were settled (more information about the settlement here).*

In 2007, Dr. Robert Bullard – widely regarded as the father of environmental justice movement – called the Holts’ struggle the “poster child” of environmental racism and toxic dumping in his landmark report Toxic Waste and Race at 20. The report pointed out that although Dickson County covers more than 490 square miles – an equivalent of 313,600 acres – the only cluster of solid waste facilities in the county is located directly adjacent to a small mostly black community on Eno Road – a quiet enclave of black families, many of whose forebears were freed slaves. The report notes that blacks make up less than five percent of the county’s population and occupy less than one percent of the county’s land mass. Statistics only tell half of this story of environmental injustice.

In 2002, Sheila’s father, Harry Holt, discovered he had prostate cancer. Soon after, Sheila was diagnosed with breast cancer and her mother, Beatrice Holt, was diagnosed with cervical polyps. In 2007, Harry passed away. After Sheila found out that she had cancer, she learned that most of her friends and neighbors on Eno Road had at least one family member who was suffering from some form of cancer. Sheila also learned that the well her family had used for drinking water for decades had become contaminated by trichloroethylene (TCE), an industrial solvent, at levels that exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) safety standards. The TCE came from a county landfill 500 feet from the Holts’ property that has also contaminated other area wells and springs once used for drinking water.

For at least three decades beginning in the 1960s, manufacturing companies near Nashville, Tennessee (40 miles east of Dickson), dumped industrial wastes containing TCE at the unlined landfill adjacent to the Holt family property. TCE is a known carcinogen and reproductive and neurological toxin. Yet, some two decades after TCE contamination was first detected, neither the companies that caused the pollution, nor the landfill’s owners and operators, nor state and federal regulators, had taken any steps to remove the TCE from the environment. Dickson County’s ground and surface waters had, in effect, been surrendered to the steady spread of an invisible and toxic chemical.

No one connected the dots for Sheila, she did it on her own. Working with Dr. Bullard, Sheila mounted a David vs. Goliath campaign demanding answers to what had happened in her community and who was responsible for it. The answers did not come easy. A former star athlete, bodybuilder, and fitness trainer, Sheila relentlessly and tenaciously searched for the truth. Her journey led her to local county commission meetings, the offices of state and federal environmental agencies, the halls Congress, and anywhere else there was someone willing to listen.

Read full blog post here

Written by Sheri Trusty,
Staff Correspondent,
The News-Messenger

CLYDE, Ohio — The Clyde Public Library hosted a viewing of the film “Fighting for Answers” on Monday night. The film detailed the struggles of three Clyde families who have fought unsuccessfully to find the causes of their children’s cancer.

The film’s director, Adan Garcia, a Fremont native now living in New Mexico, was on hand to answer questions and talk about the creation of the film. Garcia, who has worked in the television industry for more than 15 years, said he was inspired to make the film after his sister Linda Garcia died of gastric cancer in 2007 at the age of 40.

“I had been reading about this in the paper, and it caught my attention,” Garcia said. “My sister had cancer and passed away. I felt like this was something I had to do.”

The film’s title expresses well the plight of local families affected by childhood cancer. A sharp rise in invasive cancer cases was first noted in 1996, yet authorities are no closer to an answer today than they were at that time.

The film begins with the story of Kole Keller, who began to get seemingly common childhood illness symptoms at age 4. When his fevers and sinus infections wouldn’t subside, doctors looked deeper to their cause and found a tumor on the top of his brain stem.

Kole died at age 6.

Watching their child struggle through the pain of cancer and death was agonizing for his parents, Steve and Janni Keller.

“It was tough watching the whole death process,” Steve Keller said. “He took his last breath at 10:30 at night. He smiled and shed a large tear, which we felt was from joy, and went home to be with the Lord.”

The Dave and Donna Hisey family have been deeply affected by cancer; two of their children have been diagnosed with leukemia. Tyler Hisey was diagnosed in 2006, and her brother Tanner Hisey was diagnosed in 2008.

After watching the pain Tyler endured through two years of cancer treatments, Dave said it was unbearable having to tell his son that he had cancer, too.

“After seeing what my daughter went through, I had to go into the bedroom and tell my son, ‘You have cancer, too,’” Dave said.

“Now I walk in their bedrooms at night and think, ‘How many more times am I going to be able to do this?’” he said.

Garcia also interviewed the family of Alexa Brown for the film.

Brown was 8 years old when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2006. Less than 12 hours after her diagnosis, Brown underwent brain surgery to remove the tumor. The surgery left her unable to walk or talk, and relearning those skills was a difficult battle.

Brown died in 2009, the same year “Fighting for Answers” was made.

Alexa’s parents Warren and Wendy Brown attended Monday’s viewing of the film. They have felt much frustration in their search for causes to the Clyde cancer cluster.

The film details possible causes of the cluster, such as manufacturing businesses, dump sites and waste management locales. But Wendy Brown believes authorities aren’t doing enough, and maybe they aren’t doing anything worthwhile at all.

“From the beginning, Robert Indian of the Ohio Department of Health said we don’t ever find the cause, but we’ll do everything we can,” Wendy said.

Wendy doesn’t believe it.

“My feeling is that the way they test is done to not find results,” she said. “They tested for two years before they even looked at environmental factors, and we had to bring that up. If something was going on, they missed it.”

read the full article online

Little Silver girl with Ewing’s Sarcoma inspires awareness campaign to research better treatments for childhood cancer.

By Greg Kulaga
The Long Branch Patch

Long Branch, NJ–When doctors told 9-year-old Little Silver resident Lilly Daneman she wouldn’t be able to swim again after being diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a pediatric bone cancer, she was determined to prove them wrong.

Back in the pool after two years of treatment and swimming with a metal rod in her leg, Lilly’s latest mission is to spread the word that kids need better cancer treatments. Having gotten over 1,000 children from beach clubs up and down the northern Monmouth County coast to sport gold caps at their home meets this summer, early signs are she’s going to succeed at that too.

“Swimmers Go Gold to Cure Kids Cancer” has raised over $12,000 for the Make Some Noise: Cure Kids Cancer Foundation by selling the caps (which are gold to symbolize childhood cancer) for $10 to swimmers participating in the North Shore Summer Swim League and beach clubs from Sea Bright to Long Branch.

Lilly’s mom, Gerri Daneman, and Paul Buerck, who coached Lilly when she was on the Monmouth Barracudas year-round swim team, said the idea came together quickly in early June. Their goal is to fund research that develops better children’s cancer treatments, as current protocols are nearly 30 years old.

“The main thing that we’re trying to get across to people is that we need pediatric research funds because the only money we get is through the private sector,” said Gerri Daneman.

“Drug companies do no research for children’s cancers because they can’t make money on it. There’s not 100,000 kids that were diagnosed with cancer, there’s 14,500, but that comes down to two classrooms of kids a day.”

The cause is personal to Buerck, as multiple people in his life have been affected by cancer. His college roommate is the oldest living survivor of Ewing’s Sarcoma. Two students at the school he teaches at in Ocean have gotten Leukemia. In addition to Lilly, another little Barracuda, Rachel Kovach, also came down with Ewing’s Sarcoma.

“Personally I got sick to my stomach because you think ‘no that can’t be happening’,” said Buerck of when Rachel received her diagnosis in January 2011, not long after Lilly’s May 2009 diagnosis.

“It’s kind of all around me so that’s why I need to be involved and I need to find a cure. There’s no reason that there can’t be one,” said Buerck.

Daneman said she floated the idea for gold swim caps and the next thing she knew, Buerck had sent out an e-mail to the whole North Shore Summer Swim League, getting every swim team to agree to host a “Swimmers Go Gold” meet.

“Personally for me, I’m a father, I’m a coach, I deal with the kids all the time and I don’t want to see any child or a family or parents have to go through that, so if we can get out and find a cure, it’d make it better for everybody,” said Buerck.

Lilly enjoyed dancing and swimming before experiencing a pain in her leg discovered to be a cancerous tumor in her femur. She spent over 100 days in the hospital, receiving 14 rounds of chemotherapy under the care of Dr. Aaron Weiss at Robert Wood Johnson in New Brunswick. Dr. John Dormans at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) performed the limb salvage surgery that replaced her femur with a titanium rod. After extensive physical therapy, Lilly is able to walk and swim again, the only sign of her surgery being a deep scar running the length of her upper leg.

While at CHOP, Lilly met an 11-year-old named Malcolm Sutherland-Foggio, of Morris County, who also had Ewing’s Sarcoma. Lilly and Malcolm’s moms had found each other online and introduced their children to each other in a hallway in recumbent wheelchairs. Lilly had just come out of surgery, and Malcolm was still in chemotherapy.

Disturbed by a child that had died of cancer in the middle of the night, Malcolm would give his mother Julie (herself a competitive swimmer) the inspiration to form the nonprofit Make Some Noise, which Lilly and Gerri soon joined as well.

“He said ‘Mom we need to make some noise about it’ and she was like ‘wow, what a great name, make some noise’,” explained Gerri Daneman.

Survival rate for Ewing’s Sarcoma is about 70 percent for non-metastatic (cancer that has not spread from one organ to another), about 15 percent for metastatic (cancer that has spread) and about 5 percent after relapse (return of cancer). Secondary cancers are sometimes caused by the chemotherapy, which involves the administration of toxic drugs that enter the body to kill the cancer, Gerri said.

“Relapse is very severe in her type of cancer. A lot of kids are diagnosed so late because their cells are fast-growing in children so you catch cancers very late in kids. That’s why they’re hard to cure. They take the adult cancer cures and they super give them to children, they give them more toxic doses because their cells multiply so fast that they want to be able to kill the cancer. It might kill the cancer, but years down the road these kids might suffer lifelong side effects.”

Lilly’s schoolmate Jack McLoone, also of Little Silver, has childhood Leukemia, and during his treatment he suffered severe neuropathy in his legs. He wears braces on his feet and it is going to take two or three years for the nerves to come back. He has a severe limp and suffers pretty badly, Daneman says, even though he’s cured.

McLoone, like Lilly, is undeterred by the setbacks, however, and is playing baseball. Rachel has persevered as well, recently getting back into the pool to race against Lilly, Buerck, and some of Buerck’s coaches at Seashore Day Camp in Long Branch.

“The kids are strong willed,” said Buerck. “Rachel was told she wouldn’t swim and she said ‘yes I will’ and she did. The kids that have this are an inspiration and I think there wasn’t a dry eye on the pool deck when Lilly and Rachel raced, because you see a child who, they’re not going to quit, they’re not going to give up. These are very strong kids and we can learn a lot from them.”

In remission, Lilly has returned to swimming after major rehabilitation, and is competing to a limited degree on the summer Water’s Edge Beach Club swim team.

“A lot of the kids here know Lilly. They’ve watched her come in on crutches, they watched her with no hair. She’s been in remission for 22 months,” said Daneman.

Lilly, Rachel and Buerck have provided inspiration and support for Nicole Foster, another area girl from Chapel Swim Club who was recently diagnosed with Leukemia in July. Buerck and Daneman hope through Make Some Noise, they’ll be able to fund research into the prevalance of childhood cancer, which appears to be cropping up in Monmouth County in ever greater numbers.

“Unfortunately I do believe there’s a cluster around here. There’s so many kids that are coming down with it that we need to look at it in this area,” said Buerck.

Daneman said other nearby cases exist as well, but the children are getting treated at different hospitals, making it harder to identify the cluster.

“A true cluster would mean that it’s repetitive, that it keeps happening for years. Four from Monmouth County were diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma and being treated at CHOP. You’re talking about 600 different kids who are being treated for some kind of Sarcoma every year, but we had four in treatment at the same hospital from this area. That’s a lot.”

Childhood cancers are the leading cause of death by disease in children 14 and under, according the the American Cancer Association. An estimated 9,100 children will be diagnosed this year. Though a cure may be years away, it should be noted that in 1950, a diagnosis of cancer was a virtual death sentence. Today, with advances in research, eight out of 10 children can now be successfully treated.

Buerck believes “Swimmers Go Gold” could be a critical part of funding new child-specific cancer research, and has a goal of taking the campaign national.

“I’d love to get 5,000 clubs, high schools, colleges, and clubs all around the United States all wearing the caps,” said Buerck. “We’re trying to get the kids to take responsibility for it. They’ll take the information to their athletic director and sit down with their National Honor Society and their clubs in their high school and say that this is something they want to do.”

Buerck says he sees great opportunity with 2012 being an Olympic year and swimming getting more attention.

“I plan on traveling a bit nationally to go to some of the bigger clubs to get some of the more elite athletes to wear the caps and recognize it, and see it we can get it all the way to the top,” said Buerck.

The broader plans may seem ambitious, but Buerck says getting involved is uncomplicated.

“It’s something that’s real simple, it doesn’t require anything more than sitting at a table and selling the caps.”

If your team is interested in getting involved with the “Swimmers Go Gold” campaign, you can e-mail Gerri Daneman at gerri@makenoise4kids.org. For more information on the foundation, visit their website at makenoise4kids.org.

article online

By AMY BIOLCHINI
Times Herald

(Port Huron, Mich.)–The St. Clair County Board of Commissioners approved 7-0 a $5,000 addition to the health department’s budget Wednesday evening to accommodate the continuing Wilms tumor cancer cluster investigation.

The $5,000 will be used mainly as a stipend for four graduate student interns to individually review each of the eight cases involved in the possible cancer cluster to look for connections, said Dr. Annette Mercatante, medical director for the health department.

The interns each are working on master’s degrees in public health at Michigan State University.

“It’s not a research project; it’s not an investigation,” she said. “It’s a matter of sitting down and making the histories complete.”

The cases of Wilms tumor — a rare childhood kidney cancer doctors have said typically is genetic — were all diagnosed since 2007 and are in the Marine City-China Township area, the Port Huron area and on the border of St. Clair and Macomb counties in Richmond.

The case review process could involve blood and tissue testing, as well as a detailed questionnaire the interns will develop.

Kristina Tranchemontagne’s daughter, Ashleigh, 6, is a Wilms tumor survivor. Tranchemontagne of Cottrellville Township said Mercatante has been keeping the families involved up-to-date on all of the health department’s efforts.

“It’s one step closer,” she said of the addition to the department’s budget. “With the students being involved, that’s terrific.”

Any extra funds left from the addition to the department’s budget will be used for office fees associated with reviewing the cases, Mercatante said.

Contact Amy Biolchini at (810) 989-6259 or abiolchini@gannett.com.

online article

CLYDE, OH (WOIO) – Six children have died in Sandusky County and more are sick.

Now, for the first time in the Clyde Cancer Cluster, 19 Action News has helped put federal officials and parents in the same room.

19 Action News Investigator Scott Taylor confronted the Federal EPA Administrator to get the attention of Uncle Sam. Now, officials are not only listening, they are keeping their promise to meet with parents of these sick children.

The Center for Disease Control is the lead federal agency consulting with the state of Ohio on the Clyde Cancer Cluster which has killed half a dozen children including Alexa Brown, age 11.

The CDC may be the lead agency, but they have never set foot in Sandusky County nor has the Federal EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who told 19 Action News she had no idea of what was happening in Clyde, Ohio back in June.

Pretty odd considering that U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown sent a letter to Jackson in February spelling it all out and asking for help.

Lisa Jackson promised she would meet with parents, and finally she will.

After some nagging from 19 Action News Investigator Scott Taylor, Jackson promised she would meet with parents.

Senator Brown was a bit stunned at what he learned from 19 Action News and Jackson’s investigations about Clyde, OH. “That’s a big agency and she has a lot of issues but she should be briefed when she comes to Cleveland. Clyde is not really the area but close enough about this. I am going to double back with her and make sure she is focused on this” says Senator Brown.

Thursday the Federal EPA will be in Sandusky County to meet with parents. Lisa Jackson is the very first federal department head to really listen to the cries of help from Sandusky County after a little nudging from 19 Action News.

How can you help? Click HERE to sign a federal petition asking for help. Make sure to forward the link on to your friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Copyright 2011 WOIO. All rights reserved.

online article and video

BY MIA LIGHT
The Standard Speaker

(Hazelton, Penn.)–Investigators from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health will be in Schuylkill and Luzerne counties today and Thursday to take a closer look at the rare blood disorder that has affected local residents.

The scientists are eager to meet with every person who has been diagnosed with polycythemia vera or any of the related blood disorders, or anyone who thinks they may have one of the diseases. Every person who meets with the researchers will receive a $50 gift card for their time.

The investigators are willing to take appointments to meet with potential participants at any convenient time or location.

In addition, the researchers have scheduled the following times and locations where residents are encouraged to drop in, no appointment required:

* Today from 2 to 5 p.m. at Hazleton General Hospital.

* Thursday from 9 a.m. to noon at the Pennsylvania Department of Health Center in Wilkes-Barre.

* Thursday from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Pennsylvania Department of Health Center in Pottsville.

* Friday from 9 a.m. to noon at Hazleton General Hospital.

Following Thursday’s session in Pottsville, the medical research team will participate in a Community Action Committee meeting in Tamaqua at 6 p.m. This meeting is open to the public and all interested people are encouraged to attend.

The investigators will gather data to take a closer look at the statistically significant number of rare cancer diagnoses in the area of Schuylkill, Luzerne, and Carbon counties to determine whether there is a continuing cluster of a rare blood disorder that leads to blood clots, heart attacks and strokes and has no known cause.

The team will also deliver information about polycythemia vera and the related blood disorders known as myeloproliferative neoplasms.

PV is a rare illness that causes the body to make too many red blood cells, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Its cause is not known, but the ATSDR reports studies published more than 25 years ago indicated exposure to chemicals such as benzene, embalming fluid, petroleum products or radiation could cause PV. MPNs include essential thrombocythemia, primary myelofibrosis and chronic myeloid leukemia.

This investigation, funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Health and ATSDR, will run through the fall of 2012 and is a follow up to a 2008 study. It’s designed to get a better idea of the true rate of PV and MPNs in the area. Investigators plan to return to the area in September.

“Everybody needs to participate because we need to know why there is so much PV and leukemia,” said John Kolbush, a member of the resident-led organization, the Community Action Committee.

For more information or to visit with the investigators, contact Jeanine Buchanich, Ph. D., or Kristen Mertz, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Pittsburgh at 1-866-621-1172.

For more information on PV and the earlier study of the tri-county area, visit: www.atsdr.cdc .gov/sites/polycythemia_vera/index.html.

mlight@standardspeaker.com

Read more: The Standard Speaker

by Toni Yates
Eyewitness News, WABC-TV New Jersey

POMPTON LAKES (WABC) — Coincidence or cancer cluster?

That’s the question facing some folks in New Jersey, where women in one town had 38% more hospitalizations for cancerous tumors than women anywhereelse in the state – or in six surrounding towns.

“On my block 7 women have died of cancer. Three people have brain tumors,” Lisa Rissiola, Citizens for a Clean Pompton Lakes, said.

Related Content
MORE: Contact the WABC-TV New Jersey Bureau
Deaths and life-threatening illnesses that the state health department is looking deeper and deeper into in Pompton Lakes, weighing whether or not ground contamination from the old DuPont munitions site is still costing health and taking lives here at alarming rates.
“You don’t know when you’re gonna be the next,” Ruth Paez said.

Lisa and Ruth are longtime activists, trying to get Pompton Lakes designated a superfund site.

Clean-ups in some form and level have been on and off for decades in Pompton Lakes, but the latest health department report is troubling to these activists.

From 2006 to 2010, 169 local women were treated for cancerous tumors. That’s 47 cases above what would be seen as normal. In men, 118 cases, where 95 would be normal. And in women who’d just given birth, 11 were treated for birth defect related complications, when slightly less than 3 would have been expected.

Those figures higher than any surrounding towns, that saw no higher than usual cases.

“My mom lives here too. My father died of an extremely rare form of leukemia and kidney failure,” Paez said. “(My husband’s) mother died of cancer, his father died of cancer, we live day by day thinking what, are we gonna die, get cancer?”

Signs are posted, warning you not to eat fish from the contaminated lake. Pipes ventilate the ground.

article and video

Concern about possible cancer clusters prompted project

by Susan Singer-Bart, Staff Writer
The Gazette

Poolesville, Md.-Poolesville is planning to install a radon and uranium removal system on three of its 11 wells.

It is the first community water system in the state to make the installation, said Jay Apperson, spokesman for the Maryland Department of the Environment.

Wells 7 and 10 were taken out of service as a precaution in 2007 after uranium levels were found to be in danger of exceeding the maximum allowable contaminant level.

Since that time, well 7 has exceeded the level, but well 10 has not.

The Environmental Protection Agency sets the maximum allowable contaminant level for uranium at 30 micrograms per liter. It has not established a maximum level for radon.

Poolesville’s 2010-2011 water report found the level for well 7 to be 33.5 micrograms per liter. The level at wells 9 and 10 is 12.05 micrograms per liter, but the radon and uranium removal system is being used to avoid cross-contamination on those sites.

Water seeping from a contaminated well could affect water in another.

“It’s our responsibility to supply the best water we can,” said Paul “Eddie” Kuhlman II, president of the Poolesville Town Commission.

The project started out of concern there might be a cluster of cancer cases in Poolesville, a town of 5,300. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded in 2009 that was not the case, but the concern was the catalyst for the project, Kuhlman said.

Concentration of radon in drinking water minimally increases the lifetime risk of cancer, said Olga Naidenko, a scientist with the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C., with a mission to protect public health and the environment.

“The only safe level is zero,” she said.

“Under no circumstances should water from well 7 be consumed by people,” she added.

Some level of radon and uranium is present in the environment, she said.

Poolesville’s water supply comes from groundwater pumped at 11 wells around the town.

Often when a utility has several wells and one has chemical contamination levels above EPA standards, the water from several wells is blended to dilute it and meet the standards, she said.

She said she is happy to hear Poolesville has not done that.

Poolesville plans to install an ion-selection filtration system, Apperson said. The department is charged with implementing the federal Safe Water Drinking Act in the state.

The town has been planning the project for almost five years, said Town Manager Wade Yost, and has set aside $750,000 for it. The town applied to the Department of the Environment for a construction permit in 2009 and received it in June, Yost said.

The removal system will be housed in a building alongside the well house on Budd Road.

Poolesville is accepting bids for the project and hopes work will begin in October. Work should be completed next spring, Yost said.

ssingerbart@gazette.net

Radon linked to lung cancer, other development issues

The following information is provided by the EPA:

-Radon is a colorless, odorless, tasteless and radioactive gas.

-It is formed by the normal radioactive decay of uranium and radium. Underground rock containing natural uranium continuously releases radon gas into groundwater.

-Exposure to radon in the home is more commonly due to radon from rock or soil seeping into homes through foundation cracks than through water. Radon can reach harmful levels if trapped indoors.

-A 1998 report by the National Academy of Sciences confirmed that radon in drinking water is related to cancer deaths, primarily lung cancer.

-Most of the risk from radon in drinking water comes from the transfer of radon into the air and inhaling it or ingesting water containing radon.

-In addition to being present in drinking water, radon in well water becomes airborne through washing dishes and laundry, showering and flushing toilets.

-Drinking water contains dissolved radon and the radiation emitted by radon and its radiation decay products exposes sensitive cells in the stomach and other organs.

-About 21,000 lung cancer deaths in the U.S. each year are radon-related. Exposure to radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking. The number of lung cancer deaths is 160,000 per year. A National Academy of Sciences report found 184 deaths per year attributable to radon in drinking water.

-Drinking water accounts for 20 of the 13,000 deaths per year from stomach cancer.

-The EPA set a maximum contaminant level for uranium at 30 micrograms per liter of water. No data show a threshold below which exposure to radon is harmless.

According to the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit environmental watchdog based in Washington, D.C., human exposure to radon has been linked to severe respiratory disease, harmful kidney effects, sexual maturation effects, mutations and increases in lung cancer deaths.

BY RENEE DUDLEY
rdudley@postandcourier.com
The Post and Courier

CROSS, S.C.–Raymond Johnson checked himself into the emergency room last month for a throbbing pain in his chest.

The 26-year-old was stunned when the doctors delivered his diagnosis — breast cancer.

Uninsured and unable to pay for costly surgery and chemotherapy, the Cross resident followed the advice of his patient advocate and applied for a Medicaid program that covers breast cancer treatment.

Raymond Johnson of Cross found a lump in his left breast and was diagnosed with breast cancer in July. Uninsured, Johnson, 26, must rely on the generosity of hospitals and doctors for treatment.

A few days later, Johnson got another surprise. He was denied for the program because he is a man.

The Breast and Cervical Cancer Prevention and Treatment Act, a federal law enacted in 2000, uses Medicaid funds to cover treatment for breast cancer or cervical cancer patients who otherwise wouldn’t qualify for the state and federally funded health insurance program for the poor and disabled.

Patients must meet a host of eligibility requirements. According to the South Carolina Medicaid agency, Johnson met all except one: Men aren’t allowed.

“Cancer doesn’t discriminate, so this program shouldn’t discriminate,” Johnson said.

The state Medicaid agency agrees.

On Friday, the department called the federal policy “discriminatory,” and for at least the second time in two years is calling on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to change it.

“We are again urging CMS to reconsider,” the S.C. Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement. “It’s a very clear example of how overly rigid federal regulations don’t serve the interests of the people we’re supposed to be helping.”

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services did not return calls seeking comment.

The federal department’s guidelines for the breast and cervical treatment program say women must be diagnosed through “early detection” programs funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, another federal agency.

In South Carolina, such screening is offered to uninsured women between the ages of 47 and 64 who meet certain income guidelines.

Specifics of the law

The Breast and Cervical Cancer Prevention and Treatment Act of 2000 allows states to provide full Medicaid benefits to uninsured women under age 65 who need treatment for breast or cervical cancer.

Eligibility criteria for the program are less strict than those for standard Medicaid.

The program extends coverage to women below 200 percent of the federal poverty, or an income of $1,815 a month for single person. Standard Medicaid requires 50 percent of federal poverty, or $835 a month.

Additionally, the program extends coverage to women without dependent children. Medicaid typically does not cover childless adults unless they are elderly or disabled.

The program does not cover men diagnosed with breast cancer.

By the numbers

* About 2,140 new cases of invasive breast cancer in men are diagnosed in the U.S. annually.

* About 450 men are expected to die from breast cancer this year.

* Breast cancer is about 100 times less common among men than among women.
For men, the lifetime risk of getting breast cancer is about 1 in 1,000.

* Studies show that men and women with the same stage of breast cancer have a fairly similar outlook for survival.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services neither recommends nor covers routine breast cancer screening for men, meaning they “may not be considered screened” under the treatment coverage program, according to its guidelines.

The Health and Human Services Department questioned the requirement more than two years ago, when it attempted to extend Medicaid coverage to a man who had breast cancer.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services responded in a January 2009 letter, saying: “In order to change the eligibility requirements, Congress would need to change the law.”

Teresa Pischner, a “Breast Nurse Navigator” with Roper St. Francis Healthcare where Johnson gets chemotherapy every two weeks, said an amendment should be considered.

“It was shortsighted to exclude men who meet the same eligibility requirements,” Pischner said.

The American Cancer Society estimates that 2,140 new cases of breast cancer in men are diagnosed annually in the U.S.

In South Carolina, 16 men with breast cancer diagnoses have applied for coverage through the Medicaid breast and cervical cancer program since 2007. Three of them met all the eligibility requirements but were denied because they were men, said Jeff Stensland, Health and Human Services spokesman.

About 1,180 women are enrolled in the treatment coverage program, according to the department’s most recent figures.

A spokeswoman for the American Cancer Society’s lobbying group in Washington, the Cancer Action Network, said that before federal law established the treatment coverage program in 2000, early detection efforts caught breast and cervical cancer in uninsured women, but those patients still had insufficient money to pay for treatment.

“The intent of the law was to fill that gap,” said Mona Shah, associate director of federal relations for the network.

Male breast cancer patients and patients with other types of cancers will be eligible for private health insurance once federal health reform is fully implemented in 2014, Shah pointed out. She said it is unclear what will happen to the Medicaid program for breast and cervical cancer in the coming years.

As it is, though, health care providers must cobble together resources to treat Johnson and other men in his position, said Pischner, the nurse navigator. Patients pay what they can but rely heavily on hospitals’ charity care, free or discounted medicine from pharmaceutical companies and other donated services, she said.

Johnson sees doctors and a surgeon at Trident Medical Center in North Charleston and gets chemotherapy at Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital in West Ashley.

Both are more than an hour from his family’s trailer in Cross, so he received gasoline cards from Share Our Suzy, a Columbia nonprofit support group for breast cancer patients, to help him pay for transportation to treatment.

Even before his diagnosis, Johnson had trouble finding work laying tile, his trade. As a cancer patient, it’s even tougher, he said.

“I’ve been spending a lot of time sitting down, and I’m not a sit-down person,” he said.

article online with photos and comments

Written by Chad Dally
Wausau Daily Herald

WAUSAU, Wisc.–The Department of Natural Resources has identified nearly 2,300 hazardous waste sites in Marathon and Lincoln counties and can’t say how many more lurk undetected, according to a Wausau Daily Herald analysis of state records and interviews with cleanup experts.

The pollution ranges in scope and severity, from old underground fuel tanks rusting and leaking on rural and urban sites, to wood preservative chemicals flowing directly from a Merrill manufacturer into the Wisconsin River, to soil and groundwater contamination at an old Wausau factory being linked to six deaths.

The good news is that the vast majority of the sites, the toxic legacy of commercial and industrial development in central Wisconsin, are listed as “closed,” meaning they have been mostly cleaned. That includes 16 acres of riverfront property the city of Wausau bought this summer for $2.6 million.

View a map of active contaminated sites in central Wisconsin

The bad news is cleanup at 112 identified sites is ongoing, no one can definitively say how dangerous those sites are to public health, and the state has no idea how many other contaminated areas might have gone unreported.

A few of the largest hazardous waste sites have raised concerns for decades:

» Dozens of residents around the former Crestline Windows manufacturing facility on Thomas Street in Wausau, along with former employees of the company, have joined in a class action lawsuit claiming they have cancer or other diseases, have lost loved ones or suffered property damage because of toxic chemicals.

» Two gasoline spills in Kronenwetter — one in 2009 and one discovered in 1998 that officials believe happened in the 1970s — cost two companies more than $6 million in settlements and cleanup costs, and forced nearby residents to abandon private water wells and connect to the municipal water system.

» The city of Wausau and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began cleanup in 1984 of contamination on both sides of the Wisconsin River in downtown Wausau. The cleanup is largely complete, but monitoring of the site will continue indefinitely, and a ban on residential development remains in effect.

full article at Wassau Daily Herald

MEGHAN FOLEY
The Bennington Banner

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The state Department of Public Health plans to update its evaluation of thyroid cancer cases in the four towns that send students to Mount Greylock Regional High School.

DPH decided to update the evaluation after a concerned resident contacted the agency, spokeswoman Julia Hurley said. The Transcript published on article on July 25 that focused on growing concerns in the community that the high school may be the site of a cancer cluster.

“We did reiterate to the resident, however, that the weight of the scientific evidence is that perchlorate is not expected to cause cancer in humans, and that the concern is hypothyroidism at sufficient exposure levels,” Hurley said.

At press time, it could not be determined exactly when DPH will updated its evaluation.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, a cancer cluster occurs when “a greater than expected number of cancer cases occurs within a group of people, in a geographic area, or over a period of time.”

Most of the students who attend Mount Greylock live in Williamstown, Lanesborough, Hancock or New Ashford.

Several residents of the regional school district have told the Transcript that they wondered if high levels of the chemical perchlorate — which was first detected in April 2004 in the wells that supplied the school’s drinking water — had anything to do with several Mount Greylock alumni and staff either developing

Advertisement

cancer or having thyroid problems.
The presence of perchlorate — a chemical used in the production of rocket fuel, fireworks, flares and explosives — in drinking water is regulated by the state. Public water supplies are required by the state to have a perchlorate level of no more than two parts per billion.

Since the article was published, four Mount Greylock graduates have contacted the Transcript to say that they have battled thyroid cancer, while a fifth said she has Hashimoto’s Disease. Hashimoto’s Disease is an autoimmune disorder that often results in an underactive thyroid.

One Mount Greylock graduate who had thyroid cancer said two family members also became sick. One also had thyroid cancer, while the other contracted non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. All three are no longer afflicted.

The Transcript has now learned of 12 Mount Greylock alumni and former staff members who have been afflicted with thyroid cancer. Five others have experienced thyroid issues —including Graves’ Disease. Also, one more developed Hodgkin’s lymphoma; one had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma; and one developed a rare sarcoma. These 20 individuals were all diagnosed from 1990 to 2011.

Scott Harris of Clarksburg, who graduated from Mount Greylock in 1979, is preparing for his fourth surgery. His thyroid cancer has returned three times since he was first diagnosed in 1990.

“I’m done with it,” Harris said. “I don’t want it anymore.” Harris, who lived in Boston from 1981 to 2004, said his family has no history of thyroid cancer or thyroid problems. He said doctors really don’t know what originally caused the cancer to develop and then return twice.

He said the water situation at Mount Greylock has been a problem for many years. “They need to get some public water up there,” Harris said. “It’s a high school for crying out loud.”

Built in 1960 on the site of a former airport and farm, the school initially relied on two wells for its water supply. Both wells were first tested for perchlorate on April 15, 2004 after the state Department of Environmental Protection issued emergency regulations that required the testing to take place.

Well No. 2 — located south of the school — registered 1.03 parts perchlorate per billion, just over the state’s then advisory limit of 1 part per billion. But the level of perchlorate in Well No. 1 registered five times higher than the state limit at 5.05 parts per billion. Well No. 1 is located north of the school.

Over the next year, both wells continued to produce high levels of perchlorate, which forced the school to use bottled water for drinking and cooking until September 2006 when a new well was commissioned.

The new well, located about a quarter of a mile to the west of the school, was sought after efforts to have the town extend a water line further down Cold Spring Road failed. State DEP spokeswoman Catherine Skiba said perchlorate has not been detected in Well No. 3.

“The two wells with the initial perchlorate detection have been severed from the water system, but remain available for use in the event of an emergency with MassDEP approval,” she said.

While the source of the perchlorate contamination wasn’t definitively identified, it was suspected that fireworks were the source, she said. According to a report by the state DEP that examined both the occurrence and sources of perchlorate in Massachusetts, fireworks were launched on the high school’s football field between 1989 and 1992, and from 1999 to 2003.

Regional School Committee Chairman Robert Ericson said the school acted appropriately when it stopped using the first two wells after perchlorate contamination was discovered in 2004.

Still, he said, many issues were never resolved. They include where the contamination came from, how long people were exposed to it and how much perchlorate was in the water before the problem was discovered. “It is of concern, and the concern is for the kids who attended the school before the problem was fixed,” he said.

He said the School Committee plans to discuss what the regional district can do now to address the issue.

Jennifer Cushman, a 1996 graduate of Mount Greylock who lives near Rochester, N.Y., was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at the age of 31 in 2009. She had her thyroid gland removed and is currently cancer free. “If this is related to the school, it would be nice if something could be done,” she said.

Suzanne Condon, the director of the Massachusetts Bureau of Environmental Health, said one of the challenges her agency faces when it tries to determine the existence of a cancer cluster occurs when many afflicted people have moved out of the area where the problem may exist. For example, Cushman said her cancer would not be listed in the Massachusetts registry because she was diagnosed while living in New York.

“In Massachusetts, we have a population-based registry,” Condon said. “We know where people live when they are diagnosed, but we don’t know if that is where they’re living at that point in time and have lived in a different place or state. We don’t have the ability to track people diagnosed with cancer,” she said

Cancer clusters are also difficult to determine because they generally involve only a small number of people, Condon said. There are also more than 100 forms of cancer.

“According to statistics from the American Cancer Society, one in every three women are diagnosed with cancer, and for men, it’s one in every two,” Condon said. “When I started doing this work a few decades ago, we used to say it was one in every four people. So the data has changed significantly over the years.”

by Melissa Topey
The Sandusky Register

CLYDE
Clyde residents are worried about the potential health risks a natural-gas power plant could pose if it’s built in their community.

Such concerns in this town are not taken lightly — it’s host to a childhood cancer cluster that has perpetually baffled top-level health experts.

Some Clyde residents attended a public hearing Thursday to weigh in on a developer’s plan to build the power plant at 300 Premier Drive.

The Ohio EPA was required to host the meeting as part of the permit process.

The proposed builder, Sandusky-Clyde Energy Solutions, must obtain an air-pollution control permit to move forward on the energy facility, which would include seven natural-gas fired engines.

The company actually received permission in September 2010 to build the power plant at 1357 McPherson Highway, but those plans were scrapped because of problems with a railroad right-of-way.

The company is now reapplying for the air-pollution permit for the new location.

Thursday’s meeting addressed just one phase of the project: the installation of the seven engines.

Residents are more concerned about another phase, which involves “pyrolysis,” a process in which the facility would convert trash into energy.

The process involves vaporizing organic biological matter to create energy, said Jan Tredway of the Ohio EPA’s air-pollution control division.

Sandusky-Clyde Energy would have to obtain special permits for that process as well.

But the company could have a tough row to hoe.

Residents in Clyde and areas nearby are still trying to pinpoint the cause of a cancer cluster that has affected 28 children in eastern Sandusky County.

Any talks of building a pollution-generating facility in this neck of the woods, then, is certain to be greeted with serious questions.

Sandusky County administrator Warren Brown wanted to know if similar facilities have suffered failures elsewhere in the U.S., while residents were concerned about pollution from the plant, such as nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide.

The EPA would allow the plant to emit almost 12 tons of carbon monoxide and about 3 tons of nitrogen oxide, EPA officials said.

EPA inspectors would visit the site within six months of startup, then conduct follow-up inspections every two years, Tredway said.

If problems arose, they’d inspect the facility more often.

That was little consolation to people like Kenneth Turner, of Clyde, who said he’s worried because the plant would be so close to McPherson Middle School.

“It’s too close to the school to have these questions unanswered,” Turner said. “We do not want them to experiment with our town.”

A business partner in the project is R&A Energy Solutions.

Jim Anderson, principal and executive vice president of R&A Energy, attended Thursday’s meeting, but made no statements to the crowd.

Later, however, Anderson said the “pyrolysis” method is safe and is not an experiment.

“This is going on all over the country,” Anderson said. “Everyone wants alternative energy, and garbage is a great source.”

online article and video

By Dick Berry – email

CLYDE, OH (WTOL) – There’s skepticism from a Clyde couple whose daughter died as part of the a mysterious cancer cluster there.

The Sandusky Clyde Energy Solutions Company plans to build a new electricity plant at Clyde’s Industrial Park.

The plant will be powered by natural gas and electricity sold to the city over a ten year period.

“We’re bringing to Ohio another technology that will take the garbage that’s here and convert it into a natural gas too,” Jim Anderson of Sandusky Clyde Energy Solutions said.

But none of this will happen without the approval from the Ohio EPA.

“I’m not sure I believe everything the Ohio EPA says,” according to Warren Brown. He still doesn’t know why his daughter Alexa and three other children died as part of the Clyde cancer cluster.

At least forty children have been affected.

“Do I think their putting anything into the atmosphere is a good idea? No. Do we need electricity? Yes. Do we need this plant? I don’t know the answer to that question,” Brown said.

Thursday night, a hearing was held at Clyde High School by the Ohio EPA to take public testimony on whether the agency should issue an emissions permit for the plant.

Only a handful of people attended, including Mr. Brown and his wife Wendy.

Ohio EPA officials tell them they have nothing to worry about.

“With regards to the facility, we examined it on its own merits and we found it will be compliant with our pollution requirements that are protecting human health and the environment,” Jan Treadway of the Ohio EPA said.

Wendy Brown remains skeptical. “I don’t think anything would really make me feel comfortable because I know pretty much anything in the air poses a hazard.”

Company officials guarantee cancer cluster parents the plant will be a safe operation.

“We’re very aware of the cancer cluster. So we wanted it to be a safe, productive plant,” Anderson said.

The Ohio EPA will accept written comments about the plant until August 12.

Expect a decision on the emissions permit application shortly after that.

Copyright 2011 WTOL. All rights reserved.

article online

Twelve-year-old Tanner is among nearly 40 children from Ohio’s Sandusky County who have been diagnosed with cancer. The community has fought for answers to explain the series of cancer cases that began a decade ago. Now a bill introduced in the Senate will go a long way toward helping investigate disease clusters. It would direct and fund federal agencies to assist state health officials in investigating potential clusters. However, the U.S. toxics law needs reform, too, to help protect children and communities from environmental chemicals.

By Rebecca Fuoco
Environmental Health News

July 28, 2011

Tanner, a 12-year-old from Clyde, Ohio, had a difficult school year. He was only able to attend a few weeks of school. Summer activities are also limited for Tanner, who cannot swim in public pools because his leukemia has left him with a diminished immune system.

Tanner and his older sister are among nearly 40 children from Sandusky County who have been diagnosed with cancer. The community of 62,000 has fought for answers to explain the series of child cancers that began a decade ago.

While cancer clusters are a nightmare for families and communities, they also are frustrating for state and local health officials. Cancer cluster investigations are notoriously difficult because of small budgets, the variety of factors involved in cancer development and the multitude of possible sources and exposures. They are almost always inconclusive.

Earlier this year, Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Mike Crapo (R-ID) introduced a bill known as “Trevor’s Law,” named after Trevor Schaefer, a brain cancer survivor who was diagnosed at the age of 13 and has worked to raise awareness of disease clusters and possible links to the environment.

This legislation would direct and fund federal agencies to assist state health officials in investigating potential clusters. It also would create science-based guidelines for cluster identification. The bill was sparked by rising rates of childhood cancer and the President’s Cancer Panel’s 2010 statement that the burden of environmentally-induced cancer is grossly underestimated.

While cancer clusters are a nightmare for families and communities, they also are frustrating for state and local health officials. Cancer cluster investigations are notoriously difficult due to various factors. They are almost always inconclusive.Cancer clusters should indeed be a public policy concern. Forty-two cancer and other disease clusters in 13 states were recently identified by the Natural Resources Defense Council. All of them are suspected of being caused by toxic exposures in the community.

However, Trevor’s Law will yield little benefit unless there also is a significant change in the way chemicals are regulated in the United States.

The Toxic Substances Control Act is the federal law responsible for ensuring safety of industrial chemicals. Among its weaknesses is that it does not require chemical producers to provide data on a chemical’s environmental fate or toxicity before it is introduced into the market. Under the 1976 law, the Environmental Protection Agency may require the manufacturer to provide this information only if a chemical poses certain health or environmental risks. Even then, the procedures EPA must follow to obtain test data from companies can take years.

The EPA does not have the resources to routinely assess the hazards of 700 some chemicals introduced into commerce each year and companies very rarely voluntarily perform such testing. Accordingly, the vast majority of chemicals on the market today have not been tested for toxicity. Without access to scientific information on potential exposure routes, toxic mechanisms and health effects of at least 85,000 chemicals on the market today, it will remain exceedingly difficult for agencies to investigate clusters and their possible environmental causes.

Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) has introduced the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011, which will begin to close the data gap by requiring chemical manufacturers to develop and make publicly available toxicity and exposure information for all chemicals. It also gives the EPA authority to request additional testing to determine the safety of a chemical.

Not only will this testing aid the analysis of existing cancer clusters, but it might also prevent development of future cancer clusters. Chemicals proving carcinogenic in testing can more likely be restricted from use — and will therefore not end up in landfills, drinking water systems and other possible sources of community exposure in the first place.
2011-0728fuoco

Rebecca Fuoco is a Center for Health Leadership Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health

read online

Michelle Bliss, WHQR 91.3 FM
(Roderick McClain contributed audio for this report) (2011-07-27)

WILMINGTON, NC (WHQR) -The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry is mailing out 300,000 surveys between now and December to study the effects of water contamination at Camp Lejeune.

At the same time, an act that would allow Lejeune veterans and family members to receive health care through the VA sits in a U.S. House committee.

Between 1957 and 1987, carcinogens like benzene were leaked into the wells on base. WHQR’s

Michelle Bliss attended a public forum in Wilmington last week where researchers spoke to a group of active Marines and sailors, veterans, civilians, and their families about the study.

“I spent a quarter of a century in the United States Marine Corps. No has been more disillusioned and more disappointed by the conduct of the leadership of our organization than I have been about this situation with this water.”

Jerry Ensminger offered opening remarks to an audience scattered among mostly empty chairs. He’s a veteran who lost his 9-year-old daughter Janey in 1985 to childhood leukemia, one of the many illnesses linked to the contamination caused by underground fuel tanks on base and a small dry cleaning business.

Less than a hundred people attended the event, a disappointing turnout for advocates like Ensminger, who don’t want others to find out like he did, nearly 14 years ago.

“I had fixed a plate of spaghetti and I was walking into the living room to watch the evening news. And the reporter said that ATSDR wanted to take a look at the children who had been born at Camp Lejeune during the years of the contamination, primarily for childhood leukemia. Well, that’s what my daughter died from. I dropped my plate of food right there on the floor.”

Mike Partain, who drove up from Florida for the forum, shares a similar experience from 2007: a month after enduring a mastectomy to remove the 2-and-a-half centimeter tumor from his chest, Partain’s phone rang. It was his father, a Vietnam vet.

“I went home and I flipped on the TV and went to CNN like he told me. And lo and behold, there was a report. It was actually Jerry testifying in front of Congress, and he was talking about the children born on the base between January, 1968 and December of 1985 and how they were exposed to human carcinogens. My birthday is January 30, 1968. You could have knocked me over with a feather.”

Mary Blakely, who just happened to have her television on in the fall of 2009, now believes the tainted water is to blame for her learning disabilities and her mother’s death from lung cancer.

“I was watching CNN and Mike Partain was on there with some other of the male breast cancer cluster, and I heard them mention Holcomb Boulevard on the base. I recognized that from when my family lived there in Berkely Manor because it’s really close.”

Ensminger, Partain, and Blakely all attended the forum and have lived aboard Camp Lejeune at some point during the thirty-year span of contamination. But figuring out the length and potency of their individual exposures is complicated.

ATSDR Director, Chris Portier, says the government agency is using a method called water modeling to create an historical reconstruction of the wells.

“Once you turn on the pumps, it changes, so you get mixing and all sorts of different things that all have to be taken into account. And then, to get it to the people sometimes this pump’s turned on, sometimes that pump’s turned on, it’s mixed in a tank. You’ve got to figure out all of that to figure out what comes out the tap in the tail end.”

Researchers are also sending comparison surveys to people who lived and worked at Camp Pendleton. The data will determine if a presumptive link can be made between 26 different cancers and diseases that researchers say are related to heavy benzene, tetrachloroethylene, and trichloroethylene exposure.

Even though their ailments vary, many forum attendees echo the same sense of fear and loss regarding their failing health or that of a loved one:

“I always ended up on sick call. I always managed to throw up and cough up and spew up blood and be sickly and have stomach problems and esophagus problems. In 1973, they diagnosed me with osteochondroma.”

“In 1985 she had a stroke, after that, congestive heart failure, liver, and different things set in. I ended up basically with bowel disorders and nerve conditions. In 1986, my wife died.”

“One day my wife gives me a hug; she finds a bump in my chest. Two weeks later, I go to the doctor and I’m sitting on my wedding anniversary being told that I have male breast cancer. Three weeks later, they cut half my chest off. I had no idea what happened to me.”

That was Anthony Taylor, Ronald McKoy, and Mike Partain, once again. Along with the forum, they also attended a community assistance panel or CAP meeting.

Marine Corps spokesperson Captain Kendra Hardesty says that despite active participation in the past, the Corps only sent an observer this time.

“For many years, we actually did send a representative to the CAP meetings; however, in the recent past, it’s become clear that our presence at the CAP meetings was distracting for their intended purpose.”

Mary Blakely remembers one of those meetings. She jumped at the opportunity to speak up.

“I just couldn’t accept that they didn’t try to tell us about it, that they would actually lie about it being there. And the more that I talked, the angrier I got, and I started saying things like, You don’t deserve to wear the uniform of a Marine. You’re not a Marine. A real Marine is a person of honor, and what is being done is not honorable.’”

During Q/A, people asked if they had been exposed, some learning the truth for the first time. People asked how many generations could be affected researchers don’t know. But most people asked if the Marine Corps would be held accountable and step up compensation if the presumptive link is proven.

Right now, the V-A doesn’t have the authority to fund dependents, but it has recently consolidated the review process for all Lejeune claims to a single office. That means one staff can be trained to handle those cases properly.

ATSDR Senior Epidemiologist Frank Bove:

“Our goal right now is to do the best science we can so that these studies have credibility, so the science community takes it seriously and regulators take it seriously, for which to judge whatever actions they’re going to take in terms of maybe additional regulations or whatever they plan to do.”

Bove’s team is also studying mortality rates, birth defects, and childhood cancers. He says that some ATSDR studies in the late 90s are inaccurate and he hopes the new research will provide a definitive say on the risks posed by the tainted water.

Marine Corps spokesperson Hardesty maintains that until researchers prove that connection, the Marine Corps has no comment.

“We’re waiting for the studies to be completed before we can comment on that.”

When the ATSDR releases its results, some next summer and the remainder in early 2014, participants will receive a summary and the findings will be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. After that, the issue moves to regulators, legislators, and the Marine Corps to decide what happens next.

Learn more about the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry’s Camp Lejeune study.

Register to receive Marine Corps updates on Camp Lejeune water contamination.

online and audio report

From The Gothamist

Cancer-stricken emergency workers who responded to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and cancer victims who resided in the area do not qualify for federal aid, according to a review by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. NIOSH concluded that “insufficient evidence exists at this time to propose a rule to add cancer, or a certain type of cancer,” to the list of diseases that qualify for aid under the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act.

Noting that only one peer-review study has looked at the link between the cloud of toxins that spilled out of the collapsed towers and cancer, NIOSH decided that “these limitations in the exposure assessment literature make scientific analysis of a causal association between exposure and health effects, such as cancer, quite challenging.”

The result is that 9/11 survivors, first responders, and residents near the towers who have been diagnosed with cancer will not receive any aid until at least late 2012, when the government will release another review. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand yesterday called on NIOSH to accelerate the review process, while Senator Chuck Schumer dismissed the findings as “premature,” telling the AP, “So many people have gotten such rare cancers — and at young ages — that it seems obvious there must be a link.”

Firefighter Kenneth Specht, who is battling thyroid cancer, tells the Daily News, “Every time we bury a New York City firefighter: Cancer. Cancer. Cancer. How can that not be included? It’s absolutely unacceptable.” And Jennifer McNamara, whose firefighter husband died two years ago, says, “I had a husband who responded to the Trade Center in his 30s in perfect, perfect health. At the age of 41 he was diagnosed with stage 1 colon cancer. They did the DNA test and he had no genetic predisposition for colon cancer, which leaves environmental factors. What is the one big environmental disaster lurking in my husband’s past? 9/11.”

U.S. Reps. Carolyn Maloney, Jerrold Nadler, and Peter King, authors of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, released a statement yesterday saying:

As the sponsors of the Zadroga Act, we are disappointed that Health Program Administrator Dr. John Howard has not yet found sufficient evidence to support covering cancers. This is disappointing news for 9/11 responders and survivors who tragically have been diagnosed with cancer since the attacks and are suffering day-to-day and awaiting help. We are confident that studies on the effects of the toxins at ground zero -research that, under the Zadroga Act, can be funded and fully supported for the first time- will ultimately provide the scientific evidence that Dr. Howard needs to make this determination. Thankfully, we know that today’s announcement is not the last word on the inclusion of cancers in the program.

Indeed, in a press release accompanying yesterday’s report, NIOSH said, “The current absence of published scientific and medical findings… does not indicate evidence of the absence of a causal association”

The Gothamist