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.”

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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 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

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NDCA teamed with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to report on 42 disease clusters in 13 states. We intend to complete this pilot project and cover all 50 states and U.S. territories.

Read the report.

Health Alert: Disease Clusters Spotlight the Need to Protect People from Toxic Chemicals [pdf 1.5MB]

Families want answers on MS, cancer cases

By: Ellen McGregor
Cristin Severance from the Ohio News Network contributed to this report

CLEVELAND – No one wants their home in an area where a higher percentage of adults and children get cancer, leukemia, multiple sclerosis and more. These areas are called disease clusters. There are five in Ohio, including one in Lorain County. Now, a senator and an environmental activist are urging new action to help people who live in disease clusters.

en. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is co-sponsoring a new bill, and Erin Brockovich testified at a senate committee hearing Tuesday. They both want more done about quickly identifying disease clusters, and helping people in those clusters find out what made them sick.

Sen. Brown’s proposed bill would get more federal resources to five Ohio areas identified as disease clusters. He said if it passed, the bill would “provide more federal support to communities that have been afflicted by high rates of diseases like cancer and multiple sclerosis.”

read full article

By JOHN SEEWER, AP
Thu Dec 30, 2010

CLYDE, OH–Every time his kids cough, Dave Hisey’s mind starts to race. Is it cancer? Is it coming back? His oldest daughter, diagnosed with leukemia nearly five years ago when she was 13, is in remission. His 12-year-old son has another year of chemotherapy for a different type of leukemia. And his 9-year-old daughter is scared she’ll be next.

Hisey is not alone in fearing the worst. Just about every mom and dad in this rural northern Ohio town gets nervous whenever their children get a sinus infection or a stomachache lingers. It’s hard not to panic since mysterious cancers have sickened dozens of area children in recent years.

Since 1996, 35 children have been diagnosed — and three have died — of brain tumors, leukemia, lymphoma, and other forms of cancer — all within a 12-mile wide circle that includes two small towns and farmland just south of Lake Erie. With many of the diagnoses coming between 2002 and 2006, state health authorities declared it a cancer cluster, saying the number and type of diagnoses exceed what would be expected statistically for so small a population over that time.

“All you think about is what happened to these kids,” said Donna Hisey, 43, the mother whose family has been devastated by cancer. “Is it gone? Or is it still here? What is it?!”

After three years of exhaustive investigation, no cause is known. Investigators have tested wells and public drinking water, sampled groundwater and air near factories and checked homes, schools and industries for radiation.

They also set up a network of air monitors across eastern Sandusky County, finding cleaner air than in most places around Ohio, the health department said.

Nothing unusual was detected. Not even a hint.

“From the very beginning, we’ve said the vast majority of childhood cancer causes aren’t known,” said Robert Indian, the state health department’s chief of comprehensive cancer control. He’ll soon release yet another investigative report.

Without any answers as to what’s attacking their children, parents are left to question whether living within a known cancer cluster area is endangering their kids. Perhaps surprisingly, only a handful have moved away.

“It’s in the back of everybody’s mind,” said Scott Mahler, who has two healthy young sons. “Are you going to risk your children’s lives by living here?”

Eight children were diagnosed with cancer in and near Clyde between 2002-2006, nearly four times the number that state health experts figure is normal.

Ohio health investigators converged on the town of just 6,000 people halfway between Cleveland and Toledo and home to the Whirlpool Corp.’s largest washing machine factory.

What they found was worse than anyone suspected. The cancers affecting victims age 19 and younger included neighboring townships and much of the nearby town of Fremont.

One in five of the cancer cases were related to the brain or central nervous system, matching national rates, according to the American Cancer Society.

The diagnoses peaked in 2006, when nine children were told they, too, had cancer. Since then, there have been four new cases. The most recent came in the spring this year, when a 7-year-old girl was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare cancer of the body’s connective tissues.

At first, investigators focused just on Clyde, where social calendars revolve around school, sports and church. Most families have been here for generations. It’s the kind of place where teens can’t wait to leave — only to find they can’t wait to come back to start a family.

Seeing their children afflicted by unexplained illnesses has strengthened the bond among parents and neighbors instead of scaring them away.

“Even if it would’ve happened to my family, I can’t imagine where else I would go to get the support I needed,” said Melanie Overmyer, an English and journalism teacher at Clyde High School.

“People in neighboring towns say ‘I can’t believe you still live there,’” said the mother of two. “You can’t pick up your life and move every time there’s something that scares you.”

Enrollment numbers at area schools haven’t dropped and real estate agents say they haven’t encountered anyone who doesn’t want to look for homes in the area or is desperate to get out.

“Clyde is small enough that we would really know if that was happening,” said City Manager Paul Fiser.

Ohio health and environmental regulators have speculated the cause was environmental and may have come and gone — maybe a chemical from a factory or a dump that polluted the air or water.

Air and water samples have not revealed any concerns around the Whirlpool plant or the Vickery Environmental waste site just outside town, where hazardous chemicals are injected into rock a half-mile below ground.

And in September, investigators said they found no radiation from homes, schools, or industries to link to the illnesses, ruling out the Davis-Besse nuclear plant, about 20 miles from Clyde, and NASA’s former nuclear reactor near Sandusky as a possible source.

Doctors also have been vigilant, making sure they’re not missing any signs or symptoms in young patients. And parents are more likely to bring their kids in for checkups instead of waiting for an illness to go away.

“You still have to treat common things first,” said Dr. Daniel Herring, who has a family practice in Clyde.

“But it’s definitely one of the things we worry about more.”

What’s stumped investigators is the lack of any common threads among the children — all of them don’t live in the same neighborhood, go to the same school or drink from the same water. They don’t all have the same type of cancer or even parents who work at the same factory.

State health officials have spent recent months asking the sick children and their families dozens of questions about their homes and health histories, hoping to find a link. A report due soon will reveal whether they found any connections among all or some of the children, Indian said.

Some parents think it’s likely that investigators will never identify a cause.

In a way, it’s not a surprise.

Pinpointing the cause of a cancer cluster rarely — if ever — happens.

During the 1960s and ’70s, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigated 108 cancer clusters around the United States, most of them childhood leukemia. But they found no definite causes for any of them.

The CDC has since allowed states to take the lead investigating almost all suspected clusters while still offering some oversight, as the federal agency is doing in Ohio.

The outbreak around Clyde is only 50 miles north of another cluster that Ohio health officials spent four years investigating. Beginning in the late 1990s, nine former students from River Valley High School in Marion were diagnosed with leukemia.

Tests found toxic chemicals in schoolyard soil and students were relocated to new buildings miles away. Investigators never definitively linked the cancers to the old school site, a former World War II Army depot where wastes and solvents were dumped and burned.

The nation’s most intensive investigation ever of a cancer cluster began nine years ago in western Nevada and remains inconclusive. Hundreds of state and federal experts have spent millions investigating the leukemia that sickened 17 children and killed three between 1997 and 2004.

Some parents of Clyde area’s sick children question whether the state’s inquiry has been thorough enough. They point out that there’s been no soil testing or requests for experts from CDC to join the investigation.

“Why haven’t they brought all minds to the table?” said Warren Brown, whose 11-year-old daughter, Alexa, died of brain cancer in August 2009. “Why not throw everything at it?”

Investigators insist they’ve ignored nothing. Soil testing wouldn’t reveal any answers, they said, because the sick children come from a widespread area and all would have needed to come in contact with contaminated dirt.

Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Director Christopher Korleski said the state has consulted with federal health officials throughout the investigation and that they’ve signed off on the steps Ohio has taken.

The investigation is his top priority.

“It is disappointing and frustrating to not know,” said Korleski.

Brown wishes there were somebody to blame.

He’s been careful not to point fingers and doesn’t want the town to suffer. But he also said he wouldn’t hold back if something here was the cause.

“I’d be yelling at the top of my lungs to leave town,” he said. “I can’t do that.”

Brandy Kreider, a mother of five children, said she and her husband spent an agonizing week and sleepless nights wondering if they were making a mistake before buying a new home in town two years ago. In the end, leaving didn’t feel right.

“Those things don’t want to make us retreat,” she said. “They bring us together.”

The Hiseys faced the same question almost five years ago when daughter Tyler Smith, who’s now 17, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.

They put their house up for sale even though it had everything they wanted: ponds for fishing, a woods for hunting and plenty of space. They’re now glad it didn’t sell.

The outdoors surrounding their home has become a sanctuary for Tanner, 12, diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia two years after his sister was sickened.

Chemotherapy has kept him out of school most of this year so home is where he spends much of his time. It’s where he can catch catfish, watch deer romp across the fields and still be a kid.

“Everything else has been taken away,” his father said. “We can’t take their support, their comfort and their home away from them.”

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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.

<a href=http://toledoblade.com/article/20100824/NEWS32/8230402/-1/SRMAIN”>read online</a>

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.

By TOM HENRY
TOLEDO 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.

read online

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

by Michael Hawthorne
The Columbus Dispatch

Ohioans could have been kept in the dark about cancer clusters in Marion and Marysville, a meningitis outbreak in Alliance and E. coli infections at several county fairs if fast-moving state legislation already had been law.

At the behest of the Ohio Department of Health, lawmakers tucked a secrecy provision into one of the General Assembly’s top priorities: legislation intended to give state officials more power to fight bioterrorism.

The bill, sent to the House this week by state senators on a unanimous vote, would give the state health director authority to block public scrutiny of any investigations into diseases or illnesses, not just those related to anthrax or other biological agents.

“If I was illegally discharging toxic waste into one of Ohio’s rivers or streams, I would be delighted with this bill, ” said Christine Link, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.

In an interview yesterday, the Health Department’s top attorney said agency officials have for several years wanted to keep their investigations secret. The bioterrorism measure gave them an opportunity to add the exemption to Ohio’s Open Records Act, which was enacted to ensure the public can review the actions of taxpayer-funded government agencies.

“When people are ill, many others want to know what is going on in our investigation, ” said Jodi Govern, the Health Department’s chief counsel, citing families, trial lawyers and the media. “We don’t feel it is appropriate to release that kind of information.”

Although the measure is billed as a way to strengthen Ohio’s ability to defend the state against biological attacks, Govern cited investigations of food poisoning to illustrate why the department sought the secrecy provision.

Health officials typically cast a wide net after people become ill from poisoned food, she said. It would be unfair, she said, to identify restaurants suspected of serving poisoned food until investigators have pinned down the culprit.

Govern compared the provision to an existing law that allows law-enforcement officials to keep criminal investigations secret. That law is intended to aid police while protecting the legal presumption that the accused is innocent until proven guilty.

She also said the measure is based on model legislation proposed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But a Health Department spokesman later sent an e-mail confirming that the CDC proposal does not include a provision that would make health investigations secret.

Critics say that if the Ohio provision becomes law, it will deprive people of information they could use to protect themselves.

Local and state officials decided to build new high and middle schools in Marion after the public obtained information about an unusually high number of leukemia cases among graduates of River Valley High School. The existing schools were built on top of a former Army depot where cancer-causing chemicals had been dumped for years.

“It’s been hard enough as it is for us to find out what happened, ” said Mike Griffith, a member of a community group that pushed to move the schools. “If all that information had been kept secret, it would have been practically impossible to get our schools moved.”

State health officials acknowledged that, after a meningitis outbreak hit Alliance in northeastern Ohio two years ago, they should have provided information to the public more quickly.

Widespread dissemination of information about E. coli infections at county fairs three years ago helped pressure state and local officials to take steps to prevent similar outbreaks.

In other cases, health officials have been reluctant to publicize information.
The Union County Health Department began to quietly investigate a leukemia cluster in Marysville more than five years ago, disclosing few details to anyone other than a handful of community leaders and the families involved.

As in Marion, officials have not been able to link the leukemia cases to a specific cause. But the eight cases confirmed in boys and young men between 1992 and 2001 are more than three times the expected rate for residents 24 and younger, according to a state Health Department report obtained by The Dispatch through the Open Records Act.

The National Conference of State Legislatures said it was unaware of any other state contemplating legislation similar to what’s before the General Assembly.
Proponents of Ohio’s bill say the changes are necessary to keep sensitive information out of the hands of terrorists, but critics contend that some of the limits are too sweeping.

“Under the guise of homeland security, ” said Teresa Mills of the Buckeye Environment Network, a nonprofit watchdog group, “they are taking away the public’s right to know anything.”

mhawthorne@dispatch.com