No evidence is found that the Pittston-area locale was ever a dump, officials say.

MATT HUGHES mhughes@timesleader.com

The state Department of Environmental Protection is analyzing water samples collected at an alleged dump some have linked to a purported cancer cluster in Pittston, but it will not test environmental conditions at the Butler Mine Tunnel.

Mitch Cron of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region III Office in Philadelphia reviews the history and past and present environmental impacts of the Butler Mine Tunnel.

DEP Secretary Michael Krancer on Tuesday responded to state Sen. John Yudichak’s request that DEP conduct its own soil, water and air sampling at the Butler Mine Tunnel, a federal Environmental Protection Agency Superfund cleanup site that passes below Pittston and drains into the Susquehanna River.

Krancer said DEP reviewed 20 years of data from the Butler Mine Tunnel and reached the same conclusion as the EPA, that the tunnel does not pose a public health threat.

Millions of gallons of oil and chemicals illegally dumped into a borehole that indirectly drains into the tunnel in the 1970s twice spewed into the river in 1979 and again after heavy rains in 1985, prompting the EPA to monitor the site and install measures to capture potential future spills.

Earlier this year, Carroll Street resident Chuck Menichini and his family began investigating the prevalence of cancer in their neighborhood. They believe there is a cancer cluster around Carroll and Mill streets and want the EPA, DEP or other agencies to investigate.

DEP also investigated allegations that Stauffer Point, a former park at the end of Carroll Street, was once a dump and could be linked to disease in the surrounding area. Some residents of the area, the Menichinis among them, claim the area was either a municipal landfill or a site of illegal dumping in the 1960s and that water pours from the site down Carroll Street when it rains.

Krancer said DEP’s records do not indicate that there was ever a municipal landfill at Stauffer Point and that aerial photographs taken of the area in the 1930s, ’50s, late ’60s, early ’70s and within the last decade show no signs the area was used as a dump.

DEP inspected the site June 7 but could not collect surface water samples because no water was flowing that day, Krancer said. Yudichak said DEP returned to the site July 5 to collect new water samples and that the department is awaiting test results.

Any future action by DEP rests on the results of those tests.

“Unless additional information becomes available indicating a historic use of the property that may have environmental concerns, no analytical testing, beyond the surface water sampling described above, appears necessary at this time,” Krancer said in his letter.

Yudichak, D-Plymouth Township, said he was pleased with DEP’s efforts and the results of its investigation so far, even if they didn’t yield the smoking gun some may have hoped for.

“Hearing that there are no contaminants at the site, at the Butler Mine Tunnel and that other site, may not be good news for some who were looking for a definitive answer to why there are elevated rates of cancer there,” Yudichak said Friday, “but I’m pleased to find out that indeed there was not contamination there.”

It wasn’t good news for the Menichini family.

“This is a sad day for the people of this area who are still sick, suffering and dying a slow death. Or the people who are family members of the sick that can’t afford to keep their homes because they depend on the person who is sick to provide a living for them,” said Chris Menichini, Chuck’s son.

Chris Menichini said he cannot understand why no government agency has agreed to perform additional testing of the Butler Mine Tunnel, and feels he may need to pay a third party to perform the testing he feels is warranted by the data he has collected about cancer in his neighborhood.

“I don’t understand how they can say that five cases of brain cancer within one block is normal, or ‘to be expected,’” he said.

Yudichak said the investigation into Stauffer Point began with suggestions from Pittston residents, and he said the department will continue to respond to community concerns and better coordinate with other state and federal agencies in the future.

Krancer said in his letter DEP is drafting a memorandum of understanding that will provide a framework for DEP and the state Department of Health to better coordinate their response to suspected disease clusters in Pennsylvania.

Yudichak has also introduced a bill, now under consideration by the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee, that is targeted at better coordinating the state’s response to alleged disease clusters. Among other measures, the bill would create a disease and cancer cluster response team to respond to investigate and report about suspected disease clusters submitted by state residents.

read article online.

By Bill McEwen
The Fresno Bee

The big obstacles removed, Aletha Ware’s dream is coming into view.

The Arkansas native has lived in unincorporated Kettleman City for 43 years. She has spent a goodly chunk of this time trying to bring clean and safe drinking water to the Kings County community.

“It’s yellow, and it smells like eggs,” says Ware, 78, of water from the town’s two wells.

The water contains high levels of arsenic, benzene and lead, according to state health officials, who, nonetheless, didn’t link the water to a cluster of birth defects that made tiny Kettleman City a national story.

Now, after winning a fight against the state bureaucracy, residents could turn on their taps — instead of buying bottled water — as early as the end of next year if plans stay on track.

“We can at least see light at the end of the tunnel. I want this water taken care of before I go,” says Ware, who suffered a heart attack three years ago.

Though they haven’t been in the scrum nearly as long as Ware has, Kings County Supervisor Richard Valle and state Sen. Michael Rubio, D-Bakersfield, are aiding the quest.

The officials — both of whom represent Kettleman City — say that a safe and reliable water system is crucial to the town’s public health and economic development.

About that David vs. Goliath battle: in December, the state Department of Health told Kettleman City leaders that a $3 million grant was contingent on drilling a new well.

This made no sense to residents seeking a surface-water treatment plant and storage tanks, with water coming from the California Aqueduct.

“Why waste the money on another well?” Ware says. “Everybody knows we’re going to find the same thing.”

After state officials heard the protests and studied the costs, they reversed course: build, don’t drill.

(It probably didn’t hurt the Kettleman City cause that one of Gov. Jerry Brown’s first acts was to put Hanford native Diana Dooley in charge of the state’s Health and Human Services Agency.)

Though there are bureaucratic hoops ahead, deadlines to meet and more funding to nail down, Rubio all but guarantees that good water is coming.

“What can go wrong often does, so we have to stay on top of it,” Rubio says. “At a minimum, before the end of my first term , we’re going to have this project completed.”

As envisioned, the project would be constructed in two stages. The estimated total cost is $13 million, including reserves to cover operations and inflation. Plans call for the Kettleman City Community Services District to buy 900 acre-feet of water a year from Kings County’s allocation from the State Water Project.

Rubio says that bringing Kettleman City Elementary School into the system will increase funding opportunities and solve a problem.

“The school has serious water issues,” he says. “Between now and construction, we’ll have to bring immediate, temporary relief of some kind before classes start in the fall. The water is not drinkable and not safe.”

Valle has been instrumental in marshaling support from the Kings County Board of Supervisors and rallying Kettleman City residents.

“No one person can take credit for this,” he says. “This is a team effort to move forward — even if it’s just six inches at a time.”

online article

Frank Mullen
Reno Gazette-Journal

Twelve years after a childhood cancer cluster in Fallon that sickened 17 children and killed three hit the headlines, researchers are still looking for an environmental smoking gun that would explain the outbreak.

Two newly published studies continue research into possible causes of the cluster: one investigates whether prenatal exposure to heavy metals followed by exposure to a virus weakened childrens immune systems making them more prone to developing leukemia. The other study puts forth the theory that mosquitoes may have helped spread the disease.

A research paper presented in the scientific journal Chemico-Biological Interactions this month continues to follow the trail of the metal tungsten.

The potential involvement of tungsten in the development of cancers and other deleterious health problems needs to be fully elucidated by additional research, cautioned Dr. Mark Witten, president of the Tucson-based Odyssey Research Institute.

But he said the recent study by his group confirms previous findings that exposing pregnant mice to the metal and then infecting them to a common virus can damage the immune response of their offspring and result in blood disease in some of the mouse pups. That’s significant to Fallon, which studies showed has relatively high concentrations of tungsten in its environment and had a virus outbreak prior to the start of the cancer cluster.

In the studies, exposure to tungsten appeared to weaken the animals immune response to the virus, researchers reported. About half the mice had enlarged spleens, and 25 percent developed tumors in their jaws and necks. Some mice had symptoms consistent with leukemia, researchers have said.

Tungsten is a natural part of the Nevada environment, but since the 1960s, the Fallon area also has been home to a tungsten refinery and a tungsten plant in the center of town. That firm, Kennametal, has consistently denied its operations can have anything to do with the cancer outbreak.

Joy Chandler, Kennametal spokesperson in Pennsylvania, last week said her firm hasnt yet thoroughly reviewed Wittens latest study. But she said based on a summary of the most recent research the mice in both studies were exposed to concentrations of tungsten that were more than a million times higher than the actual (airborne) levels in Fallon.

Reno Gazette Journal

Public meeting held by American health officials

By CRYSTAL GARCIA,
Special to The Observer

ST. CLAIR COUNTY, MICH. — Emotions ran high Thursday at a public forum to address a cancer cluster involving children.

About 200 people attending the meeting looking for answers about the ongoing investigation into a Wilms tumor cancer cluster in St. Clair County.

A panel of speakers included Dr. Annette Mercatante, medical director of the St. Clair County Health Department, Dr. Hadi Sawaf, pediatric oncologist at St. John Providence Hospital and Greg Brown, director of environmental health at the health department.

There have been eight cases of Wilms tumor found. The rare childhood kidney cancer typically is genetic, doctors say. The cases in the investigation, all diagnosed since 2007, are in the Marine City/China Township area, the Port Huron area and on the border of St. Clair and Macomb counties in Richmond.

Water and air monitoring were issues brought up a few times by the audience.

“We are not only pushing this forward for our families, but for your families also,” said Kristina Tranchemontagne of Cottrellville Township, whose 6-year-old daughter, Ashleigh, was diagnosed with Wilms tumor when she was three years old.

“… We need to make sure that this investigation is followed through. If this is a result of the environment we live in, hopefully in the end, someone will clean up their act. In the meantime, we need the water monitors working at full capacity. We would also like air monitors in place.”

Mercatante said no sampling had been done because other factors must come into place first such as evidence of a contamination, evidence the people affected came in contact with that contamination and a link from the contamination to Wilms tumor.

Mercatante’s presentation went over the Michigan Department of Community Health’s analysis, which recognized the increase of Wilms tumor in St. Clair County, but determined that “these increases were not high enough to rule out it being a chance finding due to the relatively small number of cases,” she said.

According to the state department, “this analysis was inconclusive, but did not rule out the possibility of a Wilms tumor cluster in St. Clair County,” Mercatante said.

This analysis and conclusion is under review by the Centers for Disease Control, she said. A representative from the CDC was not at the meeting.

The CDC will determine a standardized incidence ratio, which is required statistical analysis that gives a confidence level of the cancer not being by chance, Mercatante said. She said sometimes the CDC does investigate things without a “statistically significant number.”

An ongoing collaboration with the CDC will continue, she said.

“… Even if these cases do not convey statistical significance or reliability, for us and St. Clair County and certainly for you and our community, we do not require this criteria to remain concerned and to remain involved with the study of this,” she said.

Submitted questions asked if St. Clair County was the only county with a Wilms tumor cluster and what water sources the affected families had.

Mercatante said St. Clair County was the only county with this type of cluster to her knowledge and the water sources varied from wells to some from three different municipalities.

There were also queries whether any cases of the tumor have been noted on the Canadian side of the St. Clair River. There were also concerns raised about chemical spill notification systems from industry.

Mercatante said there has not been an increase in Wilms tumor in the Sarnia-Lambton area. From 1986 to 2007, there were less than six cases of Wilms tumor in Lambton County, according to Crystal Palleschi, epidemiologist at the Lambton County Community Health Services Department. Brown said Canada is supposed to report spills to the state’s Department of Environmental Quality.

“We know there are spills coming down that river, no doubt,” he said. Next, the county health department must wait for the review from the CDC.

Once it receives the review, a final report summarizing the findings will be completed, forwarded to the state department of health and CDC for review and released to the public.

Sen. Phil Pavlov, R-St. Clair Township, attended the meeting and said he plans to take everything back to Lansing.

“Statistics tell a story, but families tell another story,” he said.

“That’s what you have to listen to.”

Port Huron Times Herald

By James Ridgway Jr
The Courier of Montgomery County

Two county water systems contaminated with radiation

Houston, TX–Two public drinking water systems in Montgomery County have been reported as being contaminated with radiation.

Long-term exposure to the radionuclide contaminants within the water has been linked to an increased risk of cancer, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

The Hulon Lakes Subdivision and Vista Verde Water Systems, both near Lake Conroe, have exceeded the Maximum Contaminate Levels (MCL) as regulated by the EPA.

Dr. Alicia Diehl, drinking water quality team leader with the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality, said radionuclide contamination in drinking water occurs naturally.

“(Radiation) comes from all around, the sky, from the surrounding geology. Even if someone avoided drinking any water at all, all of us are exposed to radiation every year from natural sources,” Dr. Diehl said.

Elston Johnson, TCEQ manager of the public drinking water section, said in addition to radiation occurring naturally, the radiation levels present in aquifers fluctuates.

“The levels can vary from year to year, season to season, decade to decade. That’s the problem with monitoring radioactivity; a lot of factors play into it.”

However, even with fluctuating levels of radiation, Hulon Lakes and Vista Verde Water Systems have been cited multiple years in a row for exceeding maximum contaminate levels.

Janice Hayes, communications manager with the managing company overseeing Hulon Lakes public water, SouthWest Water Company, said they have only received one call regarding the radionuclide contamination as of their last quarterly notice.

“Currently, the one well that is creating the violation is off-line and the pump station associated with this well is isolated from the distribution system. Because the Gross Alpha levels are lower in the other wells, we have created an in-tank blending system which should result in lower levels of Gross Alpha. We will continue to test, monitor and make adjustments as needed,” Hayes said.

The owner/operator of the Vista Verde Water System declined comment.

Dr. Diehl said the maximum contaminate levels established by the EPA for radiochemicals are extremely protective of public health—“They are based on what would happen if someone drank about a half-gallon of (public) water, every day, for 70 years.”

Water analysts test for two primary radionuclide contaminates initially, Dr. Diehl said, adjusted gross alpha radiation and combined radium-226/228. The MCL for the former is 15 picoCurie/liter (pCi/l), and the latter 5 pCi/l. Public drinking water exceeding these MCLs has been connected to increased risk of cancer.

Dr. Diehl said, in the past, the EPA had considered radionuclide levels posing an unreasonable risk to public health to be twice the MCL. However, these levels did not necessarily consider all the potential factors, she said.

“The jury is still out on this particular concern,” she said.

While residents on a public drinking water system are protected by EPA regulations, Johnson said residents on private wells are on their own.

“Unfortunately for private well owners, private wells are not regulated. They have to do the same type of analysis that the public drinking water systems do,” Johnson said. “And there’s no quick field test that can really achieve the results a lab test yields.”

Across Texas, the public water systems contaminated with radionuclides frequently show up in clusters. Dr. Diehl said these clusters are a sign of geological similarities.

Although there is no public data reporting radionuclide levels on private wells in Montgomery County, Dr. Diehl said it is possible that private wells near the same vicinity of the contaminated public water systems may show increased radionuclide levels.

“When we talk to private citizens about these concerns, basically what we try to do is find out their level of risk aversion,” Dr. Diehl said. “Take a family with kids on a private well. They might have a real concern. But we don’t have the authority to tell them to do anything. I would ask what are they most concerned about. They would probably say ‘we are concerned about our kids drinking this water.’ Then we could talk about treatment options that they could use just to ensure that they had drinking water that met their own standard.”

More information on radionuclide contamination can be found under the water section of the TCEQ’s website found at www.tceq. state.tx.us. Specific details on individuals community water systems can also be searched on the TCEQ site.

The Courier

Stamford, Conn.–Somehow the plan for the city to subsidize well water testing in North Stamford is considered controversial. To us it’s a no-brainer.

The city has a public health problem on its hands. It’s been two years since contaminated water was discovered in North Stamford, and still no answers.

Back then it first seemed the contamination was coming from the dump beneath Scofieldtown Park. But the problem appears to be much more complicated than that.

Many private wells in North Stamford have been found to contain harmful chemicals, spread out over a wide area, which indicates that if the park is a source of contamination (a city study said it wasn’t) it’s likely not the only one.

Locating possible sources of contamination is a very difficult job, and has to be approached from many angles.

One is testing wells. The more wells that are tested, the more that can be mapped. Clusters of contamination can help point to potential sources.

The problem is, two years on, and relatively few wells have been tested. There are approximately 5,000 Stamford homes that use private wells. About 300 have submitted testing results to the city Health Department.

One of the reasons so few people are testing could be the high cost — an average of $350 per test.

Then there are the people who do test, but who don’t share their results with the city, largely out of concerns for their property values.

To tackle both problems, the Board of Representatives North Stamford Water Supply Committee has approved an ordinance to spend about $100,000 a year to subsidize testing. Homeowners who take advantage would have to pay only $100 to have their well tested, but they would be required to share test results with the city. The relatively minor expenditure could pay for roughly 750 tests a year, according to health officials.

It’s not likely that many well owners would participate, but if even half that number did to start, the city would more than double its data. So where is the problem?

City Rep. Harry Day, R-13, a Water Supply Committee member, voted against the subsidy. “We don’t do this for radon,” he said. “Indeed, we don’t really do it for anything else. So why are we doing it here?”

Although he’s not the only one to have asked that question, we think the answer is obvious. If groundwater is being contaminated at a source or sources and is spreading, that’s exactly the type of situation that a city needs to confront and not leave to individual homeowners.

Then there is the North Stamford Association, which argues that subsidize testing would unduly burden people connected to water lines.

“It would be unfair to ask homeowners without private wells to subsidize the testing of private wells,” the NSA wrote in a letter to the Board of Representatives.

Well, if that’s the kind of community we have become, or want to be, Stamford is a drastically different place than it once was. Hard to believe as it may be, there really was a time when communities like this rallied together in times of crisis. Everyone didn’t say “Not my problem” and pull down their shades.

The city has before it a sensible ordinance by which it would spend a modest amount of money and amass valuable information — and, not incidentally, potentially alert residents who have contaminated wells.

There was a tremendous sense of urgency in Stamford when this problem was publicized in 2009. That urgency has since dissipated until the issue has become what Board of Representatives President Randy Skigen, D-19, accurately called “a quiet health crisis.”

It’s time to turn up the volume again.

Mr. Skigen proposed subsidized testing about a year ago — yet another example of how progress on water contamination has been too slow. Much too slow.

Perhaps the only conclusion to be drawn at this point is that the city must come together to solve this particular problem.

Stamford Advocate

By Megan Eckstein
News-Post Staff

Frederick, Md.–High levels of arsenic in soil near Fort Detrick’s Area B have local activists concerned, saying the Army post’s past use and testing of arsenic may be contributing to cancer cases in Frederick.

The Kristen Renee Foundation has been regularly taking soil samples around Area B and testing them for contaminants, publicist Rachel Kelley-Pisani said. In April, the foundation tested two new locations, one along Rocky Springs Road, the other from a cistern near Kemp Lane. The lab report showed high arsenic levels, something that had not come up in any of the other samples.

As much as 94.6 milligrams of arsenic per kilogram of soil was found near Kemp Lane, and 4.3 milligrams per kilogram was found near Rocky Springs Road, Kelley-Pisani said.

This geographic area is known for high levels of arsenic in the soil, and Frederick has an even higher level than other parts of the state, according to data from the Maryland Department of the Environment.

Whereas eastern Maryland has about 2.3 milligrams of arsenic per kilogram of soil and central Maryland has 3.3 milligrams per kilogram, Frederick has 4.9 milligrams of arsenic per kilogram of soil, MDE spokeswoman Dawn Stoltzfus said in an email.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, arsenic was used in Frederick as an agricultural pesticide in orchards and crop fields, and as an industrial herbicide along railroads, she said. It is now known that chronic exposure to arsenic can increase a person’s risk of developing skin, lung and bladder cancers.

Kelley-Pisani acknowledged the naturally occurring arsenic in the ground but said she had reason to believe Fort Detrick could have exacerbated the problem.

“There are levels of arsenic that are naturally occurring, but you wouldn’t see an exceedance like that, you wouldn’t see it to that extent,” she said Tuesday afternoon.

Kelley-Pisani said the Kristen Renee Foundation would not yet release information it has on past research at Fort Detrick and how it relates to arsenic, but she said the foundation is in contact with several former Fort Detrick researchers who have agreed to turn over lab notes outlining what carcinogens they worked with at Fort Detrick.

Dozens of people who live or lived near Fort Detrick who have developed cancer are submitting liability claims to Fort Detrick for as much as $5 million each.

The only liability claim Fort Detrick has ever paid out was in 1951, when 11 cows died near Fort Detrick’s fence line from arsenic poisoning. Kelley-Pisani said the foundation was aware of this incident, which was part of what inspired the group to investigate whether arsenic could be behind what the foundation believes is a cancer cluster, though health officials have not found evidence that one exists.

In 1951, a contractor sprayed a weed killer along the Fort Detrick fence line that contained sodium arsenite, according to The Frederick News-Post’s archives. The cows ate grass covered in arsenic and died over a three-day period.

Fort Detrick spokesman Chuck Gordon said current Fort Detrick leaders were familiar with the 1951 incident, but he said Fort Detrick regularly tests its groundwater and soil and there is no evidence of arsenic contamination on post.

When 26 wells and a spring were tested in September for metals, including arsenic, only one well tested positive for arsenic. That well had about 5 parts per billion. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allows 10 parts per billion, he said. Gordon added that MDE has reported groundwater in Frederick County may naturally contain anywhere from 1 to 26 parts per billion.

Rederick News Post

By Day Owen
Guest Viewpoint

The Register-Guard

My urine — and the urine of 20 of my Triangle Lake area neighbors — was tested and came back positive for two of the most dangerous pesticides: 2,4-D and atrazine.

It is probable that nearly everyone who lives in our coastal mountain logging community also is poisoned. We are now going to offer free tests for children at Triangle Lake School.

Our recent tests were conducted by one of the world’s premier experts: Dana Barr, who for two decades ran the labs at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. The analytical chemist is a researcher at Emory University, specializing in chemical exposures.

For seven years, we begged the state of Oregon unsuccessfully to test our urine. We knew that the timber industry helicopters that were spraying pesticides from the sky near our homes and schools were making us sick. We got zero help.

The stumbling block was that the pesticide industry is so powerful in Oregon that it exercises considerable control over state government. The agency in charge of investigating pesticide complaints is overseen by the Pesticide Division of the Department of Agriculture, which is heavily influenced by the pesticide industry.

Last year, we petitioned the federal Environmental Protection Agency for redress. It sent an investigator from the CDC, Capt. Richard Kauffman, to look into our allegations of foul play. His report on PARC — the Pesticide Analytical Response Center, overseen by the pesticide division — was scathing.

After seven years of being treated like dirt by Oregon government, we decided to take matters into our own hands and asked Barr to test our urine. Her results proved us right, but we are not celebrating.

Vindication is not sweet when every organ in your body hurts. The yearly spring spraying season has begun, and the amounts of 2,4-D and atrazine in our second urine samples taken in April have gone way up. Many of us are very sick.

Lawyers.com, a resource for environmental lawyers, lists the dangers of atrazine: increased risk of breast and prostate cancers; birth defects and fetal deaths; low birth weights and premature births; and increased toxic effects when combined with other chemicals.

2,4-D, is also more toxic when combined with other chemicals. Now they are combined in our bodies — along with who knows how many other herbicides that our budget does not permit us to check.

Almost no research has been done on the synergistic effect of several herbicides in the body, but it is believed to create a far more toxic brew than any one pesticide alone.

2,4-D is found in just 2 percent to 4 percent of the general population. But like atrazine, it was found in 100 percent of Triangle Lake residents tested so far.

Here is what we are now asking the state to do. Note that we are especially interested in fixing structural flaws in the spirit of Oregon’s legally mandated policy of best management practices.

We ask that the governor lead an effort to move PARC back under the authority of the state Public Health Division.

We ask that the governor move the authority to establish pesticide buffer zones around homes and schools from the Department of Agriculture to the health division. Pesticide lobbyists previously caused that authority to reside solely with agriculture. That is a glaring structural flaw for two reasons: Agriculture has no expertise in health and environmental toxins. And significantly, it has a financial conflict of interest because it is linked to the pesticide makers.

We ask that the governor order an investigation into exactly how the atrazine and 2,4-D entered our bodies. Both herbicides recently were sprayed aerially near our homes, and we want the governor to confirm the obvious: The stuff drifts farther than industry admits.

Oregon must repeal the part of the Oregon Right to Farm Act that prohibits a county from enacting a pesticide buffer zone.

We believe we have a cancer cluster in our region. We want that studied.

We want meaningful pesticide reform, beginning with adoption of a strong precautionary principle. Whatever steps are necessary to prevent trespass of pesticides into our bodies against our will must be taken, even if that means banning them entirely.

We demand that Oregon alter its rules that currently permit three members of the state Board of Forestry to have financial conflicts of interest.

Unless the above-named structural flaws are remedied, we will file a class action lawsuit alleging that the state of Oregon has failed to abide by best management practices. You can’t put the fox in charge of guarding the henhouse, yet that is exactly what Oregon has done.

Day Owen is the founder of the Pitchfork Rebellion, a forest dwellers support group that can be contacted at P.O. Box 160, Greenleaf, OR 97430.

The Register-Guard

By Andrew Dodson
| Booth Mid-Michigan The Bay City Times

MIDLAND, Texas — Two lawsuits have been filed on behalf of more than 250 West Texas residents against four companies they contend contaminated their water with hexavalent chromium, according to the Associated Press.

According to court documents obtained by the Midland Reporter-Telegram, the residents want compensation for past and future medical expenses, diminished property values, emotional distress, cases of wrongful death and other losses.

One of the four companies being sued in the lawsuit is Midland, Mich.-based Dow Chemical Co. Other defendants in the biggest lawsuit, filed by Midland, Texas attorney Brian Carney, are Schlumberger, Schlumberger Technology Corp. and Lear Corp. The second, smaller lawsuit, was filed on behalf of 10 plaintiffs.

Dow Spokesman Greg Baldwin said Dow received the complaint Monday and is currently reviewing it.

Hexavalent chromium is recognized as a human carcinogen through inhalation. Exposure is known to occur among workers who handle chromate-containing products as well has those who arc weld stainless steel.

The chemical compound was found in drinking water in the 1990s in Hinkley, Calif. and was brought to the attention by the involvement of Erin Brockovich. Carney is working in conjunction with Brockovich on the case.

In June 2009, the ground water in Midland, Texas, was found to be contaminated with chromium, which also involved Brockovich. Watch the video, here.

Read the full report from the Midland Reporter-Telegram.

Dow Chemical continues to face scrutiny after acknowledging responsibility for the dioxins and furan released into the Tittabawassee River from the 1930s to the 1970s. The chemical byproducts of combustion are linked to cancer, reproductive problems and weakened immune systems in laboratory animals.

A recent study says women living along the Tittabawassee and Saginaw rivers may be at a higher risk of developing breast cancer, due to the contamination, although Dow is critical of the report.

Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmentalist group, and the National Disease Clusters Alliance have released a report indicating Midland, Bay and Saginaw counties form a disease cluster, and researchers point the finger at the chemical dioxin.

Michigan Live

by STUART WATSON / NewsChannel 36

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

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

Needless to say, it got our attention.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by STUART WATSON / NewsChannel 36

WCNC.com

Posted on April 29, 2011 at 11:10 PM

Updated Saturday, Apr 30 at 10:08 AM

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

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

Needless to say, it got our attention.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WCNC.com

Posted on April 29, 2011 at 11:10 PM

Updated Saturday, Apr 30 at 10:08 AM

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

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

Needless to say, it got our attention.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WCNC News

BY MATTHEW D. LAPLANTE
The Salt Lake Tribune

First published Apr 23 2011

Ling Seager is dead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

read full article

Ill man blames pollution

MATT HUGHES mhughes@timesleader.com
The Times Leader

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those answers did not satisfy the Menichini family.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Menichinis are glad someone is listening.

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

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

Alabama State Health Department was ‘slow, apathetic’ on Eastern Shore

Op Ed Piece printed 12-21-08 in Mobile Register, Mobile, Alabama
Written by Lesley Farrey Pacey, mother of leukemia survivor Sarah Pacey and
Founder/Director of Eastern Shore Community Health Partners, Inc., a Mobile Bay initiative to research chronic disease clusters

By LESLEY FARREY PACEY

Special to the Press-Register

For nearly four years, I have been gathering the names of the Eastern Shore residents with rare cancers and neurological diseases.

Ever since January 2005, I have pleaded with the Alabama Department of Public Health to take note of that list and investigate what I believed was a childhood cancer cluster involving my daughter and five other children — two of whom died.

Four years and two failed investigations later, the health department is no closer to finding answers.

I have been continually disappointed with the state public health agency’s slow, apathetic and inadequate response to a very real health problem in our community. After flip-flopping for four years on whether our cancernumbers were elevated, the ADPH this month finally admitted in a recent news article in the Press-Register that the Eastern Shore did experience a pediatric cancer cluster from 2000 through 2004.

But here’s the kicker: Now they are telling us not to worry about it.

“We recognize that any time you have a cancer cluster, it’s logical that folks get worried about it, especially when it involves young children,” Dr. Charles Woernle, assistant state health director, told the Press-Register in a Dec. 13 article. “Now, thank goodness, we have determined that the initial cluster has dissipated and we haven’t had a recurrence.”

I’m still worried. I know about more sick people than anyone should ever know about. And recently I learned about two new cases of childhood leukemia in teenagers who live just a few miles from my Point Clear home.

I found Woernle’s admission of a childhood cancer cluster astonishing. I knew it all along. Scientists from the University of Arizona doing cancer cluster studies here knew it. But it wasn’t so clear at the Alabama Department of Public Health.

Sometimes they admitted elevations. Usually, they flat-out denied it.

But long before Woernle’s admission, the ADPH’s own Web site spoke up.

The site showed a drastic jump in new leukemia, lymphoma and brain cancer cases in Baldwin County from 2001-02. New leukemia cases jumped from seven in 2001 to 17 in 2002.

Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma rose from 13 new cases in 2001 to 31 new cases in 2002.

Baldwin County saw eight new cases of brain and other nervous system cancers in 2001, compared to 13 new cases of brain and nervous system cancers in 2002.

Different numbers were revealed in November when the state dropped its second investigation.

Woernle pointed to statistics from the Alabama Cancer Registry, a division of the ADPH, which showed incidences of some cancers rose 18 percent from 2001 through 2005. These statistics, which are based on Baldwin County as a whole, cannot accurately reflect Eastern Shore clusters.

Actually, University of Arizona scientists contend that the Fairhope/Point Clear area experienced double the number of expected childhood leukemia cases from 2000 through 2004.

Today, my lists have grown to include the names of more than 60 children and adults on the Eastern Shore with rare cancers over a dozen years, and 30 people over six years with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

The rare neurological disorder crippled and ultimately claimed, among others, my grandmother-in-law, DorothyPacey.

Our data show ALS rates on the Eastern Shore are five times the national average, at best. But the ADPH has washed its hands of the ALS issue as well.

A national registry for ALS is currently in the works. In the meantime, the ADPH has no plans to investigate the preponderance of ALS on the Eastern Shore. Staff members point to mortality rates, which they contend show no elevations in ALS deaths compared to elsewhere.

My personal experience with childhood cancer and other rare diseases began four years ago. Almost immediately after my daughter Sarah’s leukemia diagnosis in 2004, I began to notice how many of my friends and neighbors had been stricken with seemingly “rare” diseases.

My concern grew into activism. I wanted to know how cancer came to strike my little girl and so many others.

When all this began, I innocently trusted public health officials to address my concerns. Upon my urging, the ADPH launched its first-ever public health assessment in 2005.

Using names of rare cancer patients provided by me, the ADPH interviewed seven of 25 people before stopping the study without explanation.

Then, in January of this year, after Fairhope native Anna Calhoun of Nebraska wrote officials with the same request, the ADPH reopened the investigation. Alabama toxicologist Dr. Neil Sass promised to expand the study to include a rash of Eastern Shore ALS cases.

Starting with my database, the ADPH began a “Pilot Cancer Study” in Baldwin County. But after interviewing 56 of 90 contacts, Woernle halted the study, asking the University of Alabama-Birmingham’s School of Public Health for a review.

UAB in November recommended the investigation be dropped, citing statistics as well as the ADPH’s inability to do the job. Woernle said the study ended because of a lack of funding, lack of staff, lack of protocols and because the ADPH was using “unscientific open-ended” questionnaires.

The ADPH also noted that while childhood leukemias and lymphomas, as well as bladder, kidney and ovariancancer in adults, were slightly elevated in Baldwin County from 2000 through 2004, those elevations no longer appeared statistically significant.

Regardless of what the ADPH says about the statistics, I remain convinced that the Eastern Shore is experiencing too many rare cancers and neurological diseases. Many others agree.

With the help of Fairhope City Council President Debbie Quinn, I recently formed Eastern Shore Community Health Partners, a nonprofit organization. Our 12-member board of directors — which includes doctors, scientists, a hospital administrator and others — aims to assess the scope of certain chronic diseases on the Eastern Shore and form partnerships with universities to research possible environmental causes.

Already, we have formed partnerships with the University of Arizona and the University of Nebraska. The results of tree core samples collected in June on the Eastern Shore by the Arizona researchers will be revealed in January. The University of Nebraska will begin its own studies after the first of the year.

By its own admission, the ADPH is ill-prepared and understaffed and doesn’t have the resources to conduct a public health assessment. A recent Johns Hopkins study revealed Alabama isn’t alone. The study showed that state health agencies in general lack the protocols, funding and staff to conduct successful chronic disease investigations.

Also, if we really took disease clusters seriously, we would have to own up to other sins.

We might have to talk about our shoddy environmental record and the fact that in 2000 our Mobile County neighbors ranked eighth in the nation for total toxic releases to the air, especially for neurotoxins and developmental toxicants that cause birth defects and cancers, according to EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory.

Mobile County ranked first in the nation in the release of air pollutants linked to birth defects in 2001, according to the EPA.

In all my life, I have never known so many neighbors with rare cancers and neurological diseases. This is not normal or acceptable, and we should demand more as taxpayers from the agency established to protect our health.

We all deserve answers and the assurance that the air we breathe and the water we drink are safe.

Eastern Shore Community Health Partners is working to find those answers — because, unlike the officials at the Alabama Department of Public Health, we have everything to lose.

Lesley Farrey Pacey is founder and director of Eastern Shore Community Health Partners. Readers may write to her at ESCHP, P.O. Box 62, Point Clear 36564 or send e-mail to baldwinclusters@yahoo.com.

by Nishi Gupta

KTVB.COM

BOISE — Next Tuesday, a young cancer survivor from Idaho will testify at the nation’s capitol in support of a proposed law.

And alongside 21-year-old Trevor Schaefer will be Erin Brockovich, a legal assistant who helped successfully sue a California company that was polluting a community’s water supply.

Her work in the early 1990s was the subject of a movie and propelled her to stardom. Now she works an activist and fights to keep toxins out of the environment.

One of her latest projects will be to support Trevor Schaefer and the legislation named after him, called Trevor’s Law.

Trevor Schaefer and Erin Brockovich — his experience inspired legislation, her experience inspired a box office hit.

Both share a common goal to provide relief to communities that have abnormally high cases of disease.

March 29th, they’ll both testify in front of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee.

read full article and watch 3-minute video online

Victor Furman, op-ed
Press & Sun-Bulletin

The State of Delaware has confirmed a link between a coal-burning plant and an increase in cancer among exposed residents. The Delaware News Journal reports that years after citizen activists first asked the state to investigate the problem, the Delaware Division of Public Health has finally confirmed what the activists suspected: There’s a cluster of cancer cases near a coal-burning plant, the state’s worst polluter.

The coal-burning plant is NRG Energy Inc.’s Indian River complex and is located in Millsboro, Delaware. The study was conducted by examining the cancer cases in a six ZIP code area around the plant. The areas examined were Dagsboro, Frankford, Georgetown, Millsboro, Ocean View and Selbyville.

The Division of Public Health study showed an incidence of 553.9 cancer cases per 100,000 residents of this area between 2000 and 2004 compared with the Delaware state rate of 501.3 and the U.S. rate of 473.6 cancer cases per 100,000 residents. Thus, this study confirmed that the rate of cancer cases in this area is 17 percent higher than the national average.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory, coal-burning power plants in Delaware release large amounts of toxic hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, ammonia and hydrogen fluoride, along with lead, nickel and mercury compounds and other chemicals that may cause cancer or linger in human tissues or the environment.

No government study would be complete without a qualification blaming the exposed people. The Delaware study is no exception. In the study, the highest incidence of cancer among the exposed residents was lung cancer, which accounted for 19.5 percent of the cases. The Division of Public Health said that it is not sure whether the higher incidence of lung cancer could have been caused by tobacco or by people having moved into the area from a different environment.

The report also said that new state rules intended to reduce emissions “are a major step forward in providing a clean environment.” With this, we agree.

Does any of this sound familiar? As you may know, citizen activists first uncovered an unusual cluster of polycythemia vera cases along the Ben Titus Road in the Still Creek area of Rush Township. Polycythemia vera is a rare bone marrow cancer.

Two cancer studies by the Pennsylvania Department of Health (PA DOH) left the affected residents with little information of significance about the rates of cancer in the area or the cause of the polycythemia vera. The PA DOH attributed any increases in the incidences of cancer that did appear in its two studies to life style, specifically smoking and diet. The PA DOH was partially correct. The increases can be attributed to life style but in these studies the life style relates to living in an area contaminated with imported hazardous wastes and to being exposed to a toxic chemical soup.

A reporter, Sue Sturgis, from North Carolina has reviewed the PA DOH’s data of reported cases of polycythemia vera by county for the years 2001 through 2003 and suggests a possible association between polycythemia vera and power plants that burn waste coal www.hometownhazards.com. It is amazing to us that a reporter from North Carolina has done more investigating into the basis of our problems than the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

Finally, a recent article reported that the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), part of the federal Department of Health and Human Resources, is completing a study on the incidence of polycythemia vera in Carbon, Luzerne and Schuylkill counties. The article reported that the ATSDR has found an almost quadrupling of the incidence of polycythemia vera in the area.

The primary purpose of all government is to protect the health, safety and welfare of its citizens. When will our government begin to protect our health, safety and welfare from the toxic emissions of coal-fired power plants? We are not asking that these plants be shut down but we are asking that our legislators stop giving these toxin-emitting plants licenses to pollute. We are demanding that they be operated in a manner that reduces the risks of toxic emissions for the people living near these plants.

*We thank Jill McElheney of the Ministry to Improve Child and Adolescent Health (MICAH’s Mission: Micahmission@aol.com), P.O. Box 275, Winterville, GA 30683, for calling our attention to the study by the Delaware Division of Public Health..

SO YOU thought smoking cigarettes was bad for your health? Try living next to a coal-fired power plant.

That’s the diagnosis that Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) relayed to the public in a comprehensive medical study released on November 18 called “Coal’s Assault of Human Health.” In it, the organization, comprised of physicians and public health experts, claims that coal pollutants damage every major organ in the human body and contribute to four of the top five leading causes of death in the United States.

Not since NASA’s James Hansen rang the global warming alarm about coal’s major contribution to climate change has there been a more dire call to shut down coal operations in the United States. It is not simply about cleaning up the coal process; it is about halting its production altogether in order to immediately save lives.

From an article in the Socialistic Worker.org:

At every stage in its life cycle, coal can negatively impact human health, from mining operations, cleaning, transportation to burning and disposing of the combustion waste. PSR reports that many Americans are being affected daily by coal and the exposure is contributing to horrible health problems; heart attacks, lung cancer, strokes and asthma, among others.

“The findings of this report are clear: while the U.S. relies heavily on coal for its energy needs, the consequences of that reliance for our health are grave,” said Dr. Alan H. Lockwood, a principal author of the report and a professor of neurology at the University at Buffalo.

From Victor Furman:

As individuals responsible for our own carbon footprint we must look at the feet of the entire energy industry. Coal has the biggest set of feet of all other sources combined. I as many readers know, am an advocate for natural gas and natural gas drilling. I argue points and research every report of any source of problems that are connected to the hydro fracturing process. There are not any reports of water contamination or earth destroying mountain top removal scenario’s to where one can point a finger and say this was caused by fracking. There have been surface spills and production mishaps that were quickly contained and remedied but nothing, I mean nothing that compares with the intentional destruction of lands connected to the minning of coal. There is no comparison to the damage to our lands deforestation and no comparison to the many many many water tables, rivers lakes and streams that have intentionally been polluted by the by prodoct of coal, “coal ash” which has been said to contain more radioactive material then waste from a nuclear power plant as well as lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury and other Total dissolved solids that are harm full to our environment and health.

We are afforded a great opportunity to begin to lift the feet of coal from the surface of our planet for a fossil fuel that is 47 percent cleaner, uses much less water to obtain, and need not have to tear down our mountain tops. and killing our waterways through mining and coal ash dumps. This is not just a bridge to Cleaner Energy, this the cleaner energy to bring us to the promise and development of greener technologies.

Yes I am an advocate for what some are calling a gift from God. And yes I do have land and stand to make money from signing a lease. I welcome those of you who might say my advocacy for natural gas is based on greed to check the deeds office and see that the vast amount of land I own that has promised, according to some, to bring me life changing wealth. What I own is 5 acres of highly taxed land. My real goal is not the monies, but the thought of reducing the carbon emissions that are destroying our earth through anyway necessary so that my grand children wont have to watch there mother or father die of diseases brought on by energy pollution. My family and I lived near a coal fired power plant, My wife died at 42 from cancer of the endocrine system, my daughter was cured from mouth cancer at the age of 15. My other daughter suffers from thyroid problems. was it coal and coal ash dust…. I believe so. Drilling for Natural Gas beats the heck out of drilling and mining for coal.

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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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By Don Hopey and David Templeton, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Stacy Beisler's hand is covered with black soot she wiped from her backyard grill, which she had cleaned two days earlier. Robin Rombach/Post-Gazette

In many places around Western Pennsylvania residents see clusters of death and clusters of people sickened by cancer or heart and lung diseases.

And, like Lee Lasich, a Clairton resident, they’re frustrated that government health and environmental agencies don’t see them too, don’t do something about the problems and don’t take a tougher stance on enforcement of air pollution regulations.

Ms. Lasich, whose husband worked in U.S. Steel Corp.’s Clairton Coke Works and died after suffering from lung, prostate and throat cancers in 2004 when he was 53, is typical. She uses all the fingers of her right hand to tick off the names of friends who have died from brain cancer in her Constitution Circle neighborhood. She uses her left hand to count “a whole family that’s got pancreatic cancers.”

“They’re on our street and near where we live and they’re not that old,” said Ms. Lasich, a leader of the local grassroots group Residents for a Clean Healthy Mon Valley. “It’s too coincidental, and there’s too much there. This is a scary time to live here. People are starting to notice that something is going on; that something just isn’t right.”

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s analysis of Pennsylvania Department of Health mortality data from 2000 through 2008 found that 14,636 more people died from heart and respiratory disease and lung cancer in 14 Western Pennsylvania counties than national rates would predict, or 12,833 after adjusting for excess smoking in the region. And the yearlong investigation found numerous people throughout the region who talked about what seemed like unnatural and unexplained clusters of illnesses and death in their communities.

This overlap of high mortality rates and pollution raises questions about whether there is a causal relationship. The question has not been definitively answered, but for the people who live among these clusters, the connection seems clear.

• In Lincoln, across the Monongahela River from Clairton, Stacy Beisler can quickly count the names of a dozen residents who either have some form of cancer or have died from it recently. There’s a half dozen more in her neighborhood who have lung disease or have died from it.

• In LaBelle, Fayette County, Gary Kuklish is one of several residents who point to nine cases of cancer in the 18 homes on Sauerkraut Hill.

• In Clearfield County, the United Methodist Church’s Greater Shawville Parish has numerous cases of cancer and respiratory disease, according to former pastor Jennifer Heikes. There’s hardly a family in the church that hasn’t been touched by cancer, said Leslie Shaw, a parishioner.

• Street maps hand-drawn by George Simo of his Jefferson Hills neighborhood, on top of a ridge along the Mon, are crowded with names and scribbled notations about fatal cancers, heart and respiratory disease at more than three dozen homes.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines a “cluster” as an unusual number of illnesses or deaths grouped together in the same time frame or location and reported to a public health agency. Cluster investigations seek to confirm cases of a single disease; establish whether the reported cases represent an unusually high occurrence of the disease; and explore potential causes when possible.

Epidemiologists say it is almost impossible to verify with scientific certainty reports of environmental disease and death clusters. But for the residents the clusters seem real and they raise real concern.

“In 36 houses on Silverdale and Silver roads I identified 17 cases of heart disease, three cases of lung disease, 17 cancers and five cases of dementia or Alzheimer’s,” Mr. Simo said.

Known around the neighborhood as “the cat man,” or “animal man,” Mr. Simo takes in stray animals. As he did with his neighbors, he’s kept records of death rates of those animals.

“People drop off live animals here all the time, but they’re dying young,” he said, pointing to the front of his 2 1/2-acre yard where homemade wooden markers adorn weedy graves of more than 60 cats, 280 birds and 13 dogs. “These dogs should have died of old age out on the farm but they’re dying here between young and middle age. What’s happening?”

It’s a question that hangs in the air in many communities. One is Greene Township, Beaver County, which has a mortality rate 44 percent above the national average for the three diseases reviewed by the Post-Gazette.

“There seems to be a lot of heart problems and a high rate of cancer around here, and it’s been around a while. Just about every road you go on I can name two or three people with cancer who lived there,” said Russell Morgan, board of commissioners chairman in Greene Township, home to FirstEnergy Corp.’s sprawling, 1,300-acre Little Blue Run coal-ash impoundment for the Bruce Mansfield power plant in nearby Shippingport.

“We should be looking at doing a study of the higher [mortality] rates,” said Mr. Morgan, whose father died of a heart attack there at age 56.

And upwind from highly industrialized Neville Island is Avalon, where each individual disease category — heart and respiratory disease and lung cancer — is above the adjusted national average and the total three-disease mortality risk rate is 18 percent higher. Janet Strahosky, a long-time Avalon activist, lamented the public apathy despite the community’s knowledge of the eight women with breast cancer and the dead-end street in neighboring Ben Avon where there are five people with cancers.

“I’ve canvassed all of these communities door-to-door and people know what’s happening, but they don’t speak out,” she said. The Allegheny County Health Department “needs to expand the chemical pollutants it tests for. There’s lots of stuff coming out of local industries that we don’t test for and don’t measure or monitor or connect them to health effects.”

A committee appointed by the Health Department board is working on new guidelines to regulate the emissions of air toxics by local industries. The board tabled a proposal in July 2009 that would have covered 300 hazardous chemicals, including all of the 187 hazardous air pollutants — many of them dangerous carcinogens — listed in the federal Clean Air Act. The county’s existing air toxic guidelines, which date to 1988, have never been updated.

Cause of clusters unproven
The Pennsylvania Department of Health gets 50 or more requests to investigate reported “clusters” every year — including calls from towns around Neville Island, from Shaler and Washington County — but hasn’t identified the environmental cause of any.

“They’re anecdotal, so we look at the mortality rates and try to get some sort of objective measure of what’s happening,” said Gene Weinberg, head of the department’s Bureau of Epidemiology. “As to clusters, well, we’ve seen some unusual rates. But discovering the factor causing them is rare.”

Even though it gets approximately 1,000 citizen referrals or reports a year, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in the CDC has never issued an environmental cause finding for a community “cluster” of death or disease in the United States.

The ATSDR, the principal non-regulatory federal public health agency responsible for addressing health effects associated with toxic exposures, works in cooperation with state health departments, which almost always act as the lead investigating agencies.

While such collaborations haven’t identified community clusters, the ATSDR has made determinations of a number of “occupational clusters,” including asbestos-related cancers and diseases related to W.R. Grace Co.’s mining of vermiculite in Libby, Mont. Even though that cluster is classified as occupational, the agency said, it caused health problems, disease and cancers for many women and children in Libby who never worked for W.R. Grace.

The CDC, working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, is updating its 20-year-old cancer cluster investigation guidelines to incorporate new epidemiological survey and computer tools and best practices.

But those 1990 guidelines and any eventual updates of them are only advisory, which creates problems due to inconsistent investigations in different states, said Terri Nordbrock, executive director of the National Disease Clusters Alliance and an environmental health scientist.

“There’s also a lot of pressure not to declare a ‘cluster’ exists because it’s a controversial thing that takes a lot of work and attracts media attention,” Ms. Nordbrock said. “Many states don’t have the resources to do such investigations and any cluster findings can get them into a lot of trouble with not a lot of payback.”

In a written statement about the Post-Gazette’s ecological mortality study, Dr. Weinberg said the state Department of Health “recognizes that environmental pollution has health consequences.” Although associations may appear, he cautioned against attributing the mapped findings to any factor or combination of factors.

According to the ATSDR, the state health department has conducted 129 public health assessments and health consultations for the registry since 1994 and found no environmental cause for any cluster.

“It is important to understand that clusters, or elevated rates in time and space, can be identified,” said Beth Abrams, a spokeswoman for the ATSDR, “but that does not mean that those diseases necessarily share the same cause or an environmental cause.”

Another cluster view
Daniel Wartenberg, an epidemiologist, professor and director of the Division of Environmental Epidemiology at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J., said he’s concerned that state health departments and the CDC are missing legitimate clusters.

“Some of the pollutants cause multiple types of cancer and even multiple diseases,” he said. “To say that a state health department will look at only one type of cancer or one disease when considering a cluster is crazy. It’s like calling a doctor when you don’t feel good and he treats your cold symptoms but not your broken leg.”

Dr. Wartenberg, who is on the board of the National Disease Clusters Alliance and also a member of the CDC committee working to update cluster investigation guidelines, said there’s better science, computer techniques and years of experience that states should be applying to cluster investigations that will make them work better for communities and the states.

There’s also a better way to approach such investigations, including analyzing death and disease data and pinpointing problem areas, he said.

“Now the health departments wait until they are called up or approached by individuals or communities about a perceived problem. The state doesn’t go out and look for these clusters. It’s passive.” he said.

In Clairton, Rex Cole Jr., a lifelong resident, has seen family members — uncles, aunts, father, grandparents — die of some form of cancer or heart disease in their 60s along with many neighbors. It’s the way of life and death in the mill town dominated by the world’s biggest coke plant.

“What you did was, you went to high school, then got a job at U.S. Steel,” said Mr. Cole, 28, who is leading a faith-based effort to attract alternative energy industries and jobs to Clairton. “The neighbors said everybody on the street basically died of cancer … Sometimes the smell is so thick you can taste it. But most people are more worried about putting food on the table than the long-term effects of lung or heart diseases.”

U.S. Steel declined to comment on the Post-Gazette’s study and its findings, or comment on whether its emissions have affected the health of residents in the Mon Valley. It did outline its ongoing $1.2 billion replacement and upgrade of its operations in Clairton, including new coke batteries and three new coke quenching towers.

Pollution in the Liberty-Clairton region has exceeded federal health standards for airborne particles since 1995. The coke works is the largest local contributor of airborne particles. It is operating under a county consent order and agreement designed to reduce those emissions.

Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983. David Templeton: dtempleton@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1578.

First published on December 13, 2010 at 12:00 am

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