Visit the Stand Up 2 Cancer website.

By Bryant Furlow

The Medical Muckraker

Earlier this month, I got an interesting e-mail from Terry Nordbrock, executive director of the National Disease Clusters Alliance (NDCA).

Terry pointed out a curious “correction” in the monthly government scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives. (EHP is the flagship journal of the National Institutes for Environmental Health Sciences.)

EHP had added a “correction” to a 2007 CDC review of risk factors for acute childhood leukemias, Terry noticed.

Whereas the authors had originally reported that both benzene and ionizing radiation were risk factors for childhood leukemia, the correction indicated that benzene was not, after all, a leukemia-associated carcinogen:

In the Abstract and in the section “Risk Factors,” the sentences “Only two environmental risk factors (benzene and ionizing radiation) have been significantly linked to ALL or AML” in the original manuscript published online have been changed here to “Only one environmental risk factor (ionizing radiation) has been significantly linked to ALL or AML.”

That’s a hell of a shift in thinking to be buried, unexplained, in a correction note.

I’ve contacted all three authors of the corrected review, as well as leading leukemia epidemiologists, for some insight into what’s going on.

Benzene’s carcinogenicity is one of the best-established epidemiological ‘truths’ in the field.  A consensus that benzene’s not a significant carcinogen after all would be tantamount to epidemiologists deciding cigarettes might not cause cancer after all.

That would be huge news.

But given the petrochemical industry’s concerted efforts over the years to downplay benzene’s carcinogenicity, one also has to consider whether or not there may be more to the story.

Evidence for some of the seemingly most clear-cut cases of benzene’s carcinogenicity are buried away from epidemiologists’ eyes in court settlement documents regarding an occupational cancer cluster in Cincinnati, Ohio and a residential lymphoma cluster near Waller, Texas.

I’m heading up to Santa Fe now to cover state regulation of health insurance rates for The New Mexico Independent.

But I’ll be digging into the curious EHP correction and reporting what I learn at epiNewswire, later this week.

Thanks for the interesting tip, Terry!

New Bill Introduced Today Seeks to Reduce Toxic Chemical Exposure and Ensure Safety

(Washington, DC) – Congressmen Bobby Rush (D-IL) and Henry Waxman (D-CA) today introduced a groundbreaking bill to overhaul U.S. chemicals policy in the House Energy & Commerce Committee.  The “Toxic Chemicals Safety Act of 2010” is intended to overhaul the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which has failed to regulate chemicals in consumer products – even those that have known links to cancer, learning disabilities, asthma, reproductive disorders, and other serious health problems.

“Today’s legislation will reduce chronic disease in this country, a burden that scientists have increasingly linked to toxic chemicals found in our homes and places of work,” said Andy Igrejas, Director of Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, a coalition of 250 environmental and public health groups.  “It will also give American manufacturers and retailers the tools they need to compete in a world demanding safer products.  We applaud Chairman Rush and Chairman Waxman for leading the way.”

The House legislation would significantly strengthen public health protections from toxic chemicals. For the first time, the chemical industry would be required to demonstrate that chemicals are safe, rather than the EPA having to prove they are unsafe. In a major shift the legislation would require chemical manufacturers to provide basic health and safety information for all chemicals as a condition for them remaining on or entering the market and to make that information public.

Other elements of the legislation would require:

*Chemicals to meet a health standard to enter or remain on the market.

*EPA to identify and restrict the most toxic chemicals that build up in our food chain and in our bodies, such as brominated flame retardants.

*Populations most vulnerable to toxic chemicals, including pregnant women, infants and children, and those living in environmental ‘hot spots’, to have extra protections from toxic chemicals.

*EPA to rely on the National Academy of Sciences’ recommendations to incorporate the best and latest science when determining the safety of chemicals.

Today’s bill, introduced in the House, follows a similar bill introduced in the Senate in April by Senator Lautenburg (D-NJ) called the “Safe Chemicals Act of 2010”.  For the past three months Congressmen Rush and Waxman have been meeting with key stakeholders including industry representatives, health and environmental advocates and the EPA to come up with a balanced bill.

“Right now our nation is bearing the brunt of decades of lax to non- existent federal oversight and the harm to consumers is immeasurable,” said Congressman Rush in a recent article about the bill.

Just this year the President’s Cancer Panel reported that “the true burden of environmentally induced cancers has been grossly underestimated.”

“People have been led to believe that chemicals are proven safe before added to products we use every day, but the law doesn’t offer that protection,” said Igrejas.  “Today’s legislation gives EPA both the authority and a mandate to begin making up for 34 years of neglect.  Congress should seize this opportunity immediately.”

#   #   #

Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families is a broad coalition of groups, including major environmental organizations like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund, health organizations like the Learning Disabilities Association, Breast Cancer Fund, and the Autism Society, health professionals and providers like the American Nurses Association, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the Mt. Sinai Children’s Environmental Health Center, and concerned parents groups like the 1 million-member MomsRising. For more information visit our website at www.saferchemicals.org.

Op Ed, Boston Globe
By Teresa Heinz Kerry, Terry Collins and John Warner | July 10, 2010

THE PRESIDENT’S Cancer Panel recently issued a stunning report on the role of environmental factors in causing cancer. For those wondering why America has yet to win the war against cancer, the panel minces no words: “The true burden of environmentally induced cancers has been grossly underestimated.’’ If you ignore the cause, how can you prevent cancer and really win the war?

The panel urges strong actions to reduce people’s widespread exposures to carcinogens. It says the prevailing regulatory approach used in the United States is “reactionary, not preventive.’’ It concludes that US regulation of cancer-causing chemicals is ineffective for several reasons, including inadequate funding, weak laws, and undue industry influence.

This report is not the result of a liberal panel following the lead of the Obama administration. Both panel members were appointed by President George W. Bush and the panel’s public hearings were conducted before Bush left office.The report identifies a series of actions that can be taken to win the war against cancer.

First, it recommends that a prevention-oriented approach should replace the current reactionary system, and that this should become the cornerstone of a new national cancer prevention strategy.

It finds that government agencies responsible for protecting Americans from cancer need more tools, and that a more integrated and transparent system — one driven by science and free from political or industry influence — must be developed to protect public health.

Among its many recommendations, we were especially encouraged to find this: “ ‘Green chemistry’ initiatives and research . . . should be pursued and supported more aggressively. . .’’ Green chemistry offers a path forward that leads both to a healthier America and a wave of positive chemical innovations that can strengthen our economy.

World markets want safe materials. Green chemistry will be able to provide them, but only if it gets the resources it needs to flourish. Other countries, including Germany, India, and, China, are investing far more in green chemistry than the United States does. As demand grows for safer materials because of the compelling science that show how chemicals in wide use today are undermining our health, America’s chemical industry needs to become the leader.

What’s holding us back? Lack of financial support for green chemistry research and innovation. But just turning on the funding spigot won’t be enough. We also need to reinvent how chemistry is taught in US colleges and universities.

Green chemistry equips chemists with the knowledge to ask tough questions about potential hazards when they are thinking about making a new chemical. As they make choices early in new chemical design, this simple step could dramatically reduce the chances that new chemicals would be toxic.

In the past, chemists have rarely been trained to ask these questions. It’s as if a course in driver’s education never taught students about traffic accidents. Perhaps not surprisingly, students as well as potential employers are creating demand for this change.

Green chemistry has a long way to go to develop a full toolkit of chemical methods that can replace more classic approaches. But the path is clear, a “prevention-oriented’’ design strategy that can do honor to the President’s Cancer Panel’s insistence that “new products must be well-studied prior to and following their introduction into the environment. . .’’

Invigorating green chemistry is a win-win solution. Americans will become healthier because the materials in their homes, the air, and water will be safe by design, and the chemical industry will be better positioned to compete in world markets that care about chemical safety.

Teresa Heinz Kerry is chairman of the Heinz Family Philanthropies. Terry Collins is a professor of green chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University. John Warner is president of the Warner-Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry.

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Daily Exposures Cause Far More Cancers Than Once Thought, a Presidential Panel Says

By EMILY WALKER
ABC News MedPage Today Staff Writer
May 6, 2010

Environmental carcinogens are responsible for a far greater number of cancers than previously believed — a fact that suggests eradicating these environmental threats should be a priority for President Obama — according to the report of a presidential advisory panel.

“The Panel was particularly concerned to find that the true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated,” wrote the authors of the report, “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now.”

“The panel urges you most strongly to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our Nation’s productivity, and devastate American lives,” the report’s authors wrote in a letter to President Obama.
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The President’s Cancer Panel was established by the National Cancer Act of 1971, when then President Richard Nixon declared war on cancer. The panel is required to submit an annual report to the president describing the status of the “war” and identifying both progress and barriers to continued advances.

The singling out of environmental causes for cancer in this year’s report is considered a major — and some said welcome — departure from previous reports, according to a number cancer specialists contacted by ABC News and MedPage Today.

“For the past 30 years … there has been systematic effort to minimize the importance of environmental factors in carcinogenesis,” said Dr. Philip Landrigan, director of the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.

“There has been disproportionate emphasis on lifestyle factors and insufficient attention paid to discovering and controlling environmental exposures,” he said. “This report marks a sea change.”

Dr. Jennifer Lowry, a medical toxicologist at Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City, Mo., said the report finally lends a “voice that could be heard that the environment does play an important role in the health of all people of every age.”

The report is actually a synthesis of testimony from more than two dozen experts in cancer, chemicals and environmental toxins.

Based on that testimony and research compiled over the last two years, report authors Dr. LaSalle Leffall, Jr., of Howard University and Vivian Smith, professor emerita at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, concluded that the government has failed to prevent unnecessary exposures to carcinogens. The challenge for the Obama administration, they wrote, is to intensify research efforts into environmental toxins.

“With the growing body of evidence linking environmental exposures to cancer, the public is becoming increasingly aware of the unacceptable burden of cancer resulting from environmental and occupational exposures that could have been prevented through appropriate national action,” Leffal and Smith wrote in the letter to the president.

Among the potential exposures cited in the report were pesticides, fertilizers, pharmaceutical byproducts in the water supply, household chemicals and tanning beds. Emissions from cars, trucks and planes add to the toxic mix, the authors wrote.

But the authors said there was no evidence connecting the use of cell phones to increased cancer risk.

While Americans are exposed to thousands of chemicals each year, only several hundred of those chemicals have been safety tested, Leffal and Smith said.

The study of environmental factors and their effect on cancer has been giving short shrift compared to studying lifestyle factors and genetic and molecular causes of cancer, the authors claimed.

But paging through the lengthy report, it was difficult to find solid science to back that strong statement.

“At this time, we do not know how much environmental exposures influence cancer risk and related immune and endocrine dysfunction,” Leffal and Smith wrote.

In an interview, Leffal said he hoped the report, if nothing else, would raise awareness that chemicals and other environmental toxins may be causing cancer and that more studies are needed.

“We think based on what we know, when you look at all the data, it just appears to us that there are areas where its been greatly under-reported,” Lefall said. “We don’t know 100 percent, but that’s why we believe we need to do more research.”

The National Toxicology Program, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, does list some chemicals such as benzene and formaldehyde and some substances including tobacco as carcinogenic, but environmental factors, such air pollutants and naturally-occurring chemicals, are less well-understood.
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Public awareness about some compounds, such as bisphenol A (BPA), has increased in the past year as a handful of studies and report linked the ubiquitous chemical — widely used in plastics such as baby bottles and other drink containers — to metabolic disorders, heart disease and male sexual dysfunction.

Also, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently announced it would review safety data on another common chemical, triclosan, which is used in antibacterial soaps and washes, toothpastes and cosmetics, after lab tests on animals were concerning.

In the report, Leffal and Smith recommended that physicians routinely ask about their current workplace and living environment as a routine part of collecting patient history.

They also recommended:

Conducting a thorough assessment of workplace exposures and cancer risks;

Creating a more coordinated and transparent system for enforcing environmental health standards;

Increasing funding for federal research into occupational and environmental epidemiologic cancer research;

The Environmental Protection Agency should lower its current maximum standard for radon exposure, and the public should be better informed about the risks of radon;

Providing better care to military personal who were exposed to nuclear fallout.

Radiation exposure has long been recognized as a cancer risk, but this latest report from the President’s Cancer Panel claims that patients and healthcare professionals are not completely aware of radiation exposure from imaging techniques such as computed tomograpy (CT) scans — a radiation exposure that might be increasing with the use of whole body scans and virtual colonoscopy.

And while the report issued a call for increased emphasis on dialing down the radiation exposure with CT, the government may actually be out in front on this issue; the FDA recently proposed new safety requirements for manufacturers of CT scanners and fluoroscopic devices. Those new requirements are designed to reduce unnecessary radiation from medical imaging.

Gina Solomon
Senior Scientist, NRDC

Today I was privileged to be an invited guest of the community of Fort Chipewyan, Canada. I can’t blame you if you’ve never heard of “Ft. Chip” – after all, there are only 1000 residents, and it’s only accessible by plane or boat. But you should hear about it, because what happens there will affect all of us.

The town has been suffering for more than ten years from surprisingly high rates of cancer. A local doctor sounded the alarm, and eventually the government did an investigation. The government’s press release at the time the cancer study was released made it sound like there was no problem: “A study of the cancer incidence in Fort Chipewyan finds levels of the rare cancer cholangiocarcinoma are not higher than expected.”

The results of the cancer study were never presented to the community, and the government claimed there was no problem. That’s where I came in. One of my colleagues asked me to peer review the Alberta Health Services cancer investigation. To my surprise, the actual report did not align with the headlines:

* Overall, the report found a 30% increase in cancers in Ft. Chip compared with expected over the last 12 years;
* Leukemias and lymphomas were increased by 3-fold;
* Bile duct cancers were increased by 7-fold;
* Other cancers, such as soft tissue sarcomas, and lung cancers in women, were also elevated.

I’m not sure who wrote the press release for the government, but it sure weren’t the scientists who actually did the investigation.

It wasn’t just the elevated cancer rates that got my attention, however. It was also the types of cancers seen. Leukemias and lymphomas have been linked in the scientific literature to petroleum products, including VOCs (volatile components of petroleum), dioxin-like chemicals, and other hydrocarbons. Biliary cancers have been linked to petroleum and to PAHs (chemicals in tar and soot). Soft tissue sarcomas are very rare and lethal cancers that have also been linked to dioxin-like chemicals and hydrocarbons. It’s an interesting pattern — almost all of the cancer types that were elevated have been linked scientifically to chemicals in oil or tar.

It’s especially interesting because little Ft. Chip is located downstream from the largest tar sands mining and oil production operation in the world. Other scientists who also presented their findings to the community today revealed significant increases in toxic metals, PAHs, and related chemicals in the water and sediments of the river downstream from the tar sands.

About 200 community members filled the hall where the scientists and physicians presented their findings. Then the community members spoke. Elders from the Mikisew Cree Nation and the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation decried the lack of action by the government and industry. Other community members talked about their own cancer diagnoses, or about the problems they were seeing in the fish, ducks, and wildlife they hunt for food. One man brought a deformed fish to the researchers, asking that it be tested for contaminants. The meeting was long, intense, and important. These people are concerned about their livelihood, and their lives. They are also concerned about the state of their rivers, the lake, and the wildlife.

Afterward, as I flew back to Edmonton on the tiny plane, I looked down on miles of pristine boreal forest dotted with lakes and entwined by rivers. Then the tar sands operations came into view – vast scars on the land, massive sulfur piles, smokestacks creating huge plumes into the sky, and enormous tailings ponds next to the river glimmering with an oily sheen; tailings ponds that are almost certainly leaching contaminants into the Athabasca River, which carries them down toward Ft. Chip.

As I prepare to head down to the Gulf Coast, I wonder what will happen here in Canada. Will the newfound distaste for offshore oil drilling be a boon to the tar sands, thereby worsening the ecological and health situation up here? Or will the public realize that petroleum comes with a price that is too high to pay, and move toward a safer energy future?

This post originally appeared on NRDC’s Switchboard blog.

By Grace Schneider
Louisville KT Courier-Journal

As research scientists and federal regulators gathered in Washington, D.C., last month to discuss a new study of cancer rates near nuclear power plants, Sarah Sauer of Corydon, Ind., asked them for a favor.

Don’t forget the people behind the numbers, said Sarah, 16, a sophomore at Presentation Academy in Louisville.

Moments earlier, as she spoke to the National Academy of Sciences panel, the teen brought some in the room to tears, standing on a step-stool to reach the microphone as her high-pitched and strained voice told as much about her cancer battle as her words.

Linda Modica, a Sierra Club member from Tennessee who attended the panel meeting, said Sarah was a brave girl.

“It came off in a very poignant and powerful way,” said Modica.

It was a moment for which Sarah and her family had waited years — a chance to put a face on a study that will examine whether youngsters and adults who have lived near nuclear power plants suffer from higher rates of cancer.

“I got sick and I don’t want everybody else to have to go through the whole thing I did,” Sarah said in an interview last week after her return from Washington.

Her father, obstetrician Joseph Sauer, moved the family from Illinois to Southern Indiana in 2004, hoping to escape exposure from the Braidwood generating station in Braceville, Ill., about five miles from their last home. Doctors told Sarah’s parents they suspect her rare form of brain cancer was caused by environmental contamination from Braidwood, although her parents concede they can’t say for certain.

Before moving, however, the Sauers joined a chorus of environmental activists and others who clamored for more updated scientific analysis of cancer risks linked to nuclear facilities and enrichment plants. Most oppose President Barack Obama’s support for a nuclear renaissance because they contend that past problems associated with atomic-powered generating plants haven’t been adequately examined.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently asked the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a study on cancer in populations surrounding nuclear generating stations. A 1990 report by the National Cancer Institute ruled out a link, but critics have insisted that study was flawed because it considered only children who died of cancer, not children like Sarah who were sickened but survived. It also examined populations by county, not groups living closest to the power plants, critics said.

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Environmental Impact Report for refinery expansion ruled inadequate

Richmond, April 26, 2010 — In an unprecedented victory for the community, the California State Court of Appeals has upheld the majority of findings in a lower court decision that the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the expansion of the Chevron Corporation’s refinery in Richmond California violated state environmental law. The Community members have been campaigning to fight the proposed switch to refining dirtier, heavier oil for several years.

“This decision is a significant victory for environmental justice in the city of Richmond and beyond,” said Dr. Henry Clark, executive director of West County Toxics Coalition. ?African American, Latino and Asian communities near the refinery have borne a disproportionate burden of exposure to pollution from the refinery for decades. And the community has been fighting back for decades – this victory is huge.?

“The court agrees that the people of Richmond have a right to know just how dirty the crude oil processed in this refinery will be,” said Earthjustice attorney Will Rostov. “The court pointed out the legal deficiencies in Chevron’s refinery expansion plan and tells Chevron the simple steps it needs to expand their refinery in a legal way that won’t harm the neighbors.”

Environmental justice groups Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), and West County Toxics Coalition (WCTC), represented by Earthjustice, had sued the City of Richmond over its approval of the refinery expansion in 2008, on the basis that the inadequacies in the EIR rendered approval illegal under the California Environmental Quality Act. Last year, a California Superior Court in Contra Costa County agreed, tossing out that EIR and issuing an injunction preventing further work on the refinery expansion.

?In this difficult economic climate, Chevron has used jobs to hold our communities hostage,? said James Walker, member of Service Employees International Union Local 1021 and local city equipment services worker. ?As a Richmond resident and union worker, I shouldn’t have to choose between jobs and my family’s health. Times are tough. We’re all struggling to pay bills and put food on the table. It’s time for Chevron to come to the table and negotiate an agreement that protects community health and gets people back to work.?

The appellate court found today that the EIR should have addressed changes in the grade of crude oil the refinery would process after the expansion. The expansion project would increase the refinery’s ability to process dirtier grades of crude oil according to experts hired by the community, the State Attorney General’s office and the trade unions, all of whom independently reviewed Chevron’s proposed plans.

The groups charge that the refinery would likely emit significantly more toxic pollution if

it begins refining dirtier crude. This pollution would include chemicals linked to cancer and respiratory ailments, according to the groups’ expert. The EPA reported nearly 100,000 pounds of toxic waste from the site in 2007, including more than 4,000 pounds of benzene (a known human carcinogen) and 455,000 pounds of ammonia, repeated exposure to which can cause an asthma-like illness and lead to lung damage.

“This is a good decision,” said Socorro Garcia, a ten-year Richmond resident and neighbor of the refinery. “There are people like me living very close to the refinery. The refinery has damaged our health and our community. Our health is our future.”

In a precedent-setting decision on one issue, the Court also found fault with the EIR for failing to include specific and proven plans to mitigate a projected increase in greenhouse gas emissions from the expansion and for allowing Chevron itself (not the City) to come up with a mitigation plan later, outside the publicly involved CEQA process. The Chevron Richmond refinery is the single largest source of greenhouse gas pollution in the state, according to data released by the California Air Resources Board in 2009. The EIR indicated that the expansion could generate almost 900,000 tons of additional greenhouse gases.

?It’s a double whammy,” said Sandy Saeteurn, Lead Organizer with APEN and a Richmond resident. “Chevron is hurting Richmond residents like my family with its toxic pollution and hurting the planet with its greenhouse gases. I grew up in Richmond doing Chevron refinery accident drills instead of fire drills. I don’t want my 9-yr old son Nicky to keep doing the same. Accurate public information about the proposed refinery expansion will allow better decisions for protecting our environmental and economic health.?

Chevron’s plan to expand the Richmond refinery — allowing the facility to refine heavier crude oil than it can now process — could significantly increase the facility’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to CBE scientist Greg Karras. “Refineries that have begun the switch to heavier, dirtier crude oil emit up to 58 percent more greenhouse gases per barrel refined as compared with the average U.S. refinery,” said Karras.

“Asthma rates in Richmond are already twice the national average,” said Richmond resident Kay Wallis, a health educator with the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at UCSF. “For decades, Richmond families have paid a steep price for living near Chevron’s refinery. Now there’s evidence that the impact of Chevron’s pollution extends well beyond our beleaguered local neighborhoods – the damage is worldwide.”

“Richmond doesn’t need dirtier crude,” said Greg Karras. “Now we can move onto the task of creating healthy, green jobs that put people to work weatherizing buildings, expanding public transit, and moving Richmond toward economic and climate sustainability. Chevron could be a leader in this change. It can’t continue with business as usual — not for long.”

Through the Web, people from Resthaven area in Will County say they have discovered a troubling pattern of diseases they can’t easily explain.

By Joel Hood, Chicago Tribune reporter

Like millions of old friends and classmates reconnecting through Facebook after decades apart, former residents of tiny Resthaven had stories to share.

Their rural hometown in southern Will County had seemed an idyllic place to grow up in the 1970s, but now that they are in middle age, many are troubled by a pattern of serious diseases they can’t easily explain: breast cancers, colon cancers, leukemia, thyroid problems and various autoimmune and degenerative tissue problems.

“Knowing what I know now, I’m not going to sit still until I do right by the people I grew up with,” said Cathy Doolin, 51, a former Resthaven resident whose heavy metal count is so high that doctors once feared someone was trying to poison her. “This is about finding the truth.”
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So, what began as a way to reach out to long-lost friends has become an Erin Brockovich-style quest to find out what they may have been exposed to growing up and whether environmental contamination could explain why many have gotten sick.

No evidence links any of the illnesses to contamination in Resthaven, and health officials warn the cases are so complicated it be might be impossible to ever know for sure. It could simply be coincidence.

Residents in a rural area such as Resthaven are sometimes exposed to potentially harmful contaminants: pesticides from nearby farmland, discharge from power plants, landfill waste, radon gas, polluted well water and other hazardous chemicals that belie the natural beauty of the area.

Resthaven was the site of an illegal toxic waste dump throughout the 1970s, the extent of which was not well known or publicized at the time. Companies such as the former Mobil Oil, Kraft Foods and others dumped chemicals, plastics, oils, greases, solvents and other waste from several production plants stationed in the Chicago region, records show. EPA records indicate as many as 1,000 drums of potentially hazardous materials were buried at the site of an old septic cleaning service. The site was officially cleaned up in 1999, records show.

Soil samples collected at the site in the mid-1980s showed elevated levels of several known cancer-causing compounds, including chromium 6, benzene and styrene, as well as other harmful chemicals. But tests on numerous shallow backyard wells in and around Resthaven found no evidence that the toxins had leaked into drinking water.

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