Tragic medical mystery in small Ohio town: A wave of child cancer cases

[ck4829]

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.

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.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101230/ap_on_re_us/us_child_cancer_fears

[Deep13]

1. It may be a statistical fluke.

There is a national rate of childhood cancer, but that rate is not perfectly uniform across the population. Out of 300,000,000 people, we can expect random chance to produce places where cancer is nonexistent and places where it is inexplicably high. I am NOT saying that a statistical anomaly IS the explanation here, only that such things do exist. Naturally, medical and public health people need to be vigilant in finding an environmental cause in case there is one.

[lies and propaganda]

2. what is the industry there?

child cancers are prevalent as shit in places like Houston that are overly polluted from all the plants and etc.

[catgirl]

4. Farms

And the article states that parents have questioned the state for neglecting to test soil. Hmm.

[SoCalDem]

9. They live in a toxic environment. Children are often more susceptible

People forget that farmers used to use animal dung for fertilizer, and the animal feed that created the fertilizer was grown in the soil.. It was an organic "closed circle".

Crop yield was less than now, and of course it was smelly & much harder to "use", but it was probably a LOT safer.

Anywhere there are chemicals used, there is danger..

Google Fallon , NV child cancer

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&newwindow=1&q=fallon%20nv%20cancer&aq=&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=9bef8cda26d1a6ec&pf=p&pdl=300

[Nikia]

7. Whirlpool is in Clyde

I know that Fremont has several factories too. It sounds like they checked near major factories though.
The thing about the farms is that it is very densely populated farmland. Most farms are still small there. They surround towns. There is a lot of non farm population living by farms too. Toxic fertlizers or pesticides could cause problems.

[w8liftinglady]

3. we have had the same thing here

http://downwindersatrisk.org/
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/2009/07/19/0719cementtoxins.html
http://democrats.science.house.gov/Media/file/Investigations/ATSDR%20Staff%20Report%2003%2010%2009.pdf

[DeSwiss]

5. K&R

Congressional committee probes killing of Great Lakes cancer report

By Eartha Jane Melzer, Minnesota Monitor
February 21, 2008

The U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology is investigating allegations that the nation's top public-health agency has blocked publication of a study that links industrial contaminants to cancer and increased infant mortality in the Great Lakes states.

In 2001, the International Joint Commission, a U.S.-Canadian organization that manages shared waterways and monitors pollution, requested a report that would look at the potential human health impact of environmental contamination in 26 "Areas of Concern" across the Great Lakes.

The Centers for Disease Control's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry began work on the study in 2002. The report concentrated on 11 pollutants known to damage human health and was intended to serve as a guide for further epidemiological study.

The committee charges that the report, "Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern," had been peer-reviewed and was ready for release in July 2007 when the CDC abruptly canceled its publication.

In a letter to CDC chief Dr. Julia Gerberding, who also administers the registry, the committee noted that the report found that "Areas of Concern" -- which contain 40 million residents in eight states -- had higher infant-mortality rates and higher cancer rates than neighboring counties or the national average.

Committee chairmen urged the agency to explain why it has failed to release the report and insisted that it cease retaliatory measures reportedly taken against an agency scientist who drew attention to the suppression of the report.

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/article/2008/02/18/congressional-committee-probes-killing-great-lakes-cancer-report.html">link

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/grtlakes/2007.html">Click to view the 2007 Draft "Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern"

[Nikia]

6. I grew up near there and childhood cancer has always been higher than normal

I feel lucky to have survived. I hope that they figure it out.

[OhioChick]

8. I can recall this going on in Marion years ago:

"In Marion, Ohio, for example, the school board feared lawsuits once exposure of children to chemicals buried beneath and around school property by an abandoned military depot was uncovered. School students had a higher than normal rate of leukemia and other rare cancers. The school board deferred to experts who denied any serious health risk rather than to experts who judged health risks to be too high and possibly responsible for the leukemia cluster.

Only years of community activism brought the school board to limit access to certain school-ground areas with high concentrations of contaminants (“hot spots”). However, not until the Department of Defense agreed to discuss appropriating funds to help pay for a new school would the board consider construction of a new school. In November 2000, county voters approved a bond that would provide funds to build a new school, but the new building will not be ready until 2003. Meanwhile, students remain exposed to the documented contamination."



http://www.serconline.org/toxicschoolsites/fact.html

[felix_numinous]

10. Here is a PDF file

of pollutants in Lake Erie in 1985. Many cancers have a 20 year latency period, I wonder if these kids' parents were exposed to the toxins, and their kids are showing the signs of the exposure? I am posting this as a question, I am not an expert.

http://www.ohioseagrant.osu.edu/_documents/publications/FS/FS-046%20Lake%20Erie%20water%20quality%20past%20present%20future.pdf

Mercury, dioxin, PCBs, DDT, all listed present in 1985.

(Where I live there is hexavalent chromium in the water, the carcinogen publicized by Erin Brockovich, so I've been very interested in how to purify our water. I think reverse osmosis is the best so far for VOCs, found in herbicides and pesticides.)

~~Stay healthy everyone~~