Reno Gazette-Journal
Incidents of cancer clusters evident worldwide
http://www.rgj.com/news2/stories/news/980827786.html
Frank X. Mullen Jr.
Reno Gazette-Journal
Monday January 29th, 2001

Cancer and leukemia clusters have sprung up all over the industrialized world during the last 50 years but epidemiologists say few of the cases can positively be linked with a contaminant.

Accidents are the most common cause of child deaths in the United States, but cancer is the second-largest killer of children, according to the National Cancer Institute and the National Childhood Cancer Foundation.

While some cases coincide with the presence of a known carcinogen in the drinking water or elsewhere in the environment, connections are hard to prove, scientists say.

Dr. Alexander Aledo, a leukemia specialist at New York Weill-Cornell Center in Manhattan, N.Y., said people are always wanting to pin the blame on something, but in the vast majority of cancer clusters the environmental causes — if they exist — remain unknown.

“Connections aren’t easily made,” he said.

Here’s a look at some high-profile cancer/leukemia cluster cases:

In Tom’s River, N.J., 103 children are part of the nation’s largest child cancer cluster. State environmental officials discovered 4,500 drums of toxic liquid had been dumped in a nearby landfill and at a local farm. Still, it’s difficult to prove the leukemia cases are directly caused by the pollutants.

In the Woburn, Mass., cancer cluster, made famous by the book and movie “A Civil Action,” 21 children contracted leukemia. The culprit was believed to be drinking water contaminated by a hazardous waste deep-injection well. Eight families got $400,000 in the settlement of a civil suit that ended in 1986. Some scientists argue that the link between the contaminated wells and the leukemia patients was not strong enough to entirely explain the “excess” leukemia.

In La Hague, France, 27 cases of leukemia were diagnosed in people under 25 years of age between 1978 and 1993. The area is home to the world’s largest nuclear reprocessing facility. Scientists have made a case for radioactive contamination of the ocean and the sea animals and have found that victims who spent time at the beach or who ate seafood appeared more likely to contract leukemia.

In Britain in 1983, scientists began noticing a 10-scale increase in leukemia cases in the village of Seascale. The “Seascale Cluster,” as it became known, has been extensively studied by scientists. The village is near the Sellafield nuclear processing facility, but discharges from that plant seem to be too low to account for the increase in childhood leukemia, according to a 1984 study. A second study, which remains controversial, links the fathers’ exposure to radiation before conception of children to childhood leukemia.

Another British researcher has suggested that when urban areas mix with people from rural communities — as happened in Seascale — exposure to viruses increase. That theory lends support to another British scientist’s idea that some unknown infection causes leukemia clusters.

Studies conducted after the Seascale Cluster investigations found a slight, but significant increase in leukemia in people under the age of 25 in the areas around 15 nuclear facilities in England and Wales.

A cancer cluster in the early 1990s in Hinkley, Calif., inspired the movie “Erin Brockovich.” In that case, Pacific Gas and Electric went to private arbitration with the 650 plaintiffs and paid $333 million. The case involved chromium from the utility winding up in the residents’ well water.

In 1984 cancer cases began popping up in McFarland in California’s Central Valley. During a 20-year period, 21 people, mostly children, were diagnosed in the town of 8,000. A state study from 1985-1991 ended inconclusively and the Environmental Protection Agency was petitioned to study the problem. Residents suspect airborne pesticides but no causal link has been found. Randall Todd, Nevada state epidemiologist, has said it’s rare that scientists can trace the cause of cancer clusters.

“It’s very difficult to find a smoking gun,” he said. But he said the Fallon leukemia cluster remains the health division’s top priority and investigators are looking into many theories for the unexpected concentration of leukemia cases.



Commento: vedete i link sopra su Sellafield per capire il "sistema" dell'insabbiamento.