EPA rules out contamination in cancer cluster

CLYDE — After more than a decade of spec­u­la­tion about the poten­tial envi­ron­men­tal cause of a series of child cancer-cluster cases in east­ern San­dusky County, the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency reported that 13 of 14 sites sur­veyed were not con­t­a­m­i­nated and that addi­tional steps would not be pur­sued at those locations.

“Our inves­ti­ga­tion is con­tin­u­ing, but in terms of where we go from here, the good news is I’ve heard our tech­ni­cal peo­ple say they did not find any­thing at those 13 sites that is a threat to human health,” said Joshua Singer, a spokesman for the U.S EPA.

East­ern San­dusky Report

The EPA study, which offi­cially began in Feb­ru­ary, sought to find an envi­ron­men­tal cause that might have led to at least 37 child­hood can­cer cases that occurred within a 12-mile radius of Clyde since 1996.

That radius also included Vick­ery, Belle­vue, east­ern Fre­mont and four town­ships — York, Green Creek, Riley and Townsend.

Types of can­cer that were con­tracted included brain and cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem tumors, lym­phoma, and leukemia, among others.

The regional inves­ti­ga­tion included Whirlpool Corp.’s fac­tory in Clyde and mul­ti­ple dumps in the area, and involved gath­er­ing soil, air, and water sam­ples. The 14th site, the McGrath Dump Site at 3966 CR in Vick­ery, was not inves­ti­gated because access was denied to the U.S. EPA. The US EPA noted in its report it also did not locate “Meggett Land­fill”, but con­ducted a record search.

Singer said ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions are focused on about 90 tips that the agency received to its hot­line at 855–838-1304.

For War­ren Brown, whose 11-year-old daugh­ter, Alexa, died of can­cer in 2009, the results of the study are “not too lit­tle, but they are too late.”

“I’m not sur­prised by their study at all,” Mr. Brown said of the EPA results. “Boots on the ground have to hap­pen when the kids get sick. It doesn’t hap­pen two or three years after the kids get sick. You don’t study an issue when you have 19 or 26 cases in front of you, you study the issue as soon as one or two or three cases are presented.”

Brown remains adamant that there was an envi­ron­men­tal issue that led to the can­cer clus­ter in San­dusky County, but asserts that offi­cials didn’t act soon enough to dis­cover the root cause.

“I will be con­vinced until I go to heaven and visit with Alexa that the issues that arose that caused all those chil­dren to get sick were caused by some envi­ron­men­tal anom­aly,” he said.

Brown’s daugh­ter was one of the later cases added into the clus­ter — as defined by the Ohio Health Depart­ment prior to the U.S. EPA study. The Ohio EPA also con­ducted its own test­ing of air and water in the area prior to the U.S. EPA study this year, and found noth­ing conclusive.

Eleven cases of var­i­ous child­hood can­cers were bought to the atten­tion of the San­dusky County Health Depart­ment by a school nurse with Clyde-Green Springs Schools nearly a decade ago before the ODH was brought in, and it con­ducted a sta­tis­ti­cal study of the area before envi­ron­men­tal sam­pling was con­ducted in the region.

At least five chil­dren and young adults have died from pedi­atric can­cers since in the area– although not all may have been included in the clus­ter. Infor­ma­tion on fam­i­lies in the ODH clus­ter is not public.

Accord­ing to the U.S. EPA, the sites that were tested this year included:

•Amert Lagoon, CR 213, Clyde.

•Belle­vue City Dump, 610 CR 328, Bellevue.

•Clyde City Dump, McPher­son High­way, Clyde.

•For­mu­lated Prod­ucts, 110 East St., Clyde.

•Golem­biowski Dump, CR 179, Clyde.

•Green Creek Town­ship Dump, Clyde.

•Leach Dump, 1672 CR 236, Clyde.

•Riley Town­ship Dump, 31155 CR 232, Fremont.

•Townsend Town­ship Dump, CR 322, Vickery.

•Whirlpool Man­u­fac­tur­ing, 119 Bird­s­eye St., Clyde.

•Wick­er­ham Drum site, 853 Main St., Clyde.

•York Town­ship Dump, CR 205, Bellevue.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Jul 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.