Ohio Child Cancers Confound Parents, Investigators

In India there are are hot spot naturally formed and these do exceed the permissible radiation level for radiation worker. Steps were taken to reduce the radiation level from ground based Monazite sand by shielding.

In India there are small clusters of cancer cases in children coming from river bed ravine area near to my place where migrated sand settles down for long and has radioactivity in it. However, the number is not so large. I have seen number of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma cases in 10-17 year children coming from local town to cancer hospital where I was working as invited guest expert in Radiology. Cause of the hot spot is yet to be identified but looks like Radioactivity in the zone and Thorium deposits are there in this zone and in some area these may be even on surface, in exposed sand and rocks. Entire eastern sea coast has Monazite sand. Only Kerala State in some areas has very high radiation level. Perhaps it may exceed 200mR/hour at some places.

In India only Union Carbide caused serious large scale chemical disaster and there may not be any equal to it. There is Arsenic and Fluorides at many places naturally deposited in soil and comes out in water.

Ohio or nearby area has dumps of harmful Chemicals and these were reported earlier also however data is incomplete for public. Clusters do not form without reason. Perhaps parents or grand parents may be having defective / chemically altered gene.

One thing people forget about cancer clusters is the statistics of the situation. Completely random effects will produce localized coincidences all the time. It is disheartening to be told that you or your child's medical problem comes from just being unlucky. But this does happen.

The process of causing cancer is well known in the lab.

In many cases the development of cancer is a two-stage process, involving a first exposure to a cancer-promoting chemical. The "cancer-promoter" does not cause cancer itself, but it enhances susceptibility. Subsequent exposure to a carcinogen or "cancer-causer" is the second stage, and the susceptible tissue then becomes cancerous.

This is one reason why it is so difficult to find an unequivocal cause for cancer in the environment. The lag time between exposure to a "promoter" and exposure to a carcinogen, and the time for development and diagnosis of the cancer itself, makes it even more difficult to find or positively prove such causes. In the case of children, they may even have been affected by a "promoter" while in utero, making them susceptible to carcinogen exposure years later in their childhood.

The question of investigating and finding positive proof of cause is certainly compounded by the issue of liability. If the "promoter" is unknown or unrelated, can the cancer be blamed on the source of the carcinogen, if it's not considered a sufficient cause on its own? There is also the question of the liability impact on industry, if held responsible for causing environmental disease. A high degree of certainty is required, for such matters to go to court. Investigators may be reluctant to suggest probable cause if there is no clear certainty, or if they are influenced by other considerations, such as, to protect industry from liability or damaged reputation, or to maintain industrial activity for its benefits to the local economy.

In this case, a major deficiency in the investigation has been pointed out: soil samples have not been tested. Air and water may carry contaminants, but they are also (unless strictly confined) mediums in which contaminants will rapidly disperse and become undetectable. Soil is a different matter. A significant history of contamination can be retained in the soil, and it is an obvious and most important environmental sample to take. The investigators who made excuses about not taking soil samples are either incompetent or, as you suggested, deliberately avoiding the best chance of finding evidence of a probable cause that is traceable to a source.

There are a number of high profile potential sources in the area, whose history of chemical or radiation release may be privately but not publicly known.

Another measure to positively link chemical exposure to cases of cancer, is to examine the hair of the individual, if that is available, since it contains a record of exposures some time into the past.

There really can't be any significant advances in environmental medicine, until the test technology is established to readily map the data available in hair samples. The present methods for hair testing as in HPLC are crude (providing less information about time scale) and also expensive and of course, destructive of the sample, so that there's no opportunity for verification by other methods.

I may have been wrongly optimistic that RAMAN would prove to be the new NDT method for analysis of trace chemicals in hair; I am disappointed to see no developments reported for this method.

GA Artsmith. I do understand the statistical cluster problem but I would be a very suspicious parent if I lived in the area of Clyde, Ohio. This cluster is almost 100 times the normal rate.

The deep disposal of hazardous waste at the Vickers hazard waste site is reported to contain organic and metal components. A Google search reports that the injection into the deep sandstone formation to be approximately 20,000,000 gallons per year. I admit to no knowledge of the hydrogeology but remain suspicious of this disposal site nonetheless and that is just on what little I know of the area. It is a problem of time frame with regard to sampling of water supplies as much as you have outlined in your post. Part of the problem remains when a waste disposal site such as this is first incorporated into use, the hazardous components can be much more mobile than after the site has been used for a period of time. Of course upward mobility can occur even in areas declared to be confined. There are invariable small fractures that can allow this upward mobility. Once in an aquifer supplying potable water there could be many exposures to potential precursers or cancerous components. I do not know if Clyde Ohio uses ground water but it does sound possible. The latency period of exposure could explain the delay of investigating a problem such as this presents.

The reason it is difficult to find trace compounds like TCE or benzene when the site is in use for many years is that the migrating products become surrounded by a microbial consortium of consumers that block the further movement somewhat. Bacteria are often used to clean sites contaminated by organic waste. Sampling of individual water supplies is tricky and requires strategic thinking about the how, what, when and where. Clearly professional help from government or private sector is needed ( I would hope such service is already provided to these folks).

I am not sure where the article gets the level as 4 times the background. The article I provided does report a normal level of 59 cases of leukemia per million in 3-5 year old children and somewhat higher in other ages. The occurrence of Thirty five cases of nervous system cancers and leukemia in a small population could be about 98 times the norm. And yes it is cause for alarm for a parent.