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Report: 42 disease clusters in 13 U.S. states identified

By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY



On Tuesday, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has scheduled an oversight hearing on the issue. Among those testifying, aside from Solomon, are Trevor Schaefer, a 21-year old survivor of brain cancer from Boise, and Erin Brockovich, who became a household name when her fight to document a disease cluster in Hinkley, Calif., was turned into an eponymous movie starring Julia Roberts.

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Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, proposed legislation in January to fund research that would determine whether a connection exists between clusters of cancer, birth defects and other diseases and environmental contaminants.

The report, co-written by the National Disease Clusters Alliance, says Congress' Toxic Substance Control Act of 1976 has not studied that nexus or done enough to regulate toxic chemicals in industrial, commercial and consumer products.

The authors plan to identify disease clusters in all 50 states but focused their initial work -- using news reports, government research and peer-reviewed academic studies -- on 13 states: Texas, California, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Delaware, Louisiana, Montana, Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas.

They report a specific contaminant-- asbestos -- was identified in only one of the 42 clusters, which occurred in Libby, Mont. They say investigating the environmental causes of disease clusters is difficult, expensive and often inconclusive, partly because of limits in scientific tools for probing cause-and-effect in small populations.

In Hinkley, Cailf., for example, residents won a $333 million settlement from Pacific Gas & Electric in 1996 when the company's ponds leached hexavalent into the town's drinking water supply. They reported breast cancer, Hodgkin's disease, miscarriages and spinal deterioration, but three studies from the California Cancer Registry have concluded that cancer rates were not elevated there from 1988 to 2008. Other state officials say the population is too small for a cancer survey to yield meaningful results.

In a blog post Monday, Solomon cites several other disease clusters that she and other scientists documented:

  • Birth defects in Kettleman City, California, including twenty babies born over less than two years with birth defects, and four children born with birth defects so severe that they have since died, in this town of only 1,500 people.
  • Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease) – a very rare disease - in Herculaneum, Missouri, a town affected by a major lead smelter and decades of pollution.
  • Multiple sclerosis (MS) in Wellington, Ohio, where residents are three-times more likely to develop MS than in the rest of the country, a disease whose causes are unknown but are thought to involve a combination of genetic and environmental causes.
  • Birth defects in Dickson, Tennessee, a striking cluster that was identified by a non-profit organization called Birth Defect Research for Children, created by the mother of a child with birth defects, which gathers information about birth defects nationally, links families, and works with scientists to identify patterns that require investigation.
  • Male breast cancer, childhood cancer, and birth defects in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. More than 60 men who lived on that base have been diagnosed with male breast cancer – an extraordinary and alarming finding which is almost impossible to occur by chance alone, and one which deserves urgent attention.

"These examples are just the tip of the iceberg," Solomon writes. "In the states we haven't studied yet, we have already heard of dozens more disease clusters, so the problem is widespread."

Radiation in Boston rain linked to Japan nuclear crisis
U.S. slips behind China, Germany in clean energy