The Acreage Cancer Study

Hi Everyone,

It is finally Friday. Thank goodness! In celebration of the end of this fine week, today's post will be nice and short. As always, if more information arises regarding the Acreage, we will post it right here for your convenience.

Below are several articles of interest for your reading pleasure. We hope you enjoy them.

Have a great weekend!

Health officials, authors of University of West Florida cancer cluster study to meet

By Mitra MalekPalm Beach Post Staff Writer

Updated: 2:00 p.m. Friday, March 5, 2010

State and federal health officials plan to meet Wednesday with theauthors of a recently published study that contends a childhood braincancer cluster spans most of southern Florida.

The meeting, inTallahassee, will discuss confidential health information and won't be open to the public, Florida Department of Health Spokeswoman Susan Smith said today.

State health officials have declined to discussthe study to date. One of its authors said this week that the state health department hadn't contacted his team since it released an onlineversion of its findings in January.

Smith earlier this week had offered limited comments on the report, saying its data analysis methods are "relatively new and untested" and that "independent researchers will use this report to identify areas that require additional study using more traditional methods to verify the university's hypothesis."

To view the full article, Click Here.

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Should FL believe new map?

By Cynthia Washam

3/4/2010 © Health News Florida

A new study by a team of North Florida researchers that suggests an elevated risk of pediatric cancer in two large swaths of Florida isdrawing skepticism from many epidemiologists.

One of the two zones, which takes up most of the lower third of thestate, has a risk 52 percent higher than that in most of the state, theresearchers said. A risk zone in the north of the state is somewhatweaker, they said.

“We’re very concerned about what’s going on in our state,” said co-author Chatchawin Assanasen, pediatric hematologist/oncologist with the Nemours Center for Childhood Cancer Research in Pensacola.“Clusters of this size are unusual.”

The results, which appeared Jan. 6 in the online version of the medical journal Pediatric Blood & Cancer, are just too unusual to give many epidemiologists confidence in them.

One who tried to replicate the study and couldn’t is epidemiologist Jill MacKinnon, director of the Florida Cancer Data System at the University of Miami. Her program has a contract with the Department of Health (DOH) to collect data on all cancer cases in Florida.

To view the full article, Click Here.

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Experts: Study showing high cancer rates across southern Florida doesn't debunk Acreage cluster

By Mitra MalekPalm Beach Post Staff Writer

Updated: 8:05 a.m. Friday, March 5, 2010

A study that identifies the bottom third of Florida as a massive brain cancer cluster has set off a firestorm among Acreage residents worried about their community's reputation.

They insist the report, which surfaced on the Internet last month, is proof that cancer isn't a problem solely for their central Palm Beach County community, where health officials last month declared a cluster of cases among children and teenagers.

They have besieged state legislators, health officials and anyone else who could change the local designation or spread word of the report.

But in interviews, the study's authors say their findings don't discredit the state's cluster designation in The Acreage.

What's more, The Acreage's cluster is part of what's pushing up rates throughout southern Florida in the new study, said Richard Clapp, an epidemiologist and professor of environmental health at Boston University.

To view the full article, Click Here.

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Health officials in 1980s warned of health hazards in Acreage 

March 04, 2010 8:07 PM

Al Pefley  

Tonight, an I-Team Investigation reveals there was possible ground contamination discovered years ago in the Acreage.

It happened long before the pediatric cancer cluster was ever confirmed.

A new report shows state health officials likely knew about environmental contamination in the Acreage decades ago.

We just got our hands on a report that shows authorities knew there was a problem.

They were asking about contamination then, and they are asking about it today.

 The report is dated October 1988.

And it basically says investigators determined that Pratt andWhitney, located just miles from the Acreage, had contaminants thatposed a human health threat. This week, health officials are takingsoil samples, looking for the cause of the Acreage cancer cluster.

But this report points the finger at Pratt and Whitney as one possible source.

To view the full article, Click Here.

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Death by Study  Scientists keep fighting to explain high instances of childhood leukemia in Sierra Vista—even as the government has given up

By Tim Vanderpool

It's late in the day, and I'm on the phone with Pat Durkit. We have never met. But immediately I know this: She's one of those people whose steadfast pleasantness is actually brute resistance, a refusal to accept just how hideous the world can become.

Consider the details: In 2001, Durkit's granddaughter, Jessica, then 2 years old, was diagnosed with leukemia. In 2004, Jessica'shalf-sister in Phoenix, Kellie, was given the same diagnosis.

Their father and Pat's son, Dale Durkit, a heavy-equipment operatoron Sierra Vista's Fort Huachuca Army base, grew obsessed with finding acause for the disease. There is a reason for this: By then, at least 12Sierra Vista children had developed the ugly affliction that ravages their fledging blood and bone marrow. (See "Cancer Wars," Feb. 12,2004, and "For the Kids," May 18, 2006.)

Since then, the cluster continues, with one case in 2006 and another a year later. Four years ago, after much prodding, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention joined Arizona's Department of Health Services to investigate the cancer cluster.

Government scientists came up with nothing. Many people were not surprised by this. Disappointed? Yes, bitterly so. But not surprised.

In the spring of 2007, Dale was picking up railroad ties at work. One tumbled onto his hand and shin. He didn't even turn in workers'compensation papers; it was just a scrape. But the scrape grew infected, and the infection spun out of control.

To view the full article, Click Here.

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NH says Conn. River tritium levels undetectable

March 4, 2010

MONTPELIER, Vt.—New Hampshire authorities say water samples taken from the Connecticut River near the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant show no detectable levels of  tritium, the radioactive isotope leaking from Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.

To view the full article, Click Here.

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Martin Luther King School opens in Trenton after cancer-causing soil delayed opening for years

Published: Thursday, March 4, 2010

By L.A. PARKER

TRENTON — Local leaders joined  kids yesterday to cut the ribbon on the $68 million new Martin Luther King Jr. School, a project delayed for years by the need to remove 36,000 pounds of dangerous soil used as fill at the site.

Some of the neighborhood activists who protested about the soil fiasco five years ago applauded at the ceremony, which was hosted by Mayor Doug Palmer and several of the King School’s best and brightest youngsters.

Situated at Southard Street and Brunswick Avenue, the school opens to 700 students on Monday. In addition to a modern cafeteria, the school has art and music rooms, two science labs, two computer labs, atelevision studio, a gymnasium and a media center.

Superintendent of Schools Rodney Lofton praised those who mounted a protest after the potentially cancer-causing soil was found on the site early in the construction.

“It took an entire community to step forward and say, ‘You know what. We’re not going to accept what some people say we should accept,’” said Lofton. “They stood up for the brightest and best students this city has to offer.”

To view the full article, Click Here.