The Acreage Cancer Study

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Below are a few articles that may be of interest to you. We hope you enjoy them.

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Public invited to meeting with new anti-corruption leader

The Palm Beach Post

August 30, 2010

Sheryl Steckler, chosen in May to be the county government's first independent inspector general, will speak at 1 p.m. Thursday at the South County Civic Center at 16700 Jog Road, west of Delray Beach.

For more information, Click Here.

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Presidential Cancer Panel Calls for Greater Action on Radon

EPA.gov/radon

April 2010

The 2008-2009 Annual Report of the President's Cancer Panel, entitled "Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We can Do Now" (PDF, 240 pp., 7.3 M)has been released. The Report highlights the risks from radon and states that "the cancer risk attributable to residential radon exposure has been clearly demonstrated and must be better addressed." The Panelincludes several far-reaching recommendations to reduce radon exposure in the U.S., including lowering the EPA action level, requiring radon-resistant techniques in new home construction, more research for improved accuracy and reliability in radon testing methods, and mandatory testing and disclosure of radon levels in schools, daycare,and workplaces.

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New Alarm Bells About Chemicals and Cancer
The New York Times

By Nicholas D. Kristof

May 5, 2010

The President’s Cancer Panel is the Mount Everest of the medical mainstream, so it is astonishing to learn that it is poised to join ranks with the organic food movement and declare: chemicals threaten our bodies.

The cancer panelis releasing a landmark 200-page report on Thursday, warning that our lackadaisical approach to regulation may have far-reaching consequences for our health.

I’ve read an advance copy of the report, and it’s an extraordinary document. It calls on America to rethink the way we confront cancer, including much more rigorous regulation of chemicals.

Traditionally, we reduce cancer risks through regular doctor visits, self-examinations and screenings such as mammograms. The President’s Cancer Panel suggests other eye-opening steps as well, such as giving preference to organic food, checking radon levels in the home and microwaving food in glass containers rather than plastic.

In particular, the report warns about exposures to chemicals during pregnancy, when risk of damage seems to be greatest. Noting that 300 contaminants have been detected in umbilical cord blood of newborn babies, the study warns that: “to a disturbing extent, babies are born ‘pre-polluted.’ ”

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Nevada Cancer Cluster Not Coincidental, New Findings Suggest

Wired Science

By Brandon Keim

May 4, 2007

In the last decade, 17 children from tiny Fallon, Nevada — population 8,299 — have developed leukemia.

The rash of diagnoses — eleven within a three-year period — set offa local and national debate about the possible causes. Some blamed jet fuel additives and improperly buried toxic waste from a local military base. Others pointed to lingering activity from atomic bomb tests.

On the other side, many scientists and commentators dismissed the numbers as a predictable statistical aberration: just as the laws of chance state that a palmful of coins will come up tails if flipped a few million times, so too will a few cancer cases eventually cluster intime and space. 

In 2004, the CDC declared the Fallon cluster to be just such an outlier, recommending that no new environmental testing be carried outthere. They also brushed off suggestions that tungsten — a heavy metalmined nearby and present at high rates in Fallon’s air — could have caused the leukemia, declaring that the residents’ exposures weren’tunique and that the substance hadn’t been proven carcinogenic.

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Tree rings show elevated tungsten coincides with Nevada leukemia cluster

Public Press Release

April 30, 2007

Tungsten began increasing in trees in Fallon, Nev. several years before the town's rise in childhood leukemia cases, according to a new research report.

The amount of tungsten in tree rings from Fallon quadrupled between 1990 and 2002, whereas the amount in treerings from nearby towns remained the same, according to a research team led by Paul R. Sheppard of The University of Arizona's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.

This is the first study that has examined changes in levels of heavy metals in Fallon over time.

"Trees take up metals from the environment and those metals show up in thet ree rings. By analyzing chemicals in tree rings, we can look back in time years, and even decades," said Sheppard, a UA assistant professor of dendrochronology.

"Tree ring values for the early 1990s for tungsten are roughly equivalent to nearby towns, but go up in Fallon in the mid-1990s while staying the same in other towns," he said.

Tungsten levels in Fallon trees began increasing in 1994, while levels in neighboring towns remained the same. Since 1997, 17 cases of childhood leukemia have been diagnosed in children who lived in the Fallon area for some time prior to diagnosis. Fallon's high incidence of leukemia has been acknowledged as a leukemia cluster by the Nevada State Health Division.

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