FEDS DISAVOW SUPERFUND-CANCER LINK FINDINGS

Yesterday I reported that the abstract of the tri-county polycythemia vera study that will be presented Monday at the American Society of Hematology's annual meeting asserted a connection between a local cluster of the rare blood malignancy and the McAdoo Associates Superfund site. Well, today the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry is saying those findings are wrong. From an Associated Press story by Mike Stobbe and Michael Rubinkam, filed this afternoon:

Officials abruptly backpedaled Friday on a federally funded health study that suggests an environmental link to a cluster of rare blood cancer cases in northeastern Pennsylvania, saying an abstract that made the claim was mistakenly released to the public. ...

... Steve Dearwent, a government epidemiologist, said Friday that the abstract was written early in the summer and that subsequent analysis of the data did not support the conclusion of an environmental link — although he added that still is a possibility. He said the abstract should have been revised before it was submitted.

"We're going to have to retract the abstract to correct the record because it is erroneous information," said Dearwent, chief of health investigations for the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the federal agency that oversaw the study. "It was preliminary and hadn't been vetted, and unfortunately it got submitted unbeknownst to most people here."

Dearwent said additional research might prove an environmental link. And the study's lead researcher, Dr. Ronald Hoffman of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said Friday that the data does in fact point to something in the environment.

"Based upon the data, there's significant concern that there is something in the environment leading to the development of polycythemia vera in that area. The nature of what's causing it is unknown at the moment and is going to require further study," he said.

MEDICAL RESEARCHERS DRAW LINK BETWEEN LOCAL POLYCYTHEMIA VERA EPIDEMIC, SUPERFUND SITE

The American Society of Hematology's annual meeting and expo will open in Atlanta on Saturday, and the abstract for Monday's session on the local three-county polycythemia vera study has been posted online. Apparently the researchers believe they have found a connection between the high local occurrence of the rare blood malignancy and the McAdoo Associates Superfund site, as evidenced by this excerpt (bold emphasis mine):

Of the 37 cases who met both clinical and molecular criteria (JAK2V617F+) for a diagnosis of PV, 18 (49%) had resided within a 13 mile radius of the McAdoo Associates Superfund Site (MASS) for >5 years during the period 1970-95. The MASS was the home of a hazardous waste recycling business from 1975-79 where large quantities of toxic chemicals were dumped directly into old mine shafts.The Environmental Protection Agency completed surface remediation in the early 90s, but was unable to determine the extent and fate of the chemicals poured into the mine. A spatial scan statistical analysis identified this area as a significant cluster and individuals living within this area had a 4.5 times greater risk of developing PV compared to individuals residing in the remainder of the 3 counties (p<0.001).

That seems to contradict what the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry stated in its press release about the study's findings: "The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) confirmed 38 cases of polycythemia vera (PV) in Schuylkill, Luzerne and Carbon counties. ATSDR found no link between environmental factors and PV in this area." It also contradicts what U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) wrote in his Oct. 22 letter to ATSDR and the Pa. Department of Health following his briefing on the findings: "I am heartened by the study's findings that there are no environmental or occupational causes for the disease ... ."

Why didn't the ATSDR and PADOH give us this information at the Oct. 24 public meeting in Hazleton, or since then? Are they trying to keep those of us whose health may have been damaged by the site from knowing the truth? And now that the truth is out, what will our elected leaders such as Specter and our public health agencies do to help us?

Superfund365 profiles Hometown-area toxic waste sites

Read all about it here.

Superfund365 coming to Hometown

An online project that will be documenting one Superfund site each day for a year will soon be arriving in the Hometown area. Led by Brooke Singer, an assistant professor of new media at the State University of New York at Purchase, the project is titled Superfund365. The project began on Sept. 1 in the New York area and will wrap up next year in Hawaii.

Next week it's scheduled to make stops at several Superfund sites in the Hometown area: the Palmerton Zinc Pile on Wednesday, Oct. 3; Eastern Diversified Metals in Hometown on Thursday, Oct. 4; and McAdoo Associates in McAdoo on Friday, Oct. 6. The project's producers will be conducting video interviews with people involved with or impacted by the Superfund sites.

For a complete listing of sites the project will visit, click here.

Investigation documents dangers at Hometown Superfund sites

The Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based nonprofit that produces investigative journalism on issues of public concern, recently published a story documenting at least 114 Superfund sites where the threat from dangerous and sometimes carcinogenic substances is not under control, and 224 sites where the migration of contaminated groundwater is not under control -- and Eastern Diversified Metals in Hometown and McAdoo Associates just north of the village are among the sites on the latter list.

The investigation documents complaints that will strike a familiar chord with many Hometown-area residents:

People living near some of the most contaminated areas complain that the EPA favors private interests over their own and that their health suffers the consequences of government neglect.

Indeed, the EPA has continuously ignored the demands of Hometown-area residents for a thorough clean-up at the sites, instead kowtowing to the responsible polluters by favoring cheaper options at every step of the so-called "remediation" process.

CPI also raises concerns about EPA's choice to "cap" sites -- that is, to cover them with a plastic liner and dirt without addressing below-ground contamination. That's the remedy the agency chose for the EDM site despite vociferous objections from local residents, who among other things point out that capping does nothing to address the plume of the cancer-causing solvent trichloroethylene that runs beneath the site, which drains into a tributary of the Little Schuylkill River. CPI reports:

At another Superfund site in Pensacola, Fla., the EPA plans to place a giant tarp covered with soil and clay over "Mt. Dioxin," a nearly 600,000-cubic-yard mound of dirt contaminated with arsenic, dioxin, PCBs and other highly toxic material harmful to human health and whose exposure to humans is "not under control," according to the EPA.

The Pensacola site was created by another wood-treating facility, operated by Escambia Wood Treating Co. The EPA has determined that migration of groundwater off the site is also not under control.

In deciding among proposed cleanup plans, the EPA acknowledged that the one it settled on, which emphasizes containment, would not be as effective as alternatives that focus on treatment. But the agency maintained that its approach would "result in a substantially equivalent degree of protectiveness" at one-fifth the cost.

Several scientists and activists disagree.

"It's a high-tech engineered version of burying the stuff in a plastic bag," said Frances Dunham, a leading member of Citizens Against Toxic Exposure, an environmental watchdog group in Pensacola, Fla.

Among the contaminants being buried at EDM, where metals were reclaimed from phone cables, are dioxin, PCBs and lead -- all carcinogens.

I was interested to see McAdoo Associates on CPI's list of sites with uncontrolled migration of contaminated groundwater. The issue of contaminants running off the site -- a former coal mine that in the 1970s was turned into an illegal industrial waste dump used by some of America's biggest corporations -- has repeatedly come up in public discussions of the high rate of polycythemia vera among residents of Ben Titus Road, a community located downhill from the site.

The EPA has repeatedly assured local residents that any contaminants escaping from the site could not affect the private wells and municipal reservoir that lie along Ben Titus Road. However, the fact that the agency's own records acknowledge that the migration of contaminated groundwater from the site is in fact "uncontrolled" would seem to call any official assurances about its eventual destination into question.