Tuesday, December 17, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Fallon tungsten levels to be examined
Cancer cluster investigators to seek two other cities to compare with town's high readings
By RICHARD LAKE
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Federal cancer cluster investigators will be in Nevada early next month to help state officials find two communities they can compare with Fallon, the site of an outbreak of childhood leukemia cases.
Randall Todd, Nevada state epidemiologist, said officials were stunned when investigators revealed in August that levels of the heavy metal tungsten were up to 11 times higher in the Fallon area's population than the national average.
In response, he said, state officials asked federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention experts to help them find two similar Nevada communities in which they could measure the tungsten level in people. The CDC has agreed, he said.
"We need to do this because the finding of elevated tungsten levels in Fallon actually raised more questions than it answered," Todd said Monday. "We felt, and the CDC agreed, that it was important to try to find answers to those questions."
Three of the 16 children from the Fallon area diagnosed with leukemia have died.
Tungsten, a naturally occurring metal that has been mined in the Fallon area in the past, has never been shown to cause leukemia, though it has never been extensively studied for its health effects.
State and federal health experts have been seeking potential causes of the cluster of disease since it was discovered in 2000, though investigators have made no breakthroughs.
Todd said a decision has not been made on which communities should be used for the comparison.
He said the comparison is necessary because, although Fallon's tungsten levels were high compared to the national average, it is unknown if the levels are higher than in similar communities in the Mountain West.
If, as some investigators suspect, tungsten levels are high in other, similar communities without a large number of leukemia cases, that would tend to discredit the idea that tungsten could be a cause of the leukemia cluster, Todd said.
