Thursday, February 13, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Agency unable to discover clues to cancer cluster

Scientist says contaminants in environment too low to be linked to Fallon leukemia cases

A search of the air, soil and water in and around Fallon shows environmental contaminants are at levels too low to be linked conclusively to a childhood leukemia cluster, federal scientists said at a community meeting Wednesday night.

"We were looking for something unusual," said Gary Campbell, a senior environmental health scientist with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. "We did not see anything that would cause adverse health effects."

Between 1997 and the end of 2001, 16 children who live or used to live in Fallon's Churchill County were diagnosed with leukemia. The rare blood cancer has killed three of the children.

Nevada began investigating the leukemia cluster in the summer of 2000. The Centers for Disease Control and the ATSDR joined the investigation in early 2001.

The CDC announced last week the area's population had high amounts of the metals tungsten, uranium and arsenic in their blood and lower levels of some pesticides.

The ATSDR, a sister agency of the CDC, has been investigating how environmental contaminants might have gotten into the residents' blood.

Though none of the contaminants is a known cause of leukemia, health officials have recommended that residents drink bottled water or install reverse osmosis systems in their homes. The city is building a multimillion dollar water treatment plant.

The CDC's finding of tungsten in the area has prompted scientists to start genetic tests to determine whether the people who contracted leukemia have a different reaction to the metal than those who did not get the disease.

Campbell said the source of the tungsten appears to be nature.

"Tungsten is natural to the environment in Churchill County," he said. Agency scientists studied a tungsten plant in the area and found that it did not contribute enough tungsten into the environment to be a health concern, he said.

The agency said the homes of the leukemia patients were not nearer to the plant than the homes of people who did not get the disease.

Scientists plan to study what health effects, if any, tungsten has on people. They will study residents of two other Nevada towns, Pahrump and Lovelock, to determine whether high levels of tungsten are present. That testing should start in a few weeks.

Concern exists in the Fallon area that a pipeline running through the city might have leaked, exposing people to jet fuel. The pipeline runs to the Naval Air Station in Fallon from a facility in Sparks.

The ATSDR's study showed that the pipeline has not leaked and that neither the environment nor the residents were contaminated. The agency said the naval station is not a public health hazard.

"We knew going in that it would be very difficult to find a single cause of the cluster because nobody's ever been able to find a trigger for leukemia," Campbell said.

Campbell said the ATSDR's effort was useful.

He said that, with looking for a relationship between environmental contamination and the leukemia cluster, the agency conducted also a comprehensive environmental investigation that found nothing alarming.

That, he said, should make Fallon residents feel safer.