=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #127
—May 2, 1989—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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NINE CANCERS STRIKE POPULATION AT PENNSYLVANIA SUPERFUND DUMP.
A 1984 study by the federal Centers for Disease Control revealed
a pattern of excessive cancer deaths in Clinton County,
Pennsylvania, where the Drake Superfund site is located. The
researchers focused first on bladder cancers, but then found
others cancers in greater numbers.
The Drake Chemical Company used, manufactured and stored scores
of chemicals on a 46-acre site for many years, including the
known human carcinogens beta-naphthylamine, benzidine and benzene.
Researchers from the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
evaluated health data for Clinton County and found that bladder
cancers doubled in Clinton county from 1950 to 1979, whereas
bladder cancers decreased for all of Pennsylvania and remained
the same in the whole United States during the same time. Ten
bladder cancers occurred among white males in Clinton (a county
of 39,000 people) during the decade of the 1950s; by the decade
of the ’70s the rate was up to 23. However, during the same
period, the bladder cancer rate among white females in Clinton
decreased. On this basis, the CDC researchers conclude that
probably the cancers were caused by occupational exposure to
chemicals, rather than general exposure resulting from the
Superfund dump.
The cancer rates for nine other types of cancer were even more
elevated in Clinton County than were bladder cancers. The CDC
researchers conclude that at least one of these cancers
(non-Hodgkins lymphomas, or cancers of the lymph glands) struck
both men and women in Clinton County at excessive rates,
“suggesting” that a “general environmental exposure” to at least
one carcinogenic chemical occurred.
Other elevated cancer rates in Clinton county included leukemias
among women (but not men), bone cancer among men (but not women),
cancer of the salivary glands (among men, but not women), cancer
of the uterus, and cancers of the rectum and larynx (among women,
but not men).
Get: Lawrence Budnick, and others. “Cancer and Birth defects Near
the Drake Superfund Site, Pennsylvania.” ARCHIVES OF
ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH, Vol. 39, No. 6 (November/December, 1984),
pgs. 409-413.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: cancer; health effects; studies; pa;
landfilling; landfills; superfund; npl;