Tag: cancer

Radon Continues to Plague Americans

  • David Aschenbrenner from Pro-Tech Environmental installs a radon mitigation system. (Photo by Mark Brush)

There’s an invisible, odorless gas that kills 21,000 Americans every year. We’ve known about radon gas for a long time. But as Mark Brush reports, experts say we’re still a long way from fixing the problem:

Transcript

There’s an invisible, odorless gas that kills 21,000 Americans every year. We’ve known about radon gas for a long time. But as Mark Brush reports, experts say we’re still a long way from fixing the problem:

Radon gas is found down here…

…in the basement.

Really, it’s all around us. The gas drifts out of the ground from bits of uranium ore. Normally, there’s not enough of it to cause a problem. But it can get trapped in our homes, schools, and offices. We breathe it in. And the gas can cause lung cancer. It’s the second leading cause of lung cancer next to smoking. And if you’re a smoker – you’re even more at risk.

The level of radon gas in this basement is unsafe. More than four times a safe standard set by the EPA:

So a crew of two guys is here to fix the problem.

David Aschenbrenner works for Pro-Tech Environmental in Ann Arbor, MI. He says radon gas seeps up from the ground and makes its way into the house through cracks and holes in the foundation:

“So as the air is rising through the house, the house acts as a chimney. It’s creating what we call the stack effect. And that’s what’s actually pulling the radon in.”

You can’t see it. You can’t smell it. But it’s often there.

“So with the radon piping, and the radon fan, it’s going to create a suction slightly stronger than the house breathing normally.”

They drill a hole in the basement floor – put a PVC pipe into the hole. And fan on the pipe will vent the radon gas outside.
Right now – a lot of people find out about radon when they buy or sell a house. The air is tested and if there’s a problem – it can be fixed.

Bill Field is an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa. He’s studied the health risks of exposure to radiation for decades. Field says these systems work. But even though more people know about the threat of radon gas – there are still more people exposed today than in the past:

“We’re further behind now, than we were 20 years ago with addressing the radon issue, because more homes are being built that aren’t radon resistant than are being mitigated. Each year there are tens of thousands of home that are coming on the market that will hopefully be fixed someday, but they could have been fixed when they were first built.”

Field says new homes should be built to keep radon out. He says simple changes in home construction – changes that would only add $500 in construction costs – would work. He says there should be a federal requirement to build homes this way, since radon can be a problem in every state.

There are some states, counties and cities that have radon resistant new construction written into their building codes – but more than half don’t – and even in the places that do have the code on the books – workers told us that it’s not always enforced – so it’s easy to just skip the requirement.

The National Association of Home Builders says it would oppose any federal requirements to build homes this way. They say radon should be dealt with where there are known hot spots.

There are parts of the country where radon can be bigger problem than in other areas. But it can be a problem no matter where you are. The EPA has a recommended standard for radon gas. It says that homes or offices or schools should be fixed if they have radon levels of 4 pico-curies per liter or more. But Bill Field says sixty percent of the cancers caused by radon were caused at levels below this EPA standard:

“Talk about a safe level of four pico-curies per liter is really a misnomer. It’s like saying it’s o.k. to cross the road blindfolded because there’s only one car coming instead of three. There really is no safe level of radon.”

A recent report by the President’s Cancer Panel evaluated the progress being made on cancer prevention. Exposure to radioactive radon gas is one of the areas where the experts said not enough is being done. And because the problem is getting worse – they’re recommending the government do more.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

“You can test your air for radon gas by buying a test kit at your local hardware store. They cost between ten and twenty dollars.”

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Studying Cancer Near Nuke Plants

  • The NRC tells people that living near nuclear power plants does not pose extra risk for cancer, and it points to a particular study, finished twenty years ago.(Photo courtesy of the Rancho Seco Reactor)

For decades, the federal government has said it’s safe to live near nuclear power reactors and it points to a particular cancer study to back that up. Shawn Allee reports, lately, the government worries that study’s out of date and it wants scientists to take another look.

Transcript

For decades, the federal government has said it’s safe to live near nuclear power reactors and it points to a particular cancer study to back that up. Shawn Allee reports, lately, the government worries that study’s out of date and it wants scientists to take another look.

The federal agency that’s looking for an up-to-date cancer study is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC.

It’s asked the National Academy of Sciences to do that study, but the Academy hasn’t made up its mind. The academy asked the NRC, the nuclear power industry, and the public to explain why a new study’s even needed.

It broadcast the hearing over the Internet.

“Our first speaker is Sarah Sauer, private citizen.”

Sarah Sauer is 16, but looks much younger.

“I am one of the statistics you’ll be studying. When I was seven years old, I was diagnosed with brain cancer. I hope in this study you will remember who you’re doing this for.”

“Thank you Sarah, let me invite your parents to say something if they’d like to.”

“I am Cynthia Sauer, Sarah’s mom. For my family and i this study is long overdue. nine years ago today, Sarah was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. The pain has been so shattering that we still cannot give it words.”

Cynthia Sauer tells the National Academy how her family once lived near the Dresden nuclear power station, about 50 miles Southwest of Chicago.

She’d learned that power plant leaked radioactive water years ago.

Cynthia Sauer can’t say for sure the plant caused Sarah’s cancer, but she wonders … because other kids were diagnosed with cancer, too.

“I began searching for answers to my questions regarding the leaks and the numbers of children diagnosed with cancer in our small town.”

Cynthia Sauer turned to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The NRC tells people that living near nuclear power plants does not pose extra risk for cancer, and it points to a particular study, finished twenty years ago.

“The scientists in the ad hoc committee statement clearly stated the study was flawed and that further monitoring and investigation was needed.”

What are the flaws? For one, the old study concluded people living near nuclear power plants do not face extra risk of dying from cancer … but it didn’t answer whether they’re at risk of getting cancer.

It ignored cancer survivors or people who moved before dying of the disease.

Sauer tells the academy that … this is why we need a new cancer study – we just can’t be confident in the old one.

And that’s a problem because at least three million people live within ten miles of a nuclear power plant.

Some US Congressmen want the safety issue settled, and in fact, so does the nuclear power industry.

Ralph Anderson is with The Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group.

He says other studies suggest power plants are safe … so the industry has nothing to worry about from a new study – unless the Academy misinterprets results:

“There have been studies where people simply collect the data and let the computer go to work to bend the data in a wide variety of ways. We have been the victim of a number studies that have done precisely that. So, you end up with weird age groups and things like that because the data’s carefully selected to prove the point. That’s what we’d like to see avoided.”

So the public, the government and industry want some kind of follow-up study on cancer rates near nuclear power plants.

But that might not be enough for The National Academy of Sciences to move forward.
Many scientists say we can’t begin good studies, because it’s hard to collect the necessary data.
In fact, one group that says that … is the same group that conducted the original cancer study twenty years ago.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Veterans’ Benefits for Agent Orange Exposure

  • A poster from the Department of Veterans Affairs offering help and resources to veterans exposed to Agent Orange. (Photo courtesy of the Department of Veterans Affairs)

The US Department of Veterans
Affairs is offering new help to
Vietnam-era vets. The VA says
it can now assist vets who have
ailments related to Agent Orange
exposure. Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

The US Department of Veterans
Affairs is offering new help to
Vietnam-era vets. The VA says
it can now assist vets who have
ailments related to Agent Orange
exposure. Mark Brush has more:

During the Vietnam War, the herbicide known as Agent Orange was sprayed over jungles and forests. It was used to strip the leaves from the trees and expose enemy soldiers.

Some US soldiers who were exposed to the herbicide have long complained about health problems.

Now, the Department of Veterans Affairs says it will help these veterans with disability benefits.

Exposure to Agent Orange has been tied to health problems like parkinson’s disease, cancer, and heart problems.

Allan Oates is with the US Military Veterans with Parkinson’s. He served in Vietnam. And was exposed to Agent Orange. He says his group was thrilled by the VA’s decision.

“It was just an exhilarating feeling to have these people knowing that they were going to get the help that they deserved.”

Oates says many Vietnam era veterans don’t know yet that help is available to them.

The VA estimates that 2.6 million military personnel were potentially exposed to sprayed Agent Orange.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Dioxin Deal One Step Closer

  • A sign on the Tittabawassee River, downriver from Dow Chemical Plant, stating to avoid contact with the soil and not eat the fish due to dioxin contamination (Photo by Vincent Duffy)

The federal government and a major
chemical company have reached an
initial agreement about cleaning
up one of the nation’s largest dioxin
pollution sites. But, Shawn Allee reports, the public will
have to wait a bit to examine the
fine print:

Transcript

The federal government and a major
chemical company have reached an
initial agreement about cleaning
up one of the nation’s largest dioxin
pollution sites. But, Shawn Allee reports, the public will
have to wait a bit to examine the
fine print:

Central Michigan has a dubious distinction: The Environmental Protection Agency
claims that a flood plain there has some of the highest dioxin levels ever found in soil.

That dioxin came from a Dow chemical plant decades ago. The EPA and Dow just
concluded negotiations over a clean-up deal.

Wendy Carney is with the EPA’s regional Superfund cleanup office. Carney says the
deal is not done, though.

“This agreement doesn’t actually contain any cleanup options. It also doesn’t
address any cleanup levels for the site. That would be a part of things we would talk
about with the public in a public forum to get their feedback on those issues.”

Carney says the EPA could unveil its agreement with Dow in two weeks.

The EPA suspects dioxins cause cancer and other health problems.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Pollution Causes Portion of Animal Cancer Cases

  • Beluga Whales along the Canadian Atlantic coast developed tumors after they came in contact with chemicals from aluminum smelters. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)

A new report in the journal Nature Reviews
Cancer looks at cancer in wildlife. Mark
Brush reports, the disease in animals is
sometimes caused by pollution:

Transcript

A new report in the journal Nature Reviews
Cancer looks at cancer in wildlife. Mark
Brush reports, the disease in animals is
sometimes caused by pollution:

The authors of this paper looked at a lot of research on cancer in wild animals. Some of these studies linked the cancer cases to pollution.

Beluga Whales along the Canadian Atlantic coast developed tumors after they came in contact with chemicals from aluminum smelters. And some fish and clam species have developed cancers after being exposed to pollution.

Denise McAloose is a veterinarian with the Wildlife Conservation Society. She’s the lead author of the paper.

“People should care about cancer in wildlife because, especially in those cancers that are driven by environmental factors, those environmental factors affect not only the animals, but people as well.”

For example, the people who worked in those aluminum smelters also had higher rates of cancer.

She says more research into the link between pollution and cancer in animals needs to be done. Because looking at how the disease affects wildlife might help us treat or prevent cancer in people.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Styrene Industry Sues Over Cancer Listing

  • Styrene is one component in styrofoam containers (Photo by Renee Comet, courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)

The styrene industry is suing to stop environmental officials from saying styrene could cause cancer and birth defects. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

The styrene industry is suing to stop environmental officials from saying styrene could cause cancer and birth defects. Lester Graham reports:

Styrene is used in all kinds of products – containers like coffee cups, egg cartons, in construction, in cars.

The state of California wants to add it to a list of cancer-causing materials. The International Agency for Research on Cancer found styrene is “possibly carcinogenic to humans.”

Joe Walker is a spokesman for the Styrene Information and Research Center.

“Styrene is not a carginogen. Any listing that would categorize it as such basically would be illegal and would be erroneous and would have the potential of alarming the public unnecessarily about products that are made from styrene.”

If the court does allow California to put styrene on its cancer list, the styrene industry has a year to prove it doesn’t belong on that list.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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The Great Vaccination Debate

  • There are parts of the country where up to 20% of families are saying ‘no’ to vaccines. (Photo by Bill Branson, courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)

Babies and young children get a lot more vaccines today than they did ten years ago. To most parents, it’s a chance to protect their children from more diseases. But there are pockets of places where lots of people are opting out of vaccines. Julie Grant reports that it has the Centers for Disease Control concerned:

Transcript

Babies and young children get a lot more vaccines today than they did ten years ago. To most parents, it’s a chance to protect their children from more diseases. But there are pockets of places where lots of people are opting out of vaccines. Julie Grant reports that it has the Centers for Disease Control concerned:

Heather Waltz has a five month old daughter. Most Americans her age have already started a series of vaccinations – to prevent everything from Hepatitis B, to Diphtheria, to Polio.

But Waltz’s little girl isn’t going to get those shots. Her mom worries they could cause things like autism, juvenile diabetes and even cancer.

“I think the jury’s still out, as far as what the research says. But there is enough anecdotal sort of stuff to make me aware and decide that, really, right at this point, vaccinating wasn’t what I wanted to do.”

Waltz is among a small, but growing number of parents who are becoming skeptical of vaccines.

Lance Rodewald is director of immunization services at the Centers for Disease Control.

He says more than 90% of American children are vaccinated. But there are parts of the country where up to 20% of families are saying ‘no’ to vaccines.

“And that’s getting to a rate of lack of protection of children that really can be a fertile ground for the spreading of diseases like measles. And we actually saw that last year.”

In one case last year, Rodewald says a child who wasn’t vaccinated caught the measles in Switzerland and brought it back to Arizona.

“The parents didn’t realize that the child had measles – brought him to the pediatricians office where there were babies that were too young to be vaccinated that got measles. And then that particular outbreak went through four generations of spread, from child to child to child to child before it was able to be contained.”

Measles can cause more than just a nasty rash. In rare cases, it can lead to death. Measles still causes 200,000 deaths around the world. But it’s been almost eradicated in the U.S. because of vaccines.

Rodewald says many parents are concerned about vaccines today because of a ten-year old scientific article that linked the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella to autism. Rodewald says the science in that article proved to be wrong.

“The authors withdrew their names from the article. But this particular study set off a whole series of concerns about vaccines and autism that, to this day, is still talked about.”

Rodewald says many studies have been done and found no association, no cause and effect, between vaccines and autism.

It’s tough for parents to wade through all the information that’s out there these days. And there are so many vaccines to try to understand. Back in the mid-1990s, children were given 6 vaccines. Today, they’re supposed to get more than twice that many.

Mother Heather Waltz tries to keep up with it all and says she still plans to avoid vaccines.

Waltz: “For every bit of research and every article I find sort of helping me support my point, there’s a million other bits of research and articles saying that I’m a bad parent, or saying that I’m somehow damaging the health of the entire United States by not vaccinating my child. Just this idea that she could be a measles monster and just running around and infecting her classmates with measles or something like that, and that would be a terrible thing.”

Grant: “What do you think when you see that?”

Waltz: “It doesn’t make logical sense to me. Because to me, if you have 30 kids in a classroom, and my one isn’t vaccinated, wouldn’t my child be the one at risk? Not the public’s.”

But even if Waltz’s daughter doesn’t get vaccinated, she’ll probably be safe from these diseases. With so many other kids getting inoculations, most of the U.S. is not fertile ground for them to regain traction.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Coal Ash Could Cause Cancer

  • Coal ash is sometimes used as an ingredient in concrete blocks (Photo source: Skepticsteve at Wikimedia Commons)

For decades coal burning power plants have dumped coal ash into landfills or ponds next to the plants. Tamara Keith reports environmental groups say that’s more dangerous that previously known:

Transcript

For decades coal burning power plants have dumped coal ash into landfills or ponds next to the plants. Tamara Keith reports environmental groups say that’s more dangerous that previously known:

A new report from the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice uses data from the US Environmental Protection Agency – including a study that had been kept quiet since 2002.

Among the findings, people who live near coal ash storage ponds that are unlined, and who get their drinking water from a well, have a 1 in 50 chance of getting cancer from arsenic contamination.

Lisa Evans is an attorney with Earthjustice.

“It by far presents the largest risk to human health and the environment and there’s no reason to manage the waste in this way.”

The groups are calling for these storage ponds to be phased out and cleaned up in the next 5 years.

The EPA says new regulations are coming soon.

Power companies are willing to stop using storage ponds – but don’t want the coal ash classified as toxic. That would make disposal more expensive.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

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Will Coal Ash Spill Get Into the Air?

  • Airborne toxins could be causing health problems for residents near this coal ash spill (seen in the background) in Tennessee. (Photo by Matt Shafer Powell)

Environmentalists don’t want a lot of new coal-burning power plants to be built. They’re concerned about more greenhouse gases from the plants and environmental damage from mining the coal. Late last year, another concern came to light. For decades a power plant disposed of coal ash in a pond next to it. The dam holding back the coal ash sludge failed. Matt Shafer Powell reports more than a billion gallons of the sludge caused plenty of damage to the soil and water. Now, there’s concern about the air:

Transcript

Environmentalists don’t want a lot of new coal-burning power plants to be built. They’re concerned about more greenhouse gases from the plants and environmental damage from mining the coal. Late last year, another concern came to light. For decades a power plant disposed of coal ash in a pond next to it. The dam holding back the coal ash sludge failed. Matt Shafer Powell reports more than a billion gallons of the sludge caused plenty of damage to the soil and water. Now, there’s concern about the air:

In December, the massive coal ash spill at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in East Tennessee made people aware of a hazard they’d never really considered before. And no one knows how much of a problem it’s going to be.

“We’re looking across the Emory River.”

Matt Landon is a volunteer for the environmental group United Mountain Defense. These days, he spends a lot of time near the Tennessee Valley Authority’s ash spill site. His double respirator mask, his personal video camera and his vocal criticism of the T.V.A. have all become fixtures here. It was on one of his recent rounds near the Emory River that he saw something that scared him.

“I drove around the bend here on Emory River Road and I witnessed a massive dust storm coming off the entire coal ash disaster site.”

Landon says the dust cloud was about 70-to-80 feet high and about a half mile wide. Coal ash can contain several toxic heavy metals — like arsenic, lead, and mercury. For Landon, the site of this swirling cloud was a sobering and frightening reminder that it wouldn’t take much for the toxic materials contained in the wet cement-like sludge to dry out and become airborne.

When Landon walks up to Diana Anderson’s house on the Emory River, her shih-tzus go nuts. And no wonder. Here’s this tall, lanky guy in a double-respirator mask headed their way.

Anderson has lived here for forty years now, just downwind from the plant. And she never worried about it. But since the spill, she’s begun to notice changes in her health.

“My sinuses are irritated, I have a raspy throat, and I do a lot of coughing and my head hurts and I feel very, very, very fatigued.”

Anderson has volunteered to let Matt Landon test the air near her home. So, the two head to her kitchen sink, where they wash and prepare Pyrex dishes.

They’ll set the dishes out on Anderson’s back porch to collect dust. After a while, Landon will send the dust samples off to a lab to find out what’s in the air.

The T.V.A. is also testing the air, with help from the state of Tennessee and the E.P.A. T.V.A. Spokesman Gil Francis says they’ve already collected more than 10-thousand air samples.

“We’re taking samples 24/7, the samples are coming back that the air quality is meeting the National Air Ambient Standards and we’re going to continue to work hard to make sure that’s what the case is going forward.”

That might be easier said than done. Francis says the T.V.A. has done a lot to keep the ash from drying out and blowing around. They’ve dropped straw and grass seed from helicopters and coated the ash in an acrylic mixture. But Steven Smith of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy says nobody really knows what it’s going to take to clean this mess up. Or how the people who live downwind will be affected.

“There are still a lot of unknowns about this. We’ve never had an ash spill this size and I think people ought to err on the side of caution.”

If there’s one bit of consolation for the people living near the Kingston coal ash spill, it’s this: the National Weather Service says that during the summer months this region is among the least windy and most humid in the country.

For the Environment Report, I’m Matt Shafer Powell.

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Bpa in Your Body

  • BPA is not only found in plastic bottles, it is also found in the lining of most canned foods (Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of the USDA)

A chemical found in plastic might be present in people’s bodies more than previously thought. A number of previous studies suggest that even at very low levels bisphenol-A, or BPA, could be linked to health problems. They range from prostate and breast cancer to early puberty in kids. Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

A chemical found in plastic might be present in people’s bodies more than previously thought. A number of previous studies suggest that even at very low levels bisphenol-A, or BPA, could be linked to health problems. They range from prostate and breast cancer to early puberty in kids. Rebecca Williams reports:

Scientists thought our main exposure to BPA was through food because of plastic linings in cans and other containers. They also thought BPA didn’t stay in our bodies very long.

But in this new study, researchers found that people who fasted for 24 hours still had levels of BPA close to the same as people who’d just eaten.

So they think we might be exposed to BPA some other way. Maybe water – some plastic water pipes contain BPA. Or, BPA is staying in our bodies for longer than people thought. Or both.

Dr. Rick Stahlhut is the lead author of the study in Environmental Health Perspectives. He says there are some ways to reduce your exposure from food.

“You’d probably have to get food that was mostly fresh and cook it yourself and try not to use polycarbonate plastic to store food.”

And he says use containers and bottles that don’t contain BPA.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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