Opinion: 'Trevor's Law' would help investigate childhood cancer clusters
Twelve-year-old Tanner is among nearly 40 children from Ohio's Sandusky County who have been diagnosed with cancer. The community has fought for answers to explain the series of cancer cases that began a decade ago. Now a bill introduced in the Senate will go a long way toward helping investigate disease clusters. It would direct and fund federal agencies to assist state health officials in investigating potential clusters. However, the U.S. toxics law needs reform, too, to help protect children and communities from environmental chemicals.
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| suzeo99/flickr. |
| Forty-two cancer and other disease clusters in 13 states were recently identified, and toxic exposures in the communities are the suspected cause. |
By Rebecca Fuoco
Environmental Health News
July 28, 2011
Tanner, a 12-year-old from Clyde, Ohio, had a difficult school year. He was only able to attend a few weeks of school. Summer activities are also limited for Tanner, who cannot swim in public pools because his leukemia has left him with a diminished immune system.
Tanner and his older sister are among nearly 40 children from Sandusky County who have been diagnosed with cancer. The community of 62,000 has fought for answers to explain the series of child cancers that began a decade ago.
While cancer clusters are a nightmare for families and communities, they also are frustrating for state and local health officials. Cancer cluster investigations are notoriously difficult because of small budgets, the variety of factors involved in cancer development and the multitude of possible sources and exposures. They are almost always inconclusive.
Earlier this year, Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Mike Crapo (R-ID) introduced a bill known as “Trevor’s Law," named after Trevor Schaefer, a brain cancer survivor who was diagnosed at the age of 13 and has worked to raise awareness of disease clusters and possible links to the environment.
This legislation would direct and fund federal agencies to assist state health officials in investigating potential clusters. It also would create science-based guidelines for cluster identification. The bill was sparked by rising rates of childhood cancer and the President’s Cancer Panel’s 2010 statement that the burden of environmentally-induced cancer is grossly underestimated.
While cancer clusters are a nightmare for families and communities, they also are frustrating for state and local health officials. Cancer cluster investigations are notoriously difficult due to various factors. They are almost always inconclusive.Cancer clusters should indeed be a public policy concern. Forty-two cancer and other disease clusters in 13 states were recently identified by the Natural Resources Defense Council. All of them are suspected of being caused by toxic exposures in the community.
However, Trevor’s Law will yield little benefit unless there also is a significant change in the way chemicals are regulated in the United States.
The Toxic Substances Control Act is the federal law responsible for ensuring safety of industrial chemicals. Among its weaknesses is that it does not require chemical producers to provide data on a chemical’s environmental fate or toxicity before it is introduced into the market. Under the 1976 law, the Environmental Protection Agency may require the manufacturer to provide this information only if a chemical poses certain health or environmental risks. Even then, the procedures EPA must follow to obtain test data from companies can take years.
The EPA does not have the resources to routinely assess the hazards of 700 some chemicals introduced into commerce each year and companies very rarely voluntarily perform such testing. Accordingly, the vast majority of chemicals on the market today have not been tested for toxicity. Without access to scientific information on potential exposure routes, toxic mechanisms and health effects of at least 85,000 chemicals on the market today, it will remain exceedingly difficult for agencies to investigate clusters and their possible environmental causes.
Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) has introduced the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011, which will begin to close the data gap by requiring chemical manufacturers to develop and make publicly available toxicity and exposure information for all chemicals. It also gives the EPA authority to request additional testing to determine the safety of a chemical.
Not only will this testing aid the analysis of existing cancer clusters, but it might also prevent development of future cancer clusters. Chemicals proving carcinogenic in testing can more likely be restricted from use -- and will therefore not end up in landfills, drinking water systems and other possible sources of community exposure in the first place.
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Rebecca Fuoco is a Center for Health Leadership Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health
Opinion: 'Trevor's Law' would help investigate childhood cancer clusters. by Environmental Health News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
