Sunday, April 20, 2014

WJLA-TV ABC7 report: high number of cancer cases in the Stronghold has many concerned; plus fliers distributed in the Stronghold

Thanks to Bloomingdame for passing along a copy of the pancreatic-cancer-in-Stronghold flier:



Here is another flier -- see this tweet and pic from resident Rebecca Mills:

Rebecca Mills

@RebeccaMillsDC

Ex-@ThBrightwoodian, onetime ANC 4B04 commissioner, current @Stronghold_DC. Rider of bikes, advocate for bike infrastructure. Rock. And so much more.




4/5/14, 1:35 PMLeft at my front door. Stronghold residents concerned we're a cancer cluster, pushing for a @dcwater study. twitpic.com/e0egxk

Now see this WJLA-TV report

Click on the link below to read the entire story.

Note that this question was raised at last week's Ward 5 DC Water Town Hall meeting.

High number of cancer cases in D.C neighborhood has many concerned

April 18, 2014 - 06:07 pm

(WJLA) - A seemingly  high number of pancreatic cancer instances in one neighborhood in the District has many wondering if a common environmental factor has anything to do with the sicknesses.
                 
Neighbors said in the past year and six months,  there have been six cases of pancreatic cancer-all within a few blocks of each other.
                                           
Four people have died, one is in hospice care and the sixth is recovering from treatment, neighbors told WJLA.

...
                                            

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is terrifying. Anyone thought it may not be the water, but something to do with all the equipment and towers that they have at the reservoir? There are a bunch of towers and machinery visible from 1st st and its unclear what they're used for. Agreed this needs to be about more than just assessing the water- it could be anything. I'm suprised the hospitals aren't more involved here in trying to figure this out.

Unknown said...

This is more of a minor associated issue, but I've heard that a few pipes in that neighborhood have been stopped up by debris. This may be related to the ongoing construction. If anyone in Bloomingdale has encountered problems with stoppages in their plumbing recently, you may want to reach out to the Stronghold folks.

Citizenalpha said...

Given that it's unknown what causes pancreatic cancer, it's unclear to me what environmental factors they would be testing for. In addition, before panicking about possible environmental factors, it's important that more information about the folks who passed away from pancreatic cancer be better analyzed, since it appears that there are lots factors associated with pancreatic cancer (race, smoking, obesity, diabetes, etc) that could possibly be pointed to first.

Citizenalpha said...

Causes and risk factors for pancreatic cancer:

http://pancreaticcanceraction.org/pancreatic-cancer/about/causes-and-risks/