[CPEO-MEF] HEALTH, VOCs: "Review finds Fort Detrick [MD] cancer studies inconclusive"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

[Note: I served on this NRC Committee. - LS]

Review finds Fort Detrick cancer studies inconclusive
Independent scientific panel recommends against further research

By Timothy B. Wheeler
Baltimore Sun
March 5, 2012

An independent panel of scientists says two government-issued studies  
can't show if people were harmed by toxic pollution from Fort Detrick  
contaminating the ground water, but further studies are unlikely to  
answer lingering questions about the health impacts of the cancer- 
causing chemicals buried decades ago at the Frederick military base.

In a review sponsored by the Army, a committee of environmental and  
health experts with the National Research Council took issue with a  
study by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry,  
which concluded that tainted ground water seeping out from Detrick's  
Area B was "unlikely to have produced any harmful health effects,  
including cancer."

The research council scientists said that because there had been  
little or no water sampling done before 1992, when toxic chemicals  
were discovered in residential wells near the base, it's impossible  
to reconstruct residents' past exposures. With such essential  
information lacking, the expert panel said, the federal study should  
have declared that the tainted ground water posed an "indeterminate  
public health hazard."



...

For the entire article, see
http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-gr- 
detrick-20120305,0,2072724.story

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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