CDC, state officials investigating multiple cases of rare cancer in southwestern Pa.

From an Article by David Templeton & Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 28, 2019

Many in the Canon-McMillan School District first learned about Ewing sarcoma, a rare childhood bone cancer, when Luke Blanock of the village of Cecil was diagnosed on Dec. 5, 2014.

The media did stories about the community rallying around the smart, handsome teenager and his family, then returned on Feb. 19, 2016, to cover Mr. Blanock — pale, thin and having just been told he had only two weeks to live — when he married his high school girlfriend, Natalie Britvich.

He rebounded a bit and even played a round of golf before succumbing nearly six months later on Aug. 7, from multiple tumors of the brain, spine, skull, jaw and pelvis. He was only 19.

But, as it turns out, the Ewing sarcoma scare within Canon-McMillan’s boundaries in eastern Washington County neither began nor ended with Luke Blanock.

In fact, six cases of Ewing sarcoma have been diagnosed within the school district since 2008, including two cases in the past nine months.

And only now is it being disclosed that twice that number of Ewing cases have occurred in southeastern Westmoreland County since 2011.

Only 200 to 250 cases of Ewing sarcoma — a rare cancer of the bone or nearby soft tissue — occur each year in the United States. The National Cancer Institute said the incidence for all ages is one case per million but up to 10 cases per million among those in the 10-to-19 age group.

Based on a report by a concerned resident and St. Vincent College researchers about the Ewing cases in Westmoreland County, the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched a study to determine whether these cases constitute a cluster. The state now has expanded the investigation to include the Canon-McMillan School District and Washington County.

Nate Wardle, health department spokesman, said it received more than a dozen phone calls within the last month from residents of Washington and Westmoreland counties about the Ewing sarcoma cases, and several more called this week.

Ewing Sarcoma Canon Cases mount up

The string of Ewing cases in Canon-McMillan began with the mid-2008 diagnosis of Curtis Valent, a Cecil Township resident who graduated from Bishop Canevin High School. He died on Jan. 2, 2011, at age 23, according to his obituary. His parents could not be reached for comment.

Late in 2008, Alyssa Chambers, then an 18-year-old Canon-McMillan senior living in northern Cecil Township, was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma and survived. She later became an oncology nurse at UPMC Shadyside.

Kyle Deliere, who lived about a mile from Mr. Blanock in the village of Cecil, was diagnosed with Ewing next, on Oct. 30, 2011. He lost weight, had night sweats and fevers, and developed large tumors on his hip, femur and lungs. The 11-letter high school athlete who wrestled for the University of Pittsburgh died on Nov. 15, 2013, at age 27.

Then in June 2018, David Cobb, 37 at the time, and also living in Cecil Township, was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma and now is undergoing rounds of chemotherapy.

Compounding this cancer conundrum and fueling concern, Mitchell Barton, a 21-year-old Canon-McMillan graduate now working as a technician in a local box factory, posted news on Facebook of his Dec. 27, 2018, Ewing diagnosis.

He and Mr. Blanock played baseball together in high school. Mr. Barton, now undergoing chemotherapy, still lives at home in North Strabane, where fracked natural gas wells surround him. For that reason, environmental issues crossed his mind from the moment of diagnosis.

“I worked at a golf course for four years and was exposed to a lot of chemicals, weed killers and things like that,” he said. “Our house also is in a valley surrounded by four gas wells. I heard about natural gas and my mom is concerned about methane [natural gas].”

In addition to the Ewing cases, a 14-year-old girl from Cecil Township died of astrocytoma, a brain and spinal cord cancer, in February, and as many as seven current students and two preschoolers in the Canon-McMillan School District have other types of cancer.

Those nine consist of two cases of osteosarcoma (bone); one liposarcoma (joint); one rhabdomyosarcoma (also joint); a Wilms (kidney) tumor in a child whose family has moved from the district; one liver cancer; two cases of leukemia (blood); and a 2-year-old with cancer that the parent declined to identify.

In another case, a 21-year-old Canon-McMillan graduate of North Strabane was diagnosed in early January with leukemia.

Another concentration of cases: The worries about Ewing and other forms of childhood cancer go well beyond the Canon-McMillan School District. In Westmoreland County, 12 cases of Ewing sarcoma were found to be diagnosed from 2011 through early 2018.

Maureen Grace, a Westmoreland County lawyer and teacher, began compiling a list upon hearing of one case after another in areas southeast of Greensburg. “All that I can say is that I saw beautiful children and families suffering. I asked myself, ‘What if this happened to a child in my family?’ Every child, every parent and anyone who cares about children has the right to clean, healthy, safe air, water and surroundings for their babies, little ones and teenagers to grow and become adults. I don’t know if we have this environment right now,” Ms. Grace said.

“Our children are our most precious resource. If we don’t investigate this to the very best of our abilities, who are we as a culture or community?” she added. “We need to do better for our little ones who look to us for the answers. We need to protect them above all else.”

So determined, she sought help from two St. Vincent College researchers — Elaine Bennett, professor of anthropology and public health, and Cynthia Walter, a now-retired professor of ecology and toxicology — who recruited students to help verify cases, analyze results and write a report. Ms. Grace also received help through the Healthy Child/Healthy World Organization. The research team, known as the Westmoreland County Pa. Ewing Sarcoma Project, submitted its report to the state health department and CDC in December 2017.

Working quietly, Ms. Grace finally responded to longstanding inquiries from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and stepped forward with Ms. Walter, who holds a doctorate in biology, to publicize their results. Ms. Grace said she initially documented eight pediatric Ewing cases and the health department now has expanded that total to 12, when cases involving young adults were included.

Confirming a cluster requires meeting a high statistical and analytical bar, including identifying a pollution or chemical exposure linked to that cancer, according to a Pitt biostatistician. That presents a problem because Ewing sarcoma has no known cause. What could be the cause?

The Westmoreland project presented the state with a long list of possible pollution sources, including countywide shale gas drilling and fracking operations and a Penn Township landfill that has accepted thousands of tons of radioactive drill cuttings from gas well sites. The project’s report also makes a case for how pollution exposure could lead to Ewing.

But Ms. Grace said she and the team don’t yet know if fracking, water or air pollution, or pollution from old industry, among other sources of pollution and contamination, are responsible. “We don’t want our aim to stray from seeking a scientific cause and solution,” she said.

The health department said it is reviewing cancer statistics for Washington County and for the Canon-McMillan School District, where it is only aware of four cases but has yet to incorporate 2018 cancer data into its review. In the past decade, two additional Ewing sarcoma cases have occurred in Washington County — one in Charleroi and another in or near Bentleyville — with at least two cases each in Greene and Fayette counties.

The health department also said it has been working with researchers to separately evaluate and monitor Westmoreland County statistics. Even with 12 Ewing cases, the department does not see a statistically significant excessive number in Westmoreland County, Mr. Wardle said, adding that that finding has been shared with concerned residents of the county. “But we will continue to monitor the number of cases in the area.”

He said the department is doing the statistical evaluation of the Ewing cases in Washington County and now has included all childhood cancers in the study, including those identified by the Post-Gazette.

The Ewing family of sarcoma is not one of the common cancers the department reports on annually, he said. Most cases occur in teens when they experience growth spurts, and science is limited as to what causes it.

The concerned citizens who recently called the health department wanted to know if the cancer cases are related to environmental factors, including radiation, Mr. Wardle said. Washington County has historic radiation issues related to a uranium mill tailings disposal site in North Strabane, near Canonsburg, where the U.S. Department of Energy continues to report background or below background levels of radiation.

Another concern is the widespread drilling and fracking of more than 1,000 shale gas wells, which produce waste water with radioactive components, among other pollutants. The first experimental well in southwestern Pennsylvania was fracked in 2005 in Cecil Township. The township now sits downwind from a phalanx of compressor stations and a hilltop cryogenics plant, a major source of pollution.

Academic studies done in Pennsylvania and Colorado have found higher rates of childhood cancers in areas where fracking is occurring but with no links to Ewing sarcoma.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition, the trade organization representing the shale gas industry in Pennsylvania, issued a statement citing a review of medical data by the American Cancer Society that found “no known lifestyle-related or environmental causes of Ewing tumors ….”

In a statement, David Spigelmyer, coalition president, said attempts to link the incidence of Ewing sarcoma and other childhood cancers to the shale gas drilling industry were without scientific or medical support.

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See also: Study Finds Higher Risk of Brain Tumors in Appalachia, January 17, 2019

Marcellus Shale & Radon Results (CMU)

Is the Natural Gas in your Home Upping your Radon Risk?

From an Article by Julie Grant, The Allegheny Front, August 12, 2016

Radon, the odorless gas that occurs naturally in soils and often finds its way into homeowners’ basements, is a familiar concern for people across Pennsylvania. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), radon is responsible for 21,000 cancer deaths in the U.S. every year, and Pennsylvania homes and buildings have some of the highest radon levels in the country. In fact, a full 40 percent of homes in the state have radon levels above what the EPA considers actionable.

The risks of radon and how it gets into our homes have been understood for decades. Radon starts out as uranium, which occurs naturally in soil and rocks. And as that uranium decays, it eventually becomes radon gas—which can then migrate into people’s basements. But there is some concern that unconventional natural gas development could be pushing Pennsylvanians’ radon exposure even higher.

LISTEN to Audio in Original Article: Is Pennsylvania Natural Gas Increasing Your Radon Risk?

“The Marcellus is considered to be a fairly radioactive rock,” says Elizabeth Casman, a researcher in environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

The ‘Marcellus’—or Marcellus Shale—is the geological formation feeding the state’s fracking boom, and it has particularly high levels of radon. So when fracking in the region began, Casman wondered whether radon in the Marcellus could be making its way into the natural gas that fuels furnaces, water heaters and stoves in our homes.

“The more I was reading about the formation and the potential for radon in the natural gas, the more nervous I got,” she says.

In fact, Casman herself stopped cooking on her gas stove.

When Carnegie Mellon researcher Elizabeth Casman learned how radioactive the Marcellus Shale is, she got a little concerned that the natural gas coming into her home could be creating dangerous levels of radon. In fact, she initially declared a mini moratorium—forgoing cooking on her gas stove—until she studied the risks.

But sorting out exactly what percentage of home radon levels may be coming from Marcellus natural gas is tricky—in part, because Pennsylvania has such high radon levels to begin with.

“We have some of the most unique geology, soils and rocks—creating some of the highest radon levels naturally probably in the country, maybe the world,” says Dave Allard, who heads up the Bureau of Radiation Protection at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA-DEP).

He says home radon levels in Pennsylvania are also trending upward. His department has even seen some homes with levels 250 times the amount that’s actionable by EPA.

“Quite honestly, some of our residential levels in Pennsylvania are higher than you would allow in a uranium mine,” he says.

So the PA-DEP started looking into whether natural gas could be responsible for these higher radon levels. Bob Lewis, the state’s chief radon officer, conducted tests at more than 30 wellheads in different parts of the state. The agency did similar sampling at natural gas power plants, compressor stations and storage facilities.

“And our conclusions show that [residents] were receiving small—very small—radiation doses from the radon in natural gas,” Lewis says.

“Quite honestly, some of our residential levels in Pennsylvania are higher than you would allow in a uranium mine.”

Initially, the PA DEP’s findings seemed to put the issue to bed: Though Pennsylvanians are still advised to test for radon in their homes, it didn’t appear that Marcellus Shale gas was adding to the problem.

But then, the state’s radon experts got blindsided. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University took a second look at PA-DEP’s own data and spotted a potentially troubling trend. In a study published in Environmental Health Perspectives, they documented that the upswing in radon levels coincided with the start of the fracking boom.

“We wanted to see if this new industrial development potentially was contributing to increased levels of radon in homes,” says Joan Casey, lead author on the Hopkins study.

The researchers first broke up the state into different regions: places with no fracking, some fracking and high levels of fracking. They then analyzed more than 800,000 home radon tests, which are filed with the PA-DEP.

“We saw at the same time that fracking was going on, increased levels of indoor radon in the places that had the most fracking,” she says.

They also looked at how a home or building’s proximity to fracking activity correlated with radon levels.

“And we found that buildings that were closer to more drilled wells had significantly higher indoor radon concentrations than buildings located farther away.”

But the DEP’s radon expert Dave Allard says those findings could unnecessarily scare people. For one, Allard points out that radon is trending up in every region of the state—no matter how close or far it is from fracking activity. To him, that indicates that there is likely some other cause. Allard’s thinks the uptick in radon levels is linked to increased soil moisture, which he says is backed up by a 2015 study from Finland.

But Casey says her analysis takes rainfall into account. And she says even the small increase in indoor radon that the PA-DEP found is reason for concern.

“In terms of lung cancer risk, there’s no safe level of radon exposure,” Casey says. “And any increase in radon levels translates into an increased risk of lung cancer. That’s definitely true.”

Casey admits the Hopkins study doesn’t explain why radon levels are increasing. She says radon could be entering homes through well water, ambient air or the use of natural gas for cooking and heating.

As for Elizabeth Casman—the Carnegie Mellon professor who stopped cooking on her gas stove—she, like any good researcher, collected her own data. With an agreement from energy companies, she and her team took samples from some natural gas pipelines. And Casman says she was relieved by the findings.

“We took all the worst cases, and still it came out to a non-scary risk level,” Casman says. “And that’s when I calmed down about cooking.”

Casman says unless someone used an unvented stove to heat their home, and they didn’t leave the house for 70 years, they won’t really have an elevated risk of lung cancer from Marcellus Shale gas. “The increment from cooking is probably not going to be killing a lot of people,” she says.

Still, Casman and others say the issue deserves further study. But for now, if you’re concerned about radon from your gas stove, she says just open a window.

Map above shows seven locations where radon samples were collected by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. Each sampling location is numbered and colored to correspond with measured radon concentration (red is highest). For Pennsylvania, county production only includes unconventional natural gas production. Map courtesy Carnegie Mellon University.

This story is part of our series Follow the Pipeline, which explores the health and environmental impacts of the region’s expanding natural gas infrastructure.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

II What are the alternatives and what are their characteristics. Part 2 of three parts.

By S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

Waste products are a huge, largely unrecognized, problem with burning hydrocarbons. Originally it was seen that coal could be shipped to the cities and electricity generated there more efficiently – trains hauling coal to the city would take less energy than is lost in long distance transmission lines.

But long ago the decision was made to leave the dirt of conversion of coal to electricity in the rural areas where coal is mined, rather than bringing it to the cities where it is used. Removal of dust from the gases going up the smokestack and later removal of some of the gases, was a huge success story at one time.

All hydrocarbons are the remains of plants that lived long ago. With solid and liquid hydrocarbons (coal and oil) these remains contain not only hydrogen and carbon, but other elements in the plants, primarily sulfur, phosphorus, nitrogen, which leave as gases, as well as  silica sand and metals. In coal these last items become fly ash, which must be stored (forever) or used in a manufacturing process.

The principal advantage of oil in use is its liquid nature, which makes it easy to handle, and the absence of solid waste, like fly ash. However the sulfur, phosphorus and nitrogen are found in oil and go into the exhaust gases.

The huge advantage of natural gas is that atoms heavier than carbon are relatively rare. Pure methane, CH₄ is a very light weight molecule, whereas phosphorus, sulfur and nitrogen compounds are much heavier; and compounds containing them sort out easily. So no sulfur, phosphorus or nitrogen oxides result from burning gas, but nitrogen oxides can result from any flame burning in air (which is 78% nitrogen) at high temperature. This absence of contaminants is one of the principal appeals of natural gas.

Clearly, coal, oil and natural gas are hydrocarbons. In gases form they are greenhouse gases and when burned become carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. A real problem for climate change.

Present day alternatives. Fission reactors. These are based on heavy elements like uranium and thorium. The fuel is abundant, with the supply adequate for 30,000 years at the present rate with the use of “breeder reactors.” High technology is involved, and frankly the public is “psyched-out,” as the expression goes, about radioactivity. That is no wonder, since their education about radioactivity is not derived from objective formal education, but largely from the media, on behalf of the hydrocarbon industry, which has fought nuclear tooth-and-nail because it is competition.

There is a waste disposal problem with fission, but it is concentrated, not dispersed over the landscape as is the waste from hydrocarbon use, and it can be kept together. The actual tonnage is small for the amount of energy obtained. However, the radiation is very long lasting, although it slowly decays over time. A depository must be found that is stable over a geological time span. Fission is considered unsafe for cities, a disadvantage for maximum usefulness (see below). It is considered suitable for some very large navy ships and for submarines, in part because so little fuel is needed that resupply takes place infrequently. Other navy ships require huge amounts of fuel, and special tankers are designed to go with them to the areas where they might need to fight. Nuclear ships do not have that disadvantage.

Nuclear power plants sometimes must be slowed when the water for cooling becomes too hot – not good for a warming climate world. After the Japanese experience, it is obvious they should not be placed on the ocean shore, even disregarding increasing sea levels.

A second alternative is using wind power. These generators are becoming familiar on mountain ridges and in the windy plains. Today’s wind turbines can approach 80% of the theoretical limits of the power that can be extracted from wind, and provide perhaps 3 megawatts of power.

Blades must be large, and the further up into the atmosphere the blades reach, the more power is available. Little windmills are less efficient. Very careful attention must be paid to aerodynamic design, and the generators are designed for long use and minimum maintenance. Nevertheless failure can be spectacular.

Since wind power occurs in remote places, extensive new connections are needed between populated areas and the places where it can be obtained. There are complaints about birds and bats which are attracted to them and killed. The output varies with wind speed, so other sources, or power storage, is needed for the low output times. The input energy cost is zero, which makes them attractive.

Another viable alternative is solar power. It also has variable output, according to time of day and clouds, so use for sole source of electricity requires batteries or some other storage. Solar is already the source of choice for small, remote needs, where an ordinary lead-acid (car) battery is sufficient for night or cloudy times. Things such as road signs, metering natural gas in transmission lines, electrical fences, and such are already best uses all over the world.

This article has a list of leading nations using of solar power, and also a map showing where solar energy is available. Solar power is a great hit in places with no distribution lines. In parts of Africa, it is important far beyond the size of the installed base. It provides recharges for cell phones, a little light at night, and radios. Also electric fences to protect villagers from wild animals. India is making great progress with solar in rural areas. In many places it is as cheap as conventional power now.

Energy radiated from the sun spans a considerable spectrum. The “trick” in engineering photocells is to get them to take up as much of the spectrum as possible. This is the basis of a lot of scientific work now, finding one or a combination of photocell materials which can harvest the maximum energy available. However room remains for improvement, the efficiency is now approaching 50%. The opportunity (and reward) for improvement is great. Once you have it installed, it is very cheap.

A great advantages of wind and solar are they do not take water for installation, and they do not use or produce contaminating chemicals on a huge scale. Capital cost is the entire cost, and negligible input energy cost.

Storage for night use and low input times is a problem with both wind and solar. Storage for large amounts of energy is almost non-existent. This is not a very large problem as long as sufficient other sources of energy are available, because they can be scaled up and down as wind and solar decrease and increase.

Pumped storage is the use of energy to pump water uphill to a lake, and then using the water to generate hydropower in “off hours.” It is very expensive and low efficiency. Several other kinds of storage have been explored: flywheels, compressed air, fuel cells, and other systems.

One of the greatest possibilities for the energy future is conservation. Insulation both for heating and cooling, more efficient light sources, more efficient transportation (both for personal use and for shipping), heat pumps, design improvements in computers (which use about 1/10 as much energy when turned off, but plugged in), more efficient irrigation, and building design.

Up to 75% of energy use in the United States would be saved with energy efficiency measures which would cost less than the energy saved, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute.

One of the most important factors in future use is to have power generation in cities where it is used. Remote power stations have a lot of waste energy which must be disposed of in the air or a river. Typically in the neighborhood of two-thirds of the energy in the coal is lost, with a similar thermal loss of nuclear plants. It could be used for space heating in houses and businesses and for some factory uses instead of being just dumped uselessly into the environment if the generating station was near the population using it.

Other energy economies are high speed trains, smart grids for electrical distribution, stopping lateral expansion of cities, more public transportation, and so on.