Panel begins probe of leukemia cases

Thursday, April 12, 2001 | 11:15 a.m.

FALLON -- Brenda Gross this morning recounted long hours since April 1999 sitting next to her 5-year-old son, Dustin, or waiting as he underwent tranfusions, surgeries and chemotherapy for acute lymphocytic leukemia.

"You often wonder, as you are watching this, 'What did I do wrong?' " she told a hearing of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works today in this rural town 60 miles southeast of Reno.

"I don't know the cause. I don't know if it's environmental. It's not a coincidence that 12 children have leukemia," she said.

The committee is in Fallon today for hearings on possible links among 12 cases of the cancer found in children up to age 19 in the past four years in Fallon. In a town Fallon's size, one case would be expected every five years.

Experts have been unable to find a common environmental link among the children, except they all have lived in Fallon, about 60 miles east of Reno, for all or part of their lives, state epidemiologist Dr. Randall Todd said.

The hearing brought doctors, researchers, politicians and parents together to review the current evidence and the progress of the ongoing investigation into the cancer cluster.

Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the ranking Democrat on the committee, led the hearing. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., also represented the committee, while Sen. John Ensign and Rep. Jim Gibbons, both R-Nev., were invited to participate.

The congressional hearing could lead to a contribution of federal funds to the investigation.

Dr. Stephen Prescott, executive director of the Huntsman Cancer Institute of Salt Lake City, said parents should not blame themselves for the cancers.

"No, there is nothing you could have done to prevent it," Prescott said after Gross' testimony.

Researchers know how a single cell can turn cancerous, and they are pursuing answers to what types of environmental influences could make healthy cells cancerous, he said.

This year 2,400 children nationwide are expected to be diagnosed with the form of cancer experienced in Fallon, Prescott said. The survival rate now is 80 percent, compared with 20 percent 20 years ago, he said.

"We wish we weren't here. We wish we were here for some other reason," said Clinton, who noted a similar cluster has been found in an Elmira, N.Y., high school. "This is something that is not confined to Nevada or New York."

Other breast cancer clusters in New York state also brought her to Fallon to hear the testimony, she said.

The Fallon clusters are frightening, she said, because there is no known cause.

State Assemblywoman Marcia de Braga, D-Fallon, said the Assembly Ways and Means Committee committed $500,000 Wednesday to the state's investigation of the cancer cluster.

The state already has tested municipal water sources, and experts have expanded the sampling to private wells near the residences where the children lived, Todd said.

All water tested so far is safe, with the exception of high levels of arsenic, a possible cancer-causing contaminant. However, officials do not believe arsenic is related to the cancers.

Further testing of air and soil is expected.

Officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta are expected to arrive in Fallon next week to begin their second phase of investigation into the cancers, Reid said.

"This leukemia cluster may be only a part of a larger picture," de Braga said, urging officials to look at other forms of cancer in children, especially cancer that affects the bone marrow.

She cited a case last year of a bone marrow cancer in a Fallon child that she said should be included in the investigation.