Jet fuel dismissed as leukemia cause

Monday, July 16, 2001 | 11 a.m.

Nevada health officials and the Navy said last week they have not discovered any environmental link between 14 cases of childhood leukemias in Fallon, 60 miles east of Reno, and jet fuel used at the neighboring naval air station.

The state has joined federal health investigators in an intense effort to track down the cause of leukemia that has occurred in children between 2 and 19 years of age who live or once lived in Fallon.

"We have no evidence that jet fuel or jet fuel byproducts have gotten into the environment and caused this," state Health Officer Dr. Mary Guinan said on Friday. "All of the evidence so far is negative."

Nevada environmental officials and the owner of the fuel pipeline that runs through Fallon to the naval station have flown over it, walked along it and photographed it. Researchers are crawling along 15 miles of the pipeline with air samplers and monitors in an effort to detect leaks the size of pinholes.

"We're getting a pretty comprehensive picture of this pipeline," state epidemiologist Randall Todd said.

Last month Nevada Division of Environmental Protection researchers walked 3 1/2 miles of the pipe, looking for any signs of disturbed plants, erosion or leaks leaving spots in nearby soils, Verne Rosse of the division said. Then the state videotaped and scanned the pipe with infrared cameras, Rosse said, still finding nothing.

Kinder Morgan, owner of the pipeline, has hired a Tucson, Ariz., consultant to inspect the line inch by inch for 15 miles, said Eugene Braithwaite, operations director for Kinder Morgan. An inert tracer has been injected into the line and a crew with a small sled holding air monitors had started walking the 15 miles on Thursday, he said. A final report is due at the end of the month.

"This will detect only current leaks, only an active leak," Braithwaite said.

No jet fuel has been found in ground water samples or city water samples taken in Fallon, Todd said.

The Navy has also tested the water and reviewed 12 million medical records of current and former personnel working at the Fallon Naval Air Station, spokeswoman Anne McMillan said. There was no evidence of fuel in the water and no childhood leukemia cases, she said.

Federal investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta are arriving in Fallon this week to ensure local laboratories are ready, that there is enough dry ice to cool biological and environmental samples and that the samples can be shipped to Atlanta in time for researchers to investigate them properly.

"It is a process of elimination in these investigations," Todd said. "Some people would like to see this investigation moving faster. So would we. At the end of the investigation with the best science, we may not know what caused this cluster."

The 14th leukemia case was added to the cluster in May.

"We are hoping every case case will be the last one," Guinan said. "We can't finish the investigation until the cluster is over. We don't know when it will be over."