Reid seeks $100 million to fight Fallon leukemia

Wednesday, May 23, 2001 | 10:11 a.m.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is seeking up to $100 million to study the Fallon childhood leukemia cluster, improve water quality and create a comprehensive data base to track similar illnesses nationwide.

Nevada health officials have identified 14 children with two types of leukemia within the past two years. A 15th case has not been confirmed. There is no common environmental link among the children, except they all lived in Fallon, a military and farming town 60 miles east of Reno.

Reid plans to seek funds through Senate appropriations bills. Some of the budgets he could tap include the Veterans Affairs or Housing and Urban Development for water filtration, the Defense Department for Fallon Naval Air Station and environmental and health monies, he said.

The largest share of the funding -- $60 million -- would create a national tracking system through the Pew Foundation's Trust for America's Health.

The rest of the funding would help Fallon remove contaminants such as arsenic from 4,000 wells in Churchill County. Fallon is a town of 8,300 people within the county. Although arsenic has not been linked to childhood leukemias, Fallon has twice the current federal limit of the naturally occurring substance in its drinking water.

Since children have been affected, Reid said the first step is treating eight school water supplies with $100,000 worth of technology to remove arsenic.

The senator is a ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Reid will play a key role in funding federal agencies and programs such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry. Both agencies are involved in the Fallon cancer investigation.

Meanwhile, federal workers began searching for clues in a cancer cluster in Fallon will test drinking-water wells for radioactivity and other contaminants that could help shed light on the 14 cases of childhood leukemia.

The testing to begin June 11 will be compared with a 1994 study that revealed radon and uranium in the wells around Fallon.