最新杏吧原创

The findings contradict a state health department report, but a group of women who grew up in North County say they鈥檒l keep pushing for a more thorough investigation.

Cancer is second to heart disease in leading causes of death. One in two men and one in three women will develop cancer at some point in their lives. But the Coldwater Creek group says it鈥檚 the rarity of their illnesses, and the young ages at which they strike, which have them questioning the creek. Its water flooded their basements and lured them to play on its banks as children.

鈥淲e understand that disease happens, and it鈥檚 not always radiation,鈥� said Kim Visintine, a native of Florissant and co-leader of the survey. 鈥淲e鈥檙e talking about extremely high rates and rare episodes.鈥�

Visintine and other McCluer North alumni started a Facebook page a few years ago when they noticed a spike in cancers among childhood friends now in their late 30s and early 40s. The group has since grown to nearly 8,500 members.

A year ago, the leaders launched the survey, which counted 1,242 total cancers among 3,300 people who had lived around the creek. Survey participants reported 202 thyroid cancers or conditions, 113 brain tumors, 37 appendix cancers and 320 auto-immune disorders, the group announced Wednesday. The group did not release further details, including the ages of the survey participants or the dates of their illnesses.

Appendix cancer is especially rare, affecting fewer than 1 in 314,000 Americans each year. Dr. Graham Colditz said last year that the number of appendix cancers in North County, then counted at 22, was larger than expected for the population. Colditz, deputy director of the Institute for Public Health at Washington University, was unavailable for comment Wednesday.

In a report last year, the Missouri health department found no higher risk of cancers linked to radiation for people living in six ZIP codes adjacent to Coldwater Creek, which runs through Florissant, Black Jack and Spanish Lake. Health officials acknowledged the limitations of the report because it didn鈥檛 account for people who had moved out of the area.

Diane Schanzenbach, who helped conduct the residents鈥� survey, said it, too, was limited by size and lack of a control group. They don鈥檛 know the total population of the area since the 1950s, when radioactive byproducts from the Mallinckrodt chemical plant in downtown 最新杏吧原创 were transported in open trucks to a dump site that borders Coldwater Creek near the airport.

鈥淲e don鈥檛 know if this is 5 percent of the total cases (of cancer) or 50 percent, but my guess is it鈥檚 closer to 5 percent,鈥� Schanzenbach said.

Residents are hoping to catch the attention of federal health investigators and get classified as 鈥渄ownwinders鈥� entitled to compensation for radiation exposure linked to atomic bomb production. Investigations into suspected cancer clusters are rarely definitive because of the complexity of the disease and the difficulty in measuring exposures to carcinogens.

The residents shared their data Wednesday with Dr. Dolores Gunn, director of the 最新杏吧原创 County health department, and a representative from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who was in town for a meeting about all of the nuclear waste sites in the area, including the West Lake Landfill Superfund site in Bridgeton.

The Army Corps of Engineers announced at a meeting Tuesday that fewer than 10 percent of soil and water samples taken last year from a small section of Coldwater Creek near the airport were contaminated with uranium, thorium or radium. The agency expects to release findings this year for samples taken from the creek north of I-270 to the St. Denis Bridge in Florissant.

At least 50 people from North County have sued Mallinckrodt and other companies for their role in nuclear waste production in 最新杏吧原创 in the World War II and Cold War eras. The plaintiffs claim they were sickened by growing up in housing developments built near the creek in the 1960s and 1970s.

Attorneys for the defendants have said the companies鈥� operations did not involve the disposal or cleanup of contaminated debris from uranium processing.

Those suing the companies include the father of Jenny Steinmann, who lived in Florissant and crossed Coldwater Creek on her way to school every day. Steinmann died in 2009 at age 23 after cancer spread to her lungs and back. Lead plaintiff Scott McClurg, a professor at Southern Illinois University, ate vegetables grown in his backyard in Florissant and developed a brain tumor in his 30s. Holly Coil has had more than five addresses in Florissant and was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at 18.

The plaintiffs鈥� attorneys asked the court last week to allow for amendments to the lawsuits because they 鈥渞ecently obtained facts and expert opinions that permit them to plead they were exposed to radiation in excess of federal dose limits.鈥�

Visintine, one of the leaders of the Coldwater Creek activist group, said their main goal was to alert residents and area doctors.鈥淲e need our community to go to their health care providers when they don鈥檛 feel right and we need our health care providers to recognize the signs and symptoms of radiation exposure.鈥�