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Wilma Swenson's daughter died of breast cancer,
leaving behind seven children. Wilma's husband had colon cancer, but
she hopes doctors removed it all in surgery. Last week, two of her
friends who also lived in the desert town of Grantsville died of
cancer. "It's everywhere here," she said. "I don't know what causes
it. But
it seems like most families have been touched by cancer," not to
mention the multiple sclerosis, birth defects, lupus and unusual
respiratory diseases that also seem too common.
Another friend, Karlla Peterson, had breast cancer and was told she
would not survive long, but she did. It made Peterson mark Xs on her
phone-book map to show homes in her town of 5,000 where she knew
cancer had struck. The Xs soon covered it.
Then she asked her students at Grantsville Middle School to raise
their hands if they had a friend or family member with cancer. "All
but 12 did. That was 137 hands in one day. I've talked to children of
friends in Salt Lake and other places, and I'm the only one they've
ever known with cancer. It's a strange occurrence there, but not
here."
So, some Grantsville residents hope to persuade the government to try
harder to figure out what causes the cancer and other diseases in the
town, which has been near military tests, mineral-processing pollution
and waste incinerators.
To help, they just finished a door-to-door survey of half the homes in
Grantsville. They say findings suggest cancer rates are much higher
than a recent state study says, and much higher than rates for the
rest of Utah.
But they acknowledge their methods won't stand up to scientific
statistical scrutiny. "We know that. But for state agencies - and I
happen to work for one - to spend the time and money to do those more
thorough scientific studies, they need a good reason. We're trying to
give them that," said Grantsville resident Chip Ward, who led the
survey effort.
Ward, who works for the State Library Division, said he recruited help
from some university professors to design a survey form. Forty
volunteers fanned out to cover 650 households - or half the town.
Swenson covered her street, and found five of seven households had
suffered from cancer or exotic diseases. Peterson said four of seven
households on the street where she was reared had cancer, and five of
the seven on the street where she lived when she was first married
did.
Volunteers found 201 cases of people with cancer, or where a family
member had died from it, in half the town. Ward says that result
suggests the total for Grantsville would be about twice that number,
or 400, especially because findings citywide seemed fairly uniform.
Ward said it is also about twice as much cancer as was identified in a
study finished in December by the Utah Bureau of Epidemiology, with
help from the Tooele County Health Department. It listed 237 cases of
cancer in Grantsville between 1973 and 1993.
Even with the lower number, the state study said some types of cancer
had increased dramatically in Grantsville. The study, however, said
small sample sizes made it impossible to determine reliably whether
that varied significantly from the rest of Utah, and whether increases
were due simply to chance or some common external cause.
For example, the state study said rates in Grantsville in 20 years had
increased 150 percent for cervical cancer, 119 percent for
lung/bronchial cancer, 37 percent for prostate cancer, 35 percent for
breast cancer and 3 percent for colorectal cancer.
Ward said he suspects the numbers should be higher because, in part,
the state study identified cases not from interviews, but from the
Utah Cancer Registry, which receives reports of newly diagnosed cancer
from hospitals, labs and doctors. He worries it may not have
identified all cases - such as those in longtime residents who had
moved to another city.
Ward said the residents' study also seemed to make a key finding that
the state did not: Grantsville cancer seems to be concentrated among
longtime residents - those who lived there 25 years or more, even if
they are now young people in their 30s and 40s, which is only a third
or so of all those surveyed.
Therefore, he said, cancer rates among long-time residents may be
astronomical.
Wayne Ball, director of the state's Environmental Epidemiology
Program, said determining that with scientific reliability won't be
easy - and may show why the recent state study on cancer rates may be
about as good as can be expected with tight budgets.
For comparisons to be made with scientific reliability, he said, three
people in "control groups" would need to be interviewed for every
Grantsville resident interviewed. Those in the control groups would
need to have similar characteristics to the Grantsville residents but
would have to live away from Grantsville's suspected causes of
disease.
"That takes a lot of time and manpower and funds," he said.
It gets more complicated. To try to make conclusions about longtime
residents in Grantsville, three times as many longtime residents in
outside control groups would also have to be interviewed. "That isn't
easy to do," he said.
Even if studies eventually scientifically prove a significantly higher
than normal rate for cancer in Grantsville, Ball says firmly tying it
to external causes such as military testing or local pollution is even
more difficult.
"Each type of cancer has its own risk factors and lifestyle factors,"
he said. "Just because someone has bladder cancer, it doesn't mean the
same thing helped cause lung cancer in someone else. The risk factors
are different. You can't lump them together."
Ward said longtime residents do share some things - such as living in
Grantsville when Dugway Proving Ground was conducting thousands of
Cold War germ, chemical and radiological warfare tests, which were
disclosed only in recent years by Deseret News investigations.
Ward said reading about those tests, including dropping the equivalent
of 2.5 trillion doses of nerve gas upwind at Dugway through the years,
is one reason he and others were galvanized.
He said other causes could include pollution from mineral-processing
companies and waste incinerators. Many residents worked at companies
doing such work or at Dugway.
One recommendation of the residents' study is a moratorium on more
emissions, such as those that will be released from a Tooele Army
Depot incinerator 20 miles away when it begins destroying chemical
arms this spring.
"The health of Grantsville citizens is too vulnerable to allow more
(emissions)," the study says.
They also want complete documentation of past military testing,
increased air monitoring and, of course, "a professional, thorough
health study with meaningful citizen participation."
"We need to get on top of what's going on out here," Swenson said. "I
have children and grandchildren who live here, and I worry about
whether it's safe."
"Behind each of these numbers is a human story," Peterson added. "I
was told I wouldn't see my 4-year-old son turn 5 . . . I worried my
children would not remember me. Do you know what that's like? You just
can't understand what this has done to all of us and our families."
She added, "If I knew what I know about Grantsville and were an
outsider, I wouldn't move here" unless some answers are found.
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