During a community meeting Monday, state Department of Health officials and a UPMC Ewing sarcoma expert provided a statistical analysis as to why a Ewing sarcoma cluster does not exist in the Canon-McMillan School District.
Many people in the audience weren’t having any of it, given that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has documented six cases of the rare childhood bone cancer with only 250 diagnoses nationwide each year, along with many other rare childhood cancers in the district.
In addition, the Health Department used only three of the six cases within the boundaries of the school district, 2005 through 2017, to conclude that the number is above expected levels but not a cluster.
Sharon Watkins, the director of the Health Department’s Bureau of Epidemiology, did say there was an elevated number of females with Ewing sarcoma in an area including Washington, Westmoreland, Fayette and Greene counties. The department also will do additional analysis of registry data to determine if anything above expected levels stands out, she said.
The state Health Department, at the request of Gov. Tom Wolf, held the meeting Monday in the Canon-McMillan High School auditorium in North Strabane, Washington County, to explain its conclusions, with Ms. Watkins noting afterward that “clusters are exceedingly rare” in epidemiology.
The panel also included Wendy Aldinger, manager of the state’s cancer registry, and Dr. Kelly Bailey, a UPMC Ewing sarcoma physician and researcher.
The panel could not answer most questions from residents wanting to cut to the heart of concern — whether pollution exposure from shale gas development could be causing Ewing sarcoma or any of the other rare cancers affecting preschoolers and students in the district. Studies to date have not made that link.
The meeting started at 6 p.m. but was brought to an end about 7:30 p.m., with people still standing in line to ask questions, leading to boos from the audience of more than 200 people.
“This was the wrong panel for this audience,” said Ned Ketyer, a retired pediatrician and member of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Philadelphia, who attended the meeting.
Some residents expressed anger that the Health Department’s list didn’t include the late Kyle Deliere, a lifelong resident of the village of Cecil whose address is mistakenly listed in Belle Vernon. The department also didn’t include David Cobb of Cecil Township and Mitchell Barton of North Strabane, who were diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma in 2018 but not yet on the registry.
Afterward, Ms. Watkins said she was upset to learn that the Deliere case wasn’t listed accurately. That could be corrected if the Deliere family contacts the hospital or physician who diagnosed his cancer in 2011 and has the address changed to Cecil.
Celeste DiNicola, a Canonsburg resident, asked the panelists to conduct research into environmental factors that could be causing the Ewing sarcoma and the rash of childhood cancers in the area.
“We want to know if something in the environment is causing these cancers,” Ms. DiNicola said. “Are we doing anything to find out why we have six, eight, 27 of these cancers in the region?”
She said the Health Department statistical analysis shows zero Ewing cases in Washington County prior to 2005, prior to the start of shale gas industry operations in the state.
In March, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette documented six cases within the Canon-McMillan School District comprising Cecil and North Strabane townships and Canonsburg with a population of about 36,000 people.
The Ewing sarcoma cases coincide with Post-Gazette findings that nine Canon-McMillan preschoolers and students during the 2018-2019 school year also had cancer and mostly rare types. Those cases include two cases each of osteosarcoma (bones) and leukemia (blood), and one case each of liposarcoma (connective tissue), rhabdomyosarcoma (soft tissue), neuroblastoma (nerve cells), liver cancer and Wilms (kidney) tumor.
In addition, a teenage student died in February from astrocytoma, a brain and spinal cord cancer, pushing the total to 10.
Pollution sources include shale gas operations near the district with concern over the U.S. Department of Energy uranium mill tailings disposal site in North Strabane, which has remained at background radiation levels ever since the $137 million cleanup was completed in 1985, and the ABB Inc. chemical disposal site in the village of Muse in Cecil Township.
Marcellus Shale Coalition President David Spigelmyer said the industry “is committed to protecting and enhancing the health and safety of our communities.”
“Representing tens of thousands of hardworking Pennsylvanians, including many families in Washington County, our industry empathizes with those battling cancer,” he stated in an email response. “We fully support and appreciate the work of independent medical experts and public health professionals who share our commitment to promoting science-based analysis of these very serious matters.”
Prior to the meeting, the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Center and other public health organizations called for studies to determine if a link exists between cancer and environmental exposure and halt shale gas development until that question is answered.
David Templeton: dtempleton@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1578. Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.
First Published: October 8, 2019, 2:23 a.m.