Environmental Update

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AIR DATE: Friday, March 1st 2013

POSTED BY: JULIE SABATIER

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Representatives of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were in West Salem this week to meet with residents who are concerned about a possible "cancer cluster" in their community. There have been five documented cases of a rare and aggressive form of bone cancer — osteosarcoma — in young people within a two mile area.

State and federal officials are not ready to classify this as a cancer cluster, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines as a "greater-than-expected number of cases." But the parents who signed the petition asking the EPA to investigate possible causes aren't concerned about numbers. They're thinking about the children who have already died from this disease and the teenager who is still struggling to recover from it.

Do you live in West Salem? How have the cancer cases there touched your life? What are you hoping for from the EPA?

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Cassandra Profita: OPB's Ecotrope blogger

Tagged as: cancer · children · environment · epa · high school

Photo credit: Royce Bair / Creative Commons