Study finds more cancer cases than expected

By T.J. PIGNATARO
News Northtowns Bureau
12/14/2001

The incidence of cancer in the neighborhoods surrounding a Town of Tonawanda site where the federal government dumped radioactive waste during World War II is "statistically significantly more than the number of cases expected," according to a state Department of Health study released Thursday.

The study of people diagnosed with cancer from 1994 to 1998 revealed that the number of colorectal cancer cases in males was "significantly more than expected," and in females, "statistically significant excesses" were found in the number of colorectal, breast and thyroid cancers.

"It's about 10 percent (higher)," said Aura L. Weinstein, director of the Cancer Surveillance Program for the health department. "A difference of this size is not likely due to chance."

Health officials found that in the 14150 and 14217 ZIP codes, there were 1,197 males with cancer, compared with the 1,084 expected to have cancer, based on standard cancer-incidence rates by age and sex for New York State outside of New York City.

Weinstein said female cancer rates were found to be 1,201 cases versus the 1,101 cases that were expected.

There were 169 colorectal cancer cases in both men and women, compared with 135 and 143 respective cases that were expected, officials said. Brain and other nervous system cancers in men and breast, thyroid and uterine cancer in women were also above expected levels.

Weinstein cautioned that the statistics do not take into account heredity, occupational exposures or diet.

"This study is not capable of proving any cause-and-effect relationship," she said. "We don't know whether any of these people with cancer were exposed to anything from the Linde site."

Weinstein also pointed out cancers of the cervix along with the kidney and pelvic areas in women were actually lower than the health department expected.

Nevertheless, health department officials said they will pursue additional studies over a longer time frame in the neighborhoods immediately surrounding the site. The results of those studies are expected sometime next year, officials said.

Area politicians, including Erie County Legislator Charles M. Swanick, D-Kenmore, and Republican Town Councilman David H. Rider, criticized state health officials for what they believed to be a failure to notify residents about Thursday's meeting.

The meeting, in the cafeteria of the Holmes Elementary School, was sparsely attended.

"It's a sham as far as I'm concerned. People should be notified," Rider said. "You can't have a public meeting without the public."

Swanick told health officials that more than just the news media should be notified, and that they should consider scheduling such meetings away from the holiday period and in a different location to ensure that all residents interested in the issue can attend.

"We'll help you get to the public, but it can't happen this way," Swanick said. Health department officials promised a better effort to notify residents.

In the subsequent study, Swanick suggested health department officials also take a look at other areas in the town, including the "Mud Flats" near the Youngmann Highway and the town's nearby landfill.

Health officials were noncommittal about Swanick's suggestion.

So our neighbor from Kenmore has a brain tumor and died. According to the mailman so did another guy around the corner. Another neighbor has breast cancer. My friends mom died of cancer in the neighborhood. My other friend has cancer. His aunt has cancer. All from 14217, 14150, 14151. So I decided to look it up some more. Mind you I worked at Praxair, where they burried the Manhattan project. One day during the summer I was eating my lunch outside at a picnic bench and there were men in space suits unburrying stuff not very far away.

I am probably gonna die from this, so I decided to do a little reserach and came up with this info.

Facts of WNY has all the info about this Manhattan project and what happened. Mind you I spent all of my formative years in 14217.

Letter from Aura L. Weinstein, M.P.H. Director, Cancer Surveillance Program

STATE OF NEW YORK DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH

Corning Tower The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza
Albany, New York 12237
Antonia C. Novello, M.D., M.P.H., Dr. P.H., Commissioner
Dennis P. Whalen, Executive Deputy Commissioner
December 13, 2001

Don Finch, Editor
FACTS Newsletter
Box 566
Kenmore, NY 14217-0566

Dear Mr. Finch:

The New York State Department of Health is conducting the Cancer Surveillance Improvement Initiative (CSII). CSII is a multi-part project designed to enhance the Department's cancer education and surveillance activities. This initiative is commonly known as the "cancer mapping project." Among the goals of the CSII is to make cancer information available to the general public in an easy-to-understand format. The CSII will produce maps of cancer incidence by county and ZIP Code, as well as information to increase public awareness of cancer rates and risk factors. Maps of breast, lung and colorectal cancer incidence by ZIP Code are currently available.

In August 1996, you wrote to the Cancer Surveillance Program requesting an investigation of the incidence of cancer in community residents living near the Linde/Praxair site located in the Town of Tonawanda, Erie County, New York. At that time, you felt there was an excess number of cancers in neighboring residents. You also expressed concern about possible health effects from potential exposures to ionizing radiation. As a result of the CSII, we were able to examine cancer incidence for the Linde/Praxair area by ZIP Code, rather than the study area originally discussed. The ZIP Codes chosen, 14150 (including point ZIP Code 14151), and 14217, (see attached map) are as similar as possible to the area originally selected.

A summary of the methods used to conduct this investigation and tables of findings are attached. The cancers studied were those frequently or occasionally associated with various types of ionizing radiation in a number of studies (Schottenfeld, 1996). As you can see from Table 1, the total numbers of both males and females diagnosed with cancer during 1994-1998 were statistically significantly more than the number of cases expected. In males, the number of colorectal cancer cases was significantly more than expected. No other type of cancer in males showed a statistically significant difference from the number expected. In females, statistically significant excesses were found in the number of cases of colorectal, breast, and thyroid cancers. Table 2 shows the results for all cancer sites.

Due to the finding of excesses of cancer cases both in total numbers as well as for certain individual cancers that have been linked with radiation exposure, we will be initiating a follow-up study of cancer incidence in a smaller area closer to the site. The study area will be defined in terms of census tracts and census block groups and the study will cover the most recent 10 year period for which cancer data are available. We anticipate that this follow-up study will be completed and released in approximately one year.

I have also included information on colorectal cancer, cancers of the breast and thyroid, and background information on cancer in general. It is important to remember that this type of study cannot tell us why the incidence of certain cancers in an area may be high. These studies can only show cancer patterns.

We hope this information helps to answer your questions about cancer near the Linde/Praxair site in the Town of Tonawanda. If you have any questions regarding this investigation, the follow-up study or any further concerns, please feel free to call me at (518) 474-2354.

Sincerely,

Aura L. Weinstein, M.P.H.

Flacidness, whoa, you are one strong dude. Hang in there. 2003, is another year where "Jesus" messed everything up for me. It kind of worries me but at the same time I really don't give a fuck either way because I've been here before and I know how to move on. I wish I could just live in the pre-christian era. I was definately made to worship some earth spirit and not some lame jew king.

I guess, to each his/her own

Well, I bet you are thinking who is that Santa and why is he on your page. The answer follows right below in picture two. I cannot believe that this is real. I just heard something in the chimeney. Is it a bird or can it be ...

Here is a place where you can play many nintendo ROMS online. Contra is one of them and I know it's your favorite.

Great job with the clone tool. What more can you say about this?

I have debated this very same issue in the context of soldier and their role as killers. So in this response I am going to be refering to soldiers and prison executioners collectively as the "killers." Terry often argues it is society that sets them up for their situation and that I cannot possibly understand the predicament that many of them are in in terms of growing up poor and not having any hope. I think that is not true.

There are plenty of students both at UB and Canisius that come from extremly poor families in the "ghettos" of America that are choosing not to be killers but rather to educate themselves out of the system.

Yes, they may have had encouragement from parents who were more caring then others. But I am sure not all of them, when it comes down to it, you (the individual) have a choice to pick up the gun or not. By picking it up the individual is making the choice to possibly play the role of the "killer" in return for weath, education, or increased class status.

In the end I can give a specific examples of another route. Through turning to a religious organization. While I am usually not a big supporter of religion, I definately see turning to god a better solution than killing people with guns or electric chairs. For this example, I would like to explain my friend Jacob's situation.

His mother was an extremly poor Najavo that lived on the reservation in the South west. At some point the mormons( who I typically do not like) came around and converted them. Evtually, she ended up at BU where she met Jacob' father, a mexican-indian who was also from a poor rural ancestry.

They eventually got married, Jacob's Dad became a bishop and started a business around their beliefs, helping kids with social problems like drug addiction in one of those desert outreach programs where the youths are subjected to living with nothing.

Jacob's family eventually became quite wealthy both monetarily and spiritually. Now I have to say I cannot support the Mormons and I am not giving any credence to their belief system. I am just saying their are alternative to killing and those who can't see this are purposely being blind.

There is nowhere in America where people do not have access to the teachings of any of the major religions which support the idea that killing is really wrong. I think the idea of not killing even transcends the moral and spiritual responsibilty of religious tenants and is actually a very humanistic construction.

In the end I am saying if you pick up the gun you are guilty. While society is at fault for making the decisions so tough and difficult for those that are less fortunate. We cannot dissolve everyone of personal moral responsibilty.

I have just taken all of my most favorite blogger posts and moved them here -see previous posts. It is an effort to move myself away from the corporate driven web publishing scheme and into the realm of local discourse. Respond to them if you wish. I figured they were better here where they were searchable.

I would encourage other people to do the same.

Kittler's discourse on the typewriter in his book "Gramophone Film Typewriter" is an informative piece concerning the development and influence of the typewriter. In “Typewriter”, Kittler discusses the many influences the typewriter has had on our society, from acting as an emancipating mechanism for women, to affording the blind the ability to write, to changing the way our entire global society conceptualizes and communicates. Seen as one of the of the major emancipating agents for women, the typewriter, a word meaning both the machine and the woman who operated it, aided in tearing down the "walls" of educational institutions that previously barred them from enrollment.

For the blind, the typewriter tore down the walls of silence in a world full of written expression. The most obvious example being Nietzsche, who suffered a form of blindness which ultimately forced him to give up his position as a professor at the university of Basal, as he no longer could control the medium of his creation, the written word. Nietzsche was one of the first adopters of the typewriter, as the typewriter bridged this gap, allowing the philosopher to literally feel the words come out of his hand and be pressed onto the paper. At the mercy of the machine as messenger for his word, Nietzsche was seriously set back when it malfunctioned only months after he first began to use it, thus destroying the fragile link between the author and the medium that the typewriter had offered. Because Nietzsche was wealthy enough to afford a subordinate to take his dictation, this may seem insignificant. However, this separation between author and work rendered allowed room for intellectual manipulation so extreme, by his sister and her pro-nazi agenda, that for the first half of the twentieth century Nietzsche was thought of as the primary philosopher of Nazism although it was well known that he had a
hatred for German Nationalism and antisemitism, as demonstrated in many of his earlier works.

While I agree that the typewriter was an emancipating force in many ways as demonstrated above, it cannot be overlooked that it also enslaved our society as a primary vehicle to the current state of technical dependence.

The typewriter was the first personal machine that began the trend toward our dependence on brain enhancing machinery, which has been nearly perfected with the advent of its evolutionary great grand child, the computer. This technological wonder, shooting forth from the military production facilities of the west, moved us toward our greater goal of increased efficiency and mass production. Once we reached this goal our society could not ever turn back without being completely destroyed, thus enslaving us in this cycle of endless technological innovation in terms of machines that allow us to rapidly disseminate information. From the brain of the master to the eyes of the subordinate in the shortest time possible, who ever gives up in this race loses all power.

The typewriter itself as a medium can also physically enslave the intellectual. As with the example of Henry James (Kittler, 216). The typewriter, a master product born out of a capitalist society, alters our ability to think by forcing a certain stimulus, in this case the typewriter clank, to be associated with intellectual production in a Pavlovian way. Kittler quotes James, “Soon a reflex loop was created: only the clanking of the typewriter induced sentences in the writer.” In this way the typewriter itself asserts a form of control over the user and demands to be purchased and worshiped.

While it is obvious that the typewriter has affected the way that we think and write, it must also be asserted that the typewriter itself is a product of the society through which it lives. A cycle which means that as far as technology can change us as a society it is ultimately only a reflection of our society's desire.
r

Lastly, the typewriter has also be
en
a


m
ajor source of governmental and religious propaganda, a theme which cannot be overlooked when speaking of it as an emancipating machine. Even more important than propaganda is the fact that the typewriter allowed, for the first time, true governmental efficiency; directly leading to the ultimate submission of the global masses to capitalist agencies. With both governmental and business issues, words became far more powerful than guns.

I am not afraid to accept the situation where I become one with the machine. Sometimes I even welcome it, with the idea that it quickly bridges the gap between me and the collective knowledge the internet holds. I spend way to much time interfacing with machines in a primitive mouse/keyboard way and would love the opportunity to merge for convenience. However, I remain reluctant to accept a cyborg future for myself. My fear is not based on losing myself or being dominated by the machine's will but rather being dominated by the humans that make the machine which would allow me to be a cyborg.

An aspect often overlooked when discussing the role of the machine in the modern human condition is that the machine itself embodies only what the creator of the machine considered relevant. A machine is a reflection of the will of the individual programmers and engineers. This becomes a serious problem when we are dealing with ethics of internal computing. Even if the argument is that machines will be able to create themselves in the future without humans being involved. There is still the aspect that the original machines which made the machines, which in turn made the newest generation of autonomous machines are still dependent on the original design specification created by the humans in power at the time of the orginal machines creation.

What may seem even more terrorfying for woman is that men created the computer langauges and hardware structures that we use today. Granted there may be many females in the field today but the field itself was created by a the will of men. Future machine that will be considered for the creation of cyborgian humans will be based on the history computer sciences. The languages that program them may be new but will definately be based on what languages were in the past like C or java - all languages built by men. Thus the machines must inately reflect a male perspective. The nature of future cognitive computers will definately have a very masculine way of thinking unless there is some major intervention by woman thinkers. This leads to a situation where men inscribe their cognitive ideals onto a chip. Which is then implanted into a woman, where she begins either to function and think like a man or how a man wants a woman to think, being dominated by the male ideal - or does not accept the chip. Thus being evolutionarily left behind in the cyborgian tranformation.

Machines, can be easily dominated by the malicious intent of a select group of people in power. Email servers for example, a society shifting machine that pracically replaces the need for transportation in terms of messages and information. However, add "carnivore" and it becomes reminiscent of Big Brother. The issue being that the people creating carnivore, do not see it as infringing or unethical. They see it as "justice prevailing over the evil terrorists." What happens when the people in power, the ones who create programs/machines such as carnivore make the machines that may be someday implanted under my skin or in my brain.

Most importantly, It is easy to believe that the producers of these machines and programs that would directly interface with the human are going to be profit driven. They therefore would directly have interest in raising your purchasing drive. Today's machines can feed humans information, but there is no guarantee that information is true. Because of the physical separation between man and machine we can chose to ignore information that we perceive to be incorrect or of malicious controlling intent. For example, an advertisement for pornography on the internet. Who is to say that once we accept this information into an internally reglated machine interface that we will retain the ability to reject information. Once the gap has been bridged between man and machine, there is nothing stopping the influence of micropropandga. Will we just be converted in buying machines - or slaves o
f the reamining humans who create
d
th


e
inferface.

Lastly, even if you exclude the possible unethical agenda of the cyborgian interface creator, there is still the issue of computer viri. A computer virus of machine that may regulate your motor control and/or breathing, and or cognitive control would be a source of outside control by a third party. For example, a hacker could program you to carry out his/her murderous wishes. Also, viri could be made o shut you down. In the end I fear the influence of the human in the creation of the cyrborg n the same way I fear George Bush in the creation of a "global democracy."