Looking for some answers
Resident’s quest is bringing scientists to the task

By Mike Odom
Staff Writer

(Created: Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Cancer survivor Sarah Pacey, 8, of Point Clear, was diagnosed with leukemia in 2004. That diagnosis led her mother, Lesley Pacey, to research what she believes to be an abnormally high number of rare cancers and neurological diseases along the Eastern Shore in Baldwin County and to establish a nonprofit group dedicated to local environmental health issues. Two scientists from Arizona will be in the Fairhope area next week to collect evidence and investigate the claims. Come October, it will have been two years since Sarah’s last chemotherapy treatment. Photo courtesy of Lesley Pacey




Two scientists from the University of Arizona will be in Fairhope next week to investigate claims of abnormally high rates of rare cancers and neurological diseases in the Eastern Shore area.

The research by the Arizona scientists is independent of an ongoing study by the Alabama Department of Public Health in the area.

The visit was arranged by a nonprofit group formed recently in Fairhope called Eastern Shore Community Health Partners. The group was founded by Lesley Pacey, whose daughter, Sarah, 8, was diagnosed with leukemia in 2004. That diagnosis started her research into similar cases in the area.

Pacey said she heard about a number of rare cancers and neurological diseases along the Eastern Shore and plotted them on a map of the county. The map shows an array of cancers of the blood, brain, bone and certain organs and diseases such as multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

“I sent a large package of information to (Mark) Witten,” Pacey said. “He was pretty convinced that we might have a child leukemia cluster based on what I sent him. They decided to come here.”

Witten, a medical doctor specializing in environmental health, and his colleague, Paul Sheppard, an assistant professor of dedrochronology, who performs environmental health research at the UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, will arrive in Fairhope Sunday. They will spend two days collecting samples from trees in the Fairhope area.

Their research methods and results regarding the rise of childhood leukemia cases in Fallon, Nev., were published last year in Environmental Health Perspectives, a research periodical.

“Mark is an expert in environmental chemistry and was called in first,” Sheppard said Monday, referring to how their collaboration started in the Fallon leukemia cases research. “The citizens there wanted to know if there was anyone who could determine temporal change. Mark knew about the Tree-Ring Research center and contacted us.”

The work at that center investigates changing conditions in chemical components in trees over time. They applied those methods to the environmental health issues in Fallon, he said.

“We can determine trace amounts of metals in the trees,” he said. “If there’s a change in time for those things, then that may tell us something.”

The methods and results have received criticism from industry groups in the peer-reviewed publications where the results have been reported.

Sheppard said the environmental data he and Witten reported in the Fallon studies did not show a link between childhood leukemia and the exposure to toxic metals in the area.

Their report states that “continued biomedical research is warranted to directly test” for such linkages. He said similar research would be required in the event they did find evidence of possible cancer or other disease clusters in the Eastern Shore area.

In 2005, the Alabama Department of Public Health began an investigation into claims of possible disease clusters in the Eastern Shore area, said Neil Sass, state toxicologist with that department.

That study stopped when his department lost its epidemiologist, he said.

“It’s taken me three years to rehire one,” he said Tuesday. “We have now started the investigation over. We put out the word in Baldwin County. We’re not limiting it to just Fairhope.”

Sass said the new epidemiologist, Martha Sanchez, is a medical doctor with a master’s degree in epidemiology.

“In the past couple months, we have interviewed 50 to 60 individuals,” he said. “She has one more round of about 20 people before we sit down and start analyzing the data.”

He said the Centers for Disease Control will admit that in 75 percent of the investigations, no link between disease and environmental causes is found.

“But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth looking into,” he said.

Pacey said she does not have a lot of confidence in state agencies, and that the Eastern Shore Community Health Partners is seeking funds to support environmental health research in the area. She also said that pressure by her group may have resulted in the state investigation being started again.

“We decided to find out if there was anything going on in our community that could cause these cancers and diseases,” she said, referring to the motivation for starting the group in the past few months. “I have been amazed by the positive response. I was concerned about being a pariah in the community, but it’s been just the opposite. Everyone I talk with has said they think we’re on the right track.”

For more information about Eastern Shore Community Health Partners, e-mail Lesley Pacey at baldwinclusters@yahoo.com.

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