Leukemia fears spread
http://regulus2.azstarnet.com/comments/index.php?id=177343
Dear Olle: Yet another "very tragic story" about Leukemia cluster (other cancers also reported):
I understand from my brother who knows one of the cancer victim's wife in Sierra Vista, that there is radar -- he said "by a mountain," that is being used to detect low-flying airplanes that are being used for drug-smuggling out of Mexico. Apparently the radar belongs to the Border Patrol.
My brother also mentioned the Libby Army Airfield on Fort Huachuca (mentioned in the forwarded article), which is at the edge of Sierra Vista. Obviously, the air field would have its own radar.
The following paragraph reminds me a lot of the EMF rhetoric:
"The U.S. military has denied JP-8's toxicity since a 2001 study — funded by the Department of Defense — concluded that exposed workers at Air Force bases suffered no negative effects from it. However, critics have called that study invalid, saying the two-year time frame is not long enough to determine the fuel's effects on human health......."
I am in touch with family members and, as usual, have a number of questions re additional EMF/EMR exposures that most likely are compounding the adverse effects of benzene and adding to adverse effects of the radar installations not to mention celluar antennae in the area.
I am very interested to learn whether many of the homes were built around the same time period and therefor may have electric or gas meters mounted on bedroom walls. Also, hopefully I will be able to come up with more information as to electric appliance and telephone equipment usage close to beds.
My purpose is never intended to "downplay" any potential hazards, just that there are "way too many mysteries" even if one dismisses the cover-ups, minimizations and denials.
I did not miss the fact that one of the mom's of a Leukemia victim (now "a survivor") is working toward, or already has her degree in Epidemiology. She is one of the persons I wrote to yesterday. Take care - Joanne
Joanne C. Mueller Guinea Pigs R Us
731 - 123rd Avenue N.W. Minneapolis, Minnesota 55448-2127 USA Phone: 763-755-6114 Email: jcmpelican @aol.com (4-7-07)
All truth goes through three stages: first it is ridiculed: then it is violently opposed: finally it is accepted as self evident. - Schopenhauer
"No substance is a poison by itself. It is the dose that makes a substance a poison..." Paracelsus (1493-1541)
Buy Daily Star photo reprints Dale Durkit "One day he's healthy, the next day he's dead," said his widow. More Photos (2): Did you know … The childhood leukemia cluster now plaguing Sierra Vista was first recognized in January 2001, when a Tucson mother of a child getting leukemia treatment at University Medical Center noticed an unusual number of Sierra Vista families also there with sick children. She asked the children's UMC oncologist, Dr. John Hutter, now retired, about it, and they notified the Arizona Department of Health Services of their concerns. By September of that year, the health department confirmed that the number of pediatric leukemia cases in Sierra Vista dating to 1997 was indeed high enough to be declared a "cluster" — an outbreak significantly above the expected rate for a city that size. Sources: Star archives, the Arizona Department of Health Services, the Tucson-based advocacy group Families Against Cancer & Toxics (FACT) To help the family Since losing father and husband Dale Durkit to leukemia, the Durkit family of Sierra Vista is struggling financially. The family's truck is being repossessed and mother Kelley Durkit is trying to hold on to the family home. A fund to help the family has been opened at Compass Bank. To donate, you may deposit a check payable to the "Durkit Family Fund" at any Compass Bank in Arizona, or mail a check to Compass Bank, 211 S. Carmichael Ave., Sierra Vista AZ 85635.
Tucson Region
Sierra Vista's deadly enemy Leukemia fears spread Death of stricken kids' dad is family's latest, cruelest blow, heightening alarm that outbreak is snaring adults, too By Carla McClain ARIZONA DAILY STAR Tucson, Arizona | Published: 04.07.2007 advertisement SIERRA VISTA — After a futile federal probe of the childhood leukemia cluster in Sierra Vista, fear of the disease is growing, not waning, prompting a new state study to find out if adults here are also suffering unusually high rates. Reports that leukemia — and other cancers — have sickened many Sierra Vista adults in recent years have long shadowed the abnormally high rates verified among the city's stricken children. The recent, stunning leukemia-related death of the father of two of those children — Dale Durkit — has only heightened the fear affecting this military town of 40,000 in Southeastern Arizona. "This came out of nowhere," said his wife, Kelley Durkit, after burying her husband last month. "He was a huge, healthy man — one day he's healthy, the next day he's dead. This doesn't make any sense. You have to believe in God or you go crazy. "This is phenomenal — every time you talk to someone, there is cancer, in the family, in someone they know. It's not just leukemia. There is cancer running through this town. It's just everywhere." Dale Durkit, 37, died at University Medical Center on March 10, just days after learning he had the same leukemia that has plagued two of his daughters. He apparently died of an infection, which he had been fighting before the leukemia diagnosis, that overwhelmed his body after he started chemotherapy. That's a risk of the treatment, said Dr. Andrew Yeager, director of UMC's blood and bone-marrow transplant program. No family has been more devastated by the Sierra Vista leukemia outbreak of the past decade than the Durkits. Dale Durkit's oldest daughter, Kellie, 13, is recovering from a recent bone-marrow transplant for her leukemia. The child of an earlier marriage, Kellie's case is "linked" to the Sierra Vista leukemia cluster because she frequently visited her father and grandparents there, while living with her mother in Phoenix. But Durkit's next daughter, Jessica, now 8, is part of the official cluster that now tallies at least 12 children — the most recent confirmed last month — and six more closely tied to it. If you count only the official 12 cases, that is at least three times the rate of childhood leukemia expected in a city the size of Sierra Vista in this time period. Stricken with leukemia in 2001, when she was 2, Jessica is in complete remission but suffering badly now from the sudden loss of her father. "They called him 'dimple-Dale,' you know," said this beautiful little girl with the family's trademark sky-blue eyes, as she pointed to her cheeks, the site of her daddy's fine dimples. When her mother, Kelley, said the family was trying to somehow accept Dale's death, Jessica looked up sharply from her coloring book in her Sierra Vista home and shook her head. "No, no, no," she said, in a whisper. Her 10-year old brother, Cody, and her little sister, Chelsie, 5, just bowed their heads. "Daddy's up there in heaven. He's building us a house," Chelsie said, adding, "I'm his 'little Boo.' " Wearing pink metal hearts inscribed "Daddy, we love you," the little girls were sitting on the living-room floor, below a montage of photos of Dale the children had pinned on the wall. Alongside the pictures, they had written a Bible verse from the book of Matthew: "If you have faith in a grain of mustard … nothing shall be impossible to you." When Jessica got sick — just as alarming evidence of the leukemia cluster was emerging in Sierra Vista — the Durkits were living in the flight path of the 300-plus military aircraft that fly out of Libby Army Airfield on Fort Huachuca every day. "We lived right where the jets turned around — that's when the big black cloud of jet fuel exhaust shoots out," said Kelley. "We were always so uncomfortable about that." Until the day he died, Dale Durkit remained convinced jet-fuel exposure is the prime cause of Sierra Vista's leukemia cluster. The only proven cause of leukemia — the toxic chemical benzene — is the major ingredient in military jet fuel, especially in its newest form, known as JP-8, which the military began using in the late 1990s. That jibes with the onset of Sierra Vista's childhood leukemia cluster and an even bigger one in Fallon, Nev., home of the U.S. Navy's "Top Gun" jet fighter training facility, Dale Durkit continually pointed out. He remained unswayed by unverified, small-scale tests done independently by two University of Arizona researchers showing high levels of some heavy metals — most notably tungsten — in the air in Fallon and in some spots in Sierra Vista. "Tungsten doesn't make sense. Tungsten has always been around, so people would have been getting sick long ago. I don't buy it," Durkit said as recently as November. "But they started using JP-8 only a few years ago, and that new formula turns benzene into a monster. There's your smoking gun." The U.S. military has denied JP-8's toxicity since a 2001 study — funded by the Department of Defense — concluded that exposed workers at Air Force bases suffered no negative effects from it. However, critics have called that study invalid, saying the two-year time frame is not long enough to determine the fuel's effects on human health. So Durkit was not at all surprised when federal investigators from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed to find any clues — much less a cause — of Sierra Vista's leukemia, after analyzing bio-samples from the city's sick and healthy children. He declined to allow his children to be tested in that probe, after the CDC also came up empty in Fallon — the site of what is likely the largest cancer cluster in U.S. history. In disgust and frightened for his children — if not himself — Durkit called the CDC the "Cluster Denial Coalition." Scientists have long theorized that some people are genetically predisposed to developing leukemia, but that it takes exposure to environmental toxins to trigger the disease. After Jessica's illness, the Durkits moved 12 miles southeast of the city, out of the jet flight path, trying to get out of harm's way. But they still don't feel safe, Kelley Durkit said. "The kids always seem to be sick — a lot of bleeding noses, coughs. This just isn't a healthy place to live," she said. Although she and Dale were making plans to leave before he died, she won't go now. "Everything here is Dale," she said, gesturing to the pond he built in their yard for the children, to their toys and playhouse. She struggled unsuccessfully to talk about him without tears. "I still wait for his phone call every single day at 11:30. … He was my rock. He was my everything. I can't leave him now." But it is not hard to understand the deep fear she lives with, of this monster that comes out of nowhere to strike those she loves, one after another. Just before leukemia struck Dale, it killed one of his colleagues at work. Stories like that are everywhere in Sierra Vista. It is why the medical director of the Arizona Cancer Registry at the state health department, Dr. Tim Flood, has responded to pleas from the people of this city to find out if adults are also part of the leukemia problem here. The results of his analysis, under way now, are expected at the end of this month. "We're going to look at leukemia in this area in all ages. But those numbers will be mostly adults, because leukemia is much more common in adults," Flood said. He admits he will have only the numbers — and not the answers — if the rates turn out unusually high. "That's the biggest challenge," he said. "We still don't know what to look for." Even so, those who are convinced leukemia is stalking this entire city, and not just its children, applaud the state's action. "They try to eliminate so much when they do these studies, it's definitely good to see them widening the investigation," said longtime Sierra Vista resident Sue Ivory, one of those who has continually sounded the alarm about afflicted adults. Three years ago she was helping organize a bone-marrow drive for Susan Taylor, the 10th Sierra Vista child hit by leukemia, who later died. Ivory was stunned then by how many adults came forward, saying they, too, had the disease or knew someone who did. "Anyone you talk to down here knows someone who has this — we've been aware of it for years," she said. "I am certain cancer rates here are high across the board. "This is killing kids and it's killing adults."?
Contact reporter Carla McClain at 806-7754 or at cmcclain@azstarnet.com.
Comments on this story
http://regulus2.azstarnet.com/comments/index.php?id=177343
--------
Re: Leukemia....Sierra Vista, AZ...4/07....
Joanne,
I saw this in today's Arizona Star, too. It is about time that this cluster got the public health attention it deserves. I know this mother you refer to but she cannot do it alone and needs our help. I have been following this for a few years now and think the military needs to be more accountable to the public health community about the growing recognition that environmental factors such as radio frequency, jet fuel and tungstun may be contributing to these health problems in Sierra Vista and Fallon. Both towns now are living in a climate of fear and that is another public health problem. Does every nail of certainty have to be pounded into the ground to establish these residents may be surviving there under preventable but now life threatening condition?
Thank you for forwarding this article, which I read to be a strong call to action by public health officials in the states of Arizona and Nevada and federally.
Libby Kelley
--------
Re: FW: Leukemia....Sierra Vista, AZ...4/07....
I think the polution from the planes and electromagnetism are a very bad combination. As the blood brain and other barriers are opened with the radar and phone masts this will allow the toxins from the planes to enter the brain ect. THE ARE USING A BANNED PESTICIDE IN THE FUEL, IF THE INFORMATION I WAS SENT IS TRUE.
HOSPITALS JAMMED AS BANNED PESTICIDE IS SPRAYED FROM THE SKIES
http://www.electrifyingtimes.com/sick.html
CATHERINE
--------
Judge to decide forum for Fallon leukemia lawsuits
http://news.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070921/NEWS01/709210393/1321/NEWS
--------
Scientists tackle Fallon cancer at meeting
http://news.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071015/NEWS18/71015026/1029/FALLON
Informant: Martin Weatherall
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=childhood+leukemia
Dear Olle: Yet another "very tragic story" about Leukemia cluster (other cancers also reported):
I understand from my brother who knows one of the cancer victim's wife in Sierra Vista, that there is radar -- he said "by a mountain," that is being used to detect low-flying airplanes that are being used for drug-smuggling out of Mexico. Apparently the radar belongs to the Border Patrol.
My brother also mentioned the Libby Army Airfield on Fort Huachuca (mentioned in the forwarded article), which is at the edge of Sierra Vista. Obviously, the air field would have its own radar.
The following paragraph reminds me a lot of the EMF rhetoric:
"The U.S. military has denied JP-8's toxicity since a 2001 study — funded by the Department of Defense — concluded that exposed workers at Air Force bases suffered no negative effects from it. However, critics have called that study invalid, saying the two-year time frame is not long enough to determine the fuel's effects on human health......."
I am in touch with family members and, as usual, have a number of questions re additional EMF/EMR exposures that most likely are compounding the adverse effects of benzene and adding to adverse effects of the radar installations not to mention celluar antennae in the area.
I am very interested to learn whether many of the homes were built around the same time period and therefor may have electric or gas meters mounted on bedroom walls. Also, hopefully I will be able to come up with more information as to electric appliance and telephone equipment usage close to beds.
My purpose is never intended to "downplay" any potential hazards, just that there are "way too many mysteries" even if one dismisses the cover-ups, minimizations and denials.
I did not miss the fact that one of the mom's of a Leukemia victim (now "a survivor") is working toward, or already has her degree in Epidemiology. She is one of the persons I wrote to yesterday. Take care - Joanne
Joanne C. Mueller Guinea Pigs R Us
731 - 123rd Avenue N.W. Minneapolis, Minnesota 55448-2127 USA Phone: 763-755-6114 Email: jcmpelican @aol.com (4-7-07)
All truth goes through three stages: first it is ridiculed: then it is violently opposed: finally it is accepted as self evident. - Schopenhauer
"No substance is a poison by itself. It is the dose that makes a substance a poison..." Paracelsus (1493-1541)
Buy Daily Star photo reprints Dale Durkit "One day he's healthy, the next day he's dead," said his widow. More Photos (2): Did you know … The childhood leukemia cluster now plaguing Sierra Vista was first recognized in January 2001, when a Tucson mother of a child getting leukemia treatment at University Medical Center noticed an unusual number of Sierra Vista families also there with sick children. She asked the children's UMC oncologist, Dr. John Hutter, now retired, about it, and they notified the Arizona Department of Health Services of their concerns. By September of that year, the health department confirmed that the number of pediatric leukemia cases in Sierra Vista dating to 1997 was indeed high enough to be declared a "cluster" — an outbreak significantly above the expected rate for a city that size. Sources: Star archives, the Arizona Department of Health Services, the Tucson-based advocacy group Families Against Cancer & Toxics (FACT) To help the family Since losing father and husband Dale Durkit to leukemia, the Durkit family of Sierra Vista is struggling financially. The family's truck is being repossessed and mother Kelley Durkit is trying to hold on to the family home. A fund to help the family has been opened at Compass Bank. To donate, you may deposit a check payable to the "Durkit Family Fund" at any Compass Bank in Arizona, or mail a check to Compass Bank, 211 S. Carmichael Ave., Sierra Vista AZ 85635.
Tucson Region
Sierra Vista's deadly enemy Leukemia fears spread Death of stricken kids' dad is family's latest, cruelest blow, heightening alarm that outbreak is snaring adults, too By Carla McClain ARIZONA DAILY STAR Tucson, Arizona | Published: 04.07.2007 advertisement SIERRA VISTA — After a futile federal probe of the childhood leukemia cluster in Sierra Vista, fear of the disease is growing, not waning, prompting a new state study to find out if adults here are also suffering unusually high rates. Reports that leukemia — and other cancers — have sickened many Sierra Vista adults in recent years have long shadowed the abnormally high rates verified among the city's stricken children. The recent, stunning leukemia-related death of the father of two of those children — Dale Durkit — has only heightened the fear affecting this military town of 40,000 in Southeastern Arizona. "This came out of nowhere," said his wife, Kelley Durkit, after burying her husband last month. "He was a huge, healthy man — one day he's healthy, the next day he's dead. This doesn't make any sense. You have to believe in God or you go crazy. "This is phenomenal — every time you talk to someone, there is cancer, in the family, in someone they know. It's not just leukemia. There is cancer running through this town. It's just everywhere." Dale Durkit, 37, died at University Medical Center on March 10, just days after learning he had the same leukemia that has plagued two of his daughters. He apparently died of an infection, which he had been fighting before the leukemia diagnosis, that overwhelmed his body after he started chemotherapy. That's a risk of the treatment, said Dr. Andrew Yeager, director of UMC's blood and bone-marrow transplant program. No family has been more devastated by the Sierra Vista leukemia outbreak of the past decade than the Durkits. Dale Durkit's oldest daughter, Kellie, 13, is recovering from a recent bone-marrow transplant for her leukemia. The child of an earlier marriage, Kellie's case is "linked" to the Sierra Vista leukemia cluster because she frequently visited her father and grandparents there, while living with her mother in Phoenix. But Durkit's next daughter, Jessica, now 8, is part of the official cluster that now tallies at least 12 children — the most recent confirmed last month — and six more closely tied to it. If you count only the official 12 cases, that is at least three times the rate of childhood leukemia expected in a city the size of Sierra Vista in this time period. Stricken with leukemia in 2001, when she was 2, Jessica is in complete remission but suffering badly now from the sudden loss of her father. "They called him 'dimple-Dale,' you know," said this beautiful little girl with the family's trademark sky-blue eyes, as she pointed to her cheeks, the site of her daddy's fine dimples. When her mother, Kelley, said the family was trying to somehow accept Dale's death, Jessica looked up sharply from her coloring book in her Sierra Vista home and shook her head. "No, no, no," she said, in a whisper. Her 10-year old brother, Cody, and her little sister, Chelsie, 5, just bowed their heads. "Daddy's up there in heaven. He's building us a house," Chelsie said, adding, "I'm his 'little Boo.' " Wearing pink metal hearts inscribed "Daddy, we love you," the little girls were sitting on the living-room floor, below a montage of photos of Dale the children had pinned on the wall. Alongside the pictures, they had written a Bible verse from the book of Matthew: "If you have faith in a grain of mustard … nothing shall be impossible to you." When Jessica got sick — just as alarming evidence of the leukemia cluster was emerging in Sierra Vista — the Durkits were living in the flight path of the 300-plus military aircraft that fly out of Libby Army Airfield on Fort Huachuca every day. "We lived right where the jets turned around — that's when the big black cloud of jet fuel exhaust shoots out," said Kelley. "We were always so uncomfortable about that." Until the day he died, Dale Durkit remained convinced jet-fuel exposure is the prime cause of Sierra Vista's leukemia cluster. The only proven cause of leukemia — the toxic chemical benzene — is the major ingredient in military jet fuel, especially in its newest form, known as JP-8, which the military began using in the late 1990s. That jibes with the onset of Sierra Vista's childhood leukemia cluster and an even bigger one in Fallon, Nev., home of the U.S. Navy's "Top Gun" jet fighter training facility, Dale Durkit continually pointed out. He remained unswayed by unverified, small-scale tests done independently by two University of Arizona researchers showing high levels of some heavy metals — most notably tungsten — in the air in Fallon and in some spots in Sierra Vista. "Tungsten doesn't make sense. Tungsten has always been around, so people would have been getting sick long ago. I don't buy it," Durkit said as recently as November. "But they started using JP-8 only a few years ago, and that new formula turns benzene into a monster. There's your smoking gun." The U.S. military has denied JP-8's toxicity since a 2001 study — funded by the Department of Defense — concluded that exposed workers at Air Force bases suffered no negative effects from it. However, critics have called that study invalid, saying the two-year time frame is not long enough to determine the fuel's effects on human health. So Durkit was not at all surprised when federal investigators from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed to find any clues — much less a cause — of Sierra Vista's leukemia, after analyzing bio-samples from the city's sick and healthy children. He declined to allow his children to be tested in that probe, after the CDC also came up empty in Fallon — the site of what is likely the largest cancer cluster in U.S. history. In disgust and frightened for his children — if not himself — Durkit called the CDC the "Cluster Denial Coalition." Scientists have long theorized that some people are genetically predisposed to developing leukemia, but that it takes exposure to environmental toxins to trigger the disease. After Jessica's illness, the Durkits moved 12 miles southeast of the city, out of the jet flight path, trying to get out of harm's way. But they still don't feel safe, Kelley Durkit said. "The kids always seem to be sick — a lot of bleeding noses, coughs. This just isn't a healthy place to live," she said. Although she and Dale were making plans to leave before he died, she won't go now. "Everything here is Dale," she said, gesturing to the pond he built in their yard for the children, to their toys and playhouse. She struggled unsuccessfully to talk about him without tears. "I still wait for his phone call every single day at 11:30. … He was my rock. He was my everything. I can't leave him now." But it is not hard to understand the deep fear she lives with, of this monster that comes out of nowhere to strike those she loves, one after another. Just before leukemia struck Dale, it killed one of his colleagues at work. Stories like that are everywhere in Sierra Vista. It is why the medical director of the Arizona Cancer Registry at the state health department, Dr. Tim Flood, has responded to pleas from the people of this city to find out if adults are also part of the leukemia problem here. The results of his analysis, under way now, are expected at the end of this month. "We're going to look at leukemia in this area in all ages. But those numbers will be mostly adults, because leukemia is much more common in adults," Flood said. He admits he will have only the numbers — and not the answers — if the rates turn out unusually high. "That's the biggest challenge," he said. "We still don't know what to look for." Even so, those who are convinced leukemia is stalking this entire city, and not just its children, applaud the state's action. "They try to eliminate so much when they do these studies, it's definitely good to see them widening the investigation," said longtime Sierra Vista resident Sue Ivory, one of those who has continually sounded the alarm about afflicted adults. Three years ago she was helping organize a bone-marrow drive for Susan Taylor, the 10th Sierra Vista child hit by leukemia, who later died. Ivory was stunned then by how many adults came forward, saying they, too, had the disease or knew someone who did. "Anyone you talk to down here knows someone who has this — we've been aware of it for years," she said. "I am certain cancer rates here are high across the board. "This is killing kids and it's killing adults."?
Contact reporter Carla McClain at 806-7754 or at cmcclain@azstarnet.com.
Comments on this story
http://regulus2.azstarnet.com/comments/index.php?id=177343
--------
Re: Leukemia....Sierra Vista, AZ...4/07....
Joanne,
I saw this in today's Arizona Star, too. It is about time that this cluster got the public health attention it deserves. I know this mother you refer to but she cannot do it alone and needs our help. I have been following this for a few years now and think the military needs to be more accountable to the public health community about the growing recognition that environmental factors such as radio frequency, jet fuel and tungstun may be contributing to these health problems in Sierra Vista and Fallon. Both towns now are living in a climate of fear and that is another public health problem. Does every nail of certainty have to be pounded into the ground to establish these residents may be surviving there under preventable but now life threatening condition?
Thank you for forwarding this article, which I read to be a strong call to action by public health officials in the states of Arizona and Nevada and federally.
Libby Kelley
--------
Re: FW: Leukemia....Sierra Vista, AZ...4/07....
I think the polution from the planes and electromagnetism are a very bad combination. As the blood brain and other barriers are opened with the radar and phone masts this will allow the toxins from the planes to enter the brain ect. THE ARE USING A BANNED PESTICIDE IN THE FUEL, IF THE INFORMATION I WAS SENT IS TRUE.
HOSPITALS JAMMED AS BANNED PESTICIDE IS SPRAYED FROM THE SKIES
http://www.electrifyingtimes.com/sick.html
CATHERINE
--------
Judge to decide forum for Fallon leukemia lawsuits
http://news.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070921/NEWS01/709210393/1321/NEWS
--------
Scientists tackle Fallon cancer at meeting
http://news.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071015/NEWS18/71015026/1029/FALLON
Informant: Martin Weatherall
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=childhood+leukemia
Starmail - 7. Apr, 22:44
