Op/Ed: My adolescent daughter had a rare form of cancer. Here's what we think caused it.
On November 10, 2015, an oncologist issued his diagnosis. A malignant tumor called Ewing Sarcoma had developed within my daughter's spinal cord. My heart sank. The pain my daughter had complained of for more than a year was not, as several doctors had suggested, a normal part of adolescence. She had a rare and potentially deadly cancer, in an even more rare and dangerous place.
I asked the oncologist what had caused my daughter's cancer. "Ewing sarcoma is caused by a genetic mutation,” he said, "but it is not inherited." This cancer, I was told, was environmentally caused. My daughter’s diagnosis that day would eventually change the course of not only my life, but also of my friend professor Jennifer Lee Johnson’s life.
Together, we began researching the long-term effects of environmental contamination. Our work started in early 2020, in Martinsville, Indiana — where my daughter grew up — and has since expanded to other cities and towns in our state.
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Morgan County, where Martinsville is located, leads the state in rates of cancer incidence for all types of cancers. And cases of rare and extremely rare cancers, including Ewing Sarcoma, are increasing.
Over the course of the last three years, we have found a long and troubled history of environmental contamination that is to blame. We have also learned that Morgan County is not alone — dozens of municipalities across Indiana face a similar situation. Hoosiers deserve better. It’s time for our state to recognize this growing health crisis and protect our people.
Cancer clusters and their causes are notoriously difficult to prove scientifically. And yet, common sense suggests that clear concentrations of cancers in Martinsville — especially rare ones — must be due to more than mere chance.
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Like many towns throughout Indiana, in Martinsville residential and industrial properties are co-located. Factories — including those still in operation and those long closed — are next door to places where people live, learn, and play. Indeed, there are two factories notorious for improperly disposing hazardous wastes near the elementary school where my daughter learned long division.
Martinsville also overlays a groundwater body contaminated with four toxic plumes of trichloroethylene (TCE) and tetrachloroethylene (PCE), a carcinogenic chemical the EPA is considering banning. Although the city's drinking water now meets federal standards for these chemicals, this was not consistently the case from at least the early 1990s until 2005, when a carbon filtration system was installed. Sporadic violations of these same standards continue to occur. The ongoing impacts of these chemicals on indoor air quality are so alarming that corporations and the federal government are currently installing vapor mitigation systems in certain properties.
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Then there are less obvious, but no less detrimental, sources of contamination. A former hazardous waste processing site sits a half a mile from the city's municipal water wells. A historic dump is directly adjacent to the city’s newest neighborhood. Our research has revealed that toxic chemicals have been dumped in both of these and other sites around Martinsville. Most of this history is now largely forgotten, though the toxic effects of the chemicals live on.
The state agency responsible for addressing these concerns is the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM). But over the last decade, state legislators have cut IDEM’s budget by $35 million. Between 2008 to 2018, IDEM’s hazardous waste management program alone lost 76% of its budget. Currently, there is a team of only 11 people tasked with cleaning up 470 Brownfield sites across Indiana. This is unacceptable. Without proper funding, IDEM cannot sufficiently assess and address historic and contemporary sources of contamination.
State budgets represent the values and priorities of our leaders. With a $2.9 billion surplus, we have the money to fix this. And by preventing cancers, these investments can save the state money on health care costs.
Not everyone is as fortunate as my daughter, who now lives cancer free. No one should have to live or die this way. Let’s show we value the lives and well-being of all Hoosiers by investing in the qualified experts Indiana desperately needs.
Deborah Corcoran is a Community Action board member for Martinsville, a Community Action group member for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Pike and Mulberry Superfund Site in Martinsville, a fellow with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Program, and a concerned citizen of Indiana, business owner and mother.
Dr. Jennifer Lee Johnson is an environmental anthropologist, formerly based in the Department of Anthropology at Purdue University, and now an associate professor in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University and fellow with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Program.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Hazardous waste may have caused my daughter's rare form of cancer.
