For Immediate Release
July 17th, 2007

Scientists should focus liver cancer study on chemicals, not corn

Tuesday July 17, 2007 – 6:15PM
Cuellar Community Center
5626 San Fernando (Old Highway 90 & 36th Street)

Organizers with the Southwest Workers Union and the Committee for Environmental Justice Action will be offering residents popcorn and green KoolAid symbolizing toxic waste in protest of a meeting organized by the Metropolitan Health District (MetroHealth) tonight. At the meeting, study organizers are asking cancer victims to undergo testing to see if higher-than-average liver cancer rates on San Antonio’s West and South sides are linked to eating corn. The study’s organizers are ignoring a much more obvious and likely cause for the cancer cluster: the several square mile groundwater plume of trichloroethylene (TCE), a potent cancer-causing solvent underlying 10s of thousands of Southside homes.

Community residents, suspicious of yet another health study that tries to point the finger away from the need for a clean-up of Kelly Air Force Base contamination, insist that the study should examine whether the high liver cancer rates are linked to a lifetime of exposure to TCE.

While MetroHealth’s meeting is in progress, the Air Force is holding a separate meeting of its Restoration Advisory Board to discuss how TCE gas can enter homes above the groundwater plume. TCE levels under homes are still up to 20 times higher than the current federal standards. A study released by a panel of scientists last year recommended that those federal standards for TCE be tightened because of overwhelming evidence that TCE causes liver cancer in mice and rats.

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Labels: cancer, community oversight, Kelly AFB, MetroHealth, TCE