(AP) Nearly a year after federal epidemiologists first sounded the alarm over a cluster of rare blood cancers in northeastern Pennsylvania, their research has zeroed in on a hardscrabble region 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia that is home to several Superfund sites and a power plant fired by waste coal.
The U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry said Monday that it confirmed an elevated number of cases of polycythemia vera, or PV, in a 20-mile stretch between Hazleton and Tamaqua.
It remains the first and only cluster of PV ever recorded in the United States, though the condition became reportable to state cancer registries only in 2001, and officials said it's statistically likely there are others.
Residents in the affected area were four times as likely to suffer from PV as residents living in outlying areas, according to the government.
Researchers cautioned, though, that their investigation was not designed to uncover an environmental link to PV, a cancer that results in the overproduction of red blood cells and can lead to heart attack or stroke. PV's cause is unknown.
"We don't want to give the message that there are no connections," said researcher Vince Seaman. "We just don't have the data."
Some residents blame their illnesses on a recycler that accepted hundreds of thousands of gallons of paint sludge, waste oils, used solvents, PCBs, cyanide, pesticides and many other known or suspected carcinogens.
Environmental officials shut down the site in 1979, and it was later placed on the federal Superfund list and cleaned up. Other Superfund sites dot the area, too, along with a power plant that burns waste coal that some residents also suspect has caused health problems.
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