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Ladera Ranch Childhood Cancer Mystery Deepens After 20-Year-Old Handwritten Warning Emerges
Officials were warned over 20 years ago not to build on land now struck by extremely rare childhood cancers without “further considerations,” unearthed records show.
The ominous handwritten notes appeared on documents for the abandoning of a historical oil well below what is now Orange County’s Ladera Ranch in California.
The memos have renewed fears about what caused at least six cases of Ewing sarcoma to be diagnosed in the community between 2013 and 2024. Some worry they have been sparked by pesticides being used on school property, while others have pointed to a landfill site in the area, with health officials still investigating possible links or causes.
The newly emerged notes, which appear twice in pencil markings on the Department of Conservation permit, say: “This well is not to be built over without further considerations.”
44% of US Pre-K-12 Schools Are Near Environmental Hazard Sites
In a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Brown University researchers found that 8% of the country’s schools are located within a quarter mile of a hazardous site, such as a Superfund site, brownfield, or Toxics Release Inventory facility, as defined by the EPA. And approximately 44% of pre-K-12 schools are located within a mile of a site, a distance where negative exposure effects on health and academic achievement have been documented.
“It was shocking to us to discover how common it was for schools to be located near toxic sites and industrial pollution,” says Matthew Kraft, a professor of education and economics at Brown who coauthored the study. “This is something we need to be concerned about in nearly every community and across every state in the US.”
Risks are borne disproportionately by Native, Black, Hispanic, and low-income students, who are 124%, 86%, 43%, and 40%, respectively, more likely to attend schools within a quarter mile of a hazardous site, according to the study.
Live Near a Dry Cleaner? You Might Have a Higher Risk for This Devastating Neurological Condition
U.S. News & World Report reported:
People living near dry cleaners might have a higher risk of Parkinson’s disease, a new study says. People living within approximately 500 feet of a dry cleaner had a 14% greater risk of Parkinson’s compared to those living four to five miles away, researchers report in the journal npj Parkinson’s Disease.
Results also showed that risk of the degenerative disease declined the farther away a person lived from a dry cleaner. “This study adds to growing evidence that environmental exposures may play an important role in Parkinson’s disease,” said senior researcher Dr. Brad Racette, chairman of neurology and senior vice president of Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix.
“Identifying those exposures is an important step toward understanding how we might reduce the burden of this disease in the future,” Racette said in a news release.
Prior research has linked long-term exposure to chlorinated solvents like trichlorethylene (TCE) and perchloroethylene (PCE) with Parkinson’s disease, researchers said in background notes.
A Florida Community Aimed to Address a Legacy of Pollution. The Trump Administration Cancelled Its Funding.
Ross Fabian’s low-slung apartment building sits beside a pond that sometimes smells of dead fish. He has seen dead dogs in the pond. For many years the pond has served an important purpose, as a repository of sorts for the pollutants and contaminants that flow with Florida’s heavy rains from the industrial sites, brownfields and failing septic systems in Fabian’s unincorporated community, which neighbors the University of South Florida and is known as the University Area.
Called Aarans Pond, it is part of a network of such artificial waterbodies across the region where stormwater collects before cascading through a series of culverts and weirs, eventually flowing into the Hillsborough River and Tampa Bay. The system helps filter the pollutants that within the region’s namesake bay would foster more of the harmful algae blooms and seagrass losses that have beleaguered treasured waterways across Florida.
But in the University Area, a community of some 10,000 residents where the per capita median income is about $12,000 and 33 percent of residents are unemployed, Aarans Pond and two others like it are impaired, a consequence of the scope of pollutants here on the north edge of Tampa and also intensifying rain events and flooding as the global climate warms.
People Living Near East Bay Refinery Have Greater Cancer Risk, Air District Says
The San Francisco Chronicle reported:
East Bay residents living near the Chevron Richmond Refinery are at a higher risk of developing cancer and other health ailments from exposure to toxic pollutants, according to preliminary findings released Tuesday by the Bay Area Air District.
The air district identified the petroleum refinery — which spans 2,900 acres near Point Richmond — as a “facility with the potential to pose high health impacts,” making it subject to a health risk assessment as required by a district regulation called Rule 11-18.
The Bay Area Air District is responsible for regulating sources of air pollution, typically at industrial or commercial facilities, in the nine Bay Area counties. The assessment found residents living near the refinery have an estimated maximum cancer risk of 37 in a million, meaning 37 additional chances in one million of developing cancer over a lifetime of exposure — exceeding the district’s risk threshold of 10 in a million.
HEPA Air Purifiers May Boost Brain Function After Just One Month
Using an in-home HEPA purifier for one month spurs a small but significant improvement in brain function in adults age 40 and older. That’s the result of a new study we co-authored in the journal Scientific Reports.
HEPA stands for high efficiency particulate air — remove particulate matter from the air. Exposure to particulate matter has been connected to respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses as well as neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Environmental health researchers increasingly recommend that people use HEPA air purifiers in their homes to lower their exposure to particulate matter, but few studies have examined whether using them boosts mental function.
We analyzed data from a study of 119 people ages 30 to 74 living in Somerville, Massachusetts. Somerville sits along Interstate 93 and Route 28, two major highways, resulting in relatively high levels of traffic-related air pollution. This makes it an especially good location for testing the health effects of air purifiers.
