Area's toxins may be sickening people

Group exposes hidden U.S. report

By SUSANNE RUST
srust@...

Posted: Feb. 11, 2008

Pollution created by several active and abandoned Milwaukee County industries may be contributing to the ill health of thousands of county residents, according to a government report.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report indicates that it may be exposure to PCBs, lead, mercury and other industrially produced toxins in Milwaukee County that is contributing to the county's higher-than-average rates of infant mortality, low birth weight, premature births and deaths from colon cancer, coronary heart disease and stroke.

The report, which was leaked last week by an investigative watchdog group, was supposed to be released in July.

The International Joint Commission, an independent panel that advises the U.S. and Canadian governments on Great Lakes issues, requested the report in 2001.

According to a CDC spokesman, the July release was blocked because of concerns about some of the methods used in the report.

However, the report had been reviewed and approved by dozens of experts from state and federal governments, as well as academics, according to the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit journalism organization based in Washington, D.C.

The center is responsible for obtaining and releasing the 400-page report to the public.

One of the reviewers of the study, Peter Orris, a professor at the University of Illinois School of Public Health in Chicago, demanded the release of the report in a 2007 letter written to the CDC's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which was in charge of the study.

"This is perhaps the most extensively critiqued report, internally and externally, that I have heard of," he wrote.

And while the CDC study does not say environmental toxins are the definitive cause of these health problems, it should be viewed as a red flag, said Frank Bevacqua, a spokesman for the Joint Commission.

"It shows where additional research should be focused," he said.

Using information gathered from government databases on abandoned waste sites and current industrial toxic releases, the report examined the health risks of 9 million people living near 26 areas cited by the Environmental Protection Agency as being "areas of concern." The areas examined by the CDC are on the Great Lakes and are known to be polluted with toxins such as mercury, PCBs and dioxins.

Many of these areas are also home to industries that release other chemicals, such as lead and arsenic, into the air, water and soil.

Several of the "hot spots" identified in the report are in Wisconsin, including the Milwaukee River estuary; the Menominee and Sheboygan rivers; Lower Green Bay and the Fox River; and the St. Louis River and Bay, on Lake Superior.

In 2001, the year the report was commissioned, more than 2 million pounds of chemicals were released into Milwaukee County's environment - most of it into the air. One percent of those chemicals, or 10,000 pounds, are identified by the Joint Commission as chemicals of concern, including dioxins, lead and mercury.

"I think the report raises really interesting questions about chronic long-term health effects to environmental exposure," said Paul Biedrzycki, the Milwaukee Health Department's manager of disease control and prevention. "Local public health departments support these kinds of studies."

CDC spokesman Glen Nowak said the toxic substances agency hopes to release a final, corrected report in a few weeks.

Lee Bergquist of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.