Here's why you should never believe everything you read -- and why you should always ask who is behind the research study. In 1997, an article was published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine that claimed chromium-contaminated water was not causing high rates of cancer in China. The study reversed an earlier finding by the same Chinese researchers that linked hexavalent chromium to cancer. Nine years later, the medical journal is planning a retraction of the article. Nine years is a long time for erroneous information to be sitting there as research-based fact. It's not a case of OOPS! this is what we knew then but here is what we know now, and what we know now is different than what we knew then -- no no NO -- it's more potentially sinister than that. You be the judge. I quote from The Wall Street Journal, "The article in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine was conceived, drafted and edited by consultants for PG&E Corporation. The PG&E consultants submitted the article for publication without letting on they or PG&E were involved."

Why, isn't this the same chromium that contaminated the groundwater of Hinkley, that led to the fearless and determined investigator Erin Brockovich to uncovering a cover-up by PG&E that led to the widely-publicized lawsuit against PG&E during the same period in time, the 1990s, that the above scientific article was published. And just so we are all on the same page of thank goodness for the good guys, it was the Environmental Working Group and The Wall Street Journal who lodged an objection to the published research in the medical journal. 

As you drive through the neighborhoods surrounding the former Kelly Air Force Base in Texas, you will notice small purple crosses planted in front lawns. The crosses mark the homes of cancer victims. The people who live in these neighborhoods call where they live the toxic triangle. They believe they have been poisoned by the industrial solvent, trichloroethylene, or TCE, that was dumped at the base for decades and subsequently spread for miles through a shallow aquifer under the 22,000 nearby houses.

The local health authorities admit they have found evidence of increased rates of liver cancer and birth defects for the residents of these neighborhoods, but state it is impossible to say that TCE is the cause. The residents are absolutely certain TCE is the cause of the cancers that plague the people who live there. And this same fate is playing out all over the country, in other cities that are home to military bases, industrial plants, nuclear weapons laboratories and NASA centers.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, a cancer cluster is defined as a greater-than-expected number of cancer cases that occurs within a group of people in a geographic area over a period of time. Before I was diagnosed with cancer, I never stopped to wonder if I was living in a cancer cluster area. This is a brief list, from 1 in 9, of famous cancer clusters:

Tom’s River, New Jersey: 103 children are part of the nation’s largest cancer cluster. 4,500 drums of toxic liquid were dumped at a nearby landfill.

Woburn, Massachusetts: 21 children diagnosed with leukemia at the time the town’s drinking water was found to be contaminated by a hazardous waste deep-injection well.

Hinkley, California: cancer cluster chromium from the utility winding up in the residents’ well water. This was the site used in the movie, Erin Brockovich.

Oak Park, Illinois, 1989: four children in a small town of 12,000 diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a rare cancer usually striking 9 in a million, living nearby a toxic stew of coal tars left behind by a manufacturing plant 70 years prior.

Niagara, Canada (“Love Canal”) 1979: A federal report indicates a 1in 10 chance of residents contracting cancer, thousands of toxic chemicals were buried on-site 20 years prior.

Fallon, Nevada 2001: Fourteen cases of leukemia in children in the past three years, adjacent to an old mining area containing arsenic and mercury.

I do not live there now, but I lived in a famous cancer cluster area without realizing it was considered a cancer cluster area. I discovered this information after my breast cancer diagnosis, by accident, while researching breast cancer information. Imagine my initial shock and stunned realization as I began to slowly wonder if it might have been a factor in the development of my disease. It is not likely I will ever have definitive proof of the origin of my cancer. But it does make me wonder. It will always make me wonder.

If you are interested in finding information about the possible dangers where you live, because finding out on your own is possibly the only way you are going to find out about it, check the Environmental Protection Agency's National Priorities List Sites for your state. You can access information about current site listings, proposed site listings, and final site listings.