'Clusters' of death
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Stacy Beisler's hand is covered with black soot she wiped from her backyard grill, which she had cleaned two days earlier. -
Stacy Beisler climbs the ladder into the attic of her Lincoln home wearing a mask to shield her from the soot on the boxes. She says black soot covers everything in the attic and will makes her sick if she goes there without a mask. -
This map drawn by George Simo of Jefferson Hills shows his depiction of pollution carried by winds in his neighborhood. -
George Simo takes in stray animals and tracks their death rates, too.
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In many places around Western Pennsylvania residents see clusters of death and clusters of people sickened by cancer or heart and lung diseases.
And, like Lee Lasich, a Clairton resident, they're frustrated that government health and environmental agencies don't see them too, don't do something about the problems and don't take a tougher stance on enforcement of air pollution regulations.
Ms. Lasich, whose husband worked in U.S. Steel Corp.'s Clairton Coke Works and died after suffering from lung, prostate and throat cancers in 2004 when he was 53, is typical. She uses all the fingers of her right hand to tick off the names of friends who have died from brain cancer in her Constitution Circle neighborhood. She uses her left hand to count "a whole family that's got pancreatic cancers."
"They're on our street and near where we live and they're not that old," said Ms. Lasich, a leader of the local grassroots group Residents for a Clean Healthy Mon Valley. "It's too coincidental, and there's too much there. This is a scary time to live here. People are starting to notice that something is going on; that something just isn't right."
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's analysis of Pennsylvania Department of Health mortality data from 2000 through 2008 found that 14,636 more people died from heart and respiratory disease and lung cancer in 14 Western Pennsylvania counties than national rates would predict, or 12,833 after adjusting for excess smoking in the region. And the yearlong investigation found numerous people throughout the region who talked about what seemed like unnatural and unexplained clusters of illnesses and death in their communities.
This overlap of high mortality rates and pollution raises questions about whether there is a causal relationship. The question has not been definitively answered, but for the people who live among these clusters, the connection seems clear.
• In Lincoln, across the Monongahela River from Clairton, Stacy Beisler can quickly count the names of a dozen residents who either have some form of cancer or have died from it recently. There's a half dozen more in her neighborhood who have lung disease or have died from it.
• In LaBelle, Fayette County, Gary Kuklish is one of several residents who point to nine cases of cancer in the 18 homes on Sauerkraut Hill.
• In Clearfield County, the United Methodist Church's Greater Shawville Parish has numerous cases of cancer and respiratory disease, according to former pastor Jennifer Heikes. There's hardly a family in the church that hasn't been touched by cancer, said Leslie Shaw, a parishioner.
First Published December 13, 2010 12:00 am
