Re: Niagara Falls citation--Hunger, Knowledge, Thought

[BLHamrick@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 6/1/2003 9:33:11 PM Pacific Standard Time, NiagaraNet@AOL.COM writes:


> NIAGARA FALLS - Niagara County leads the nation in heart disease, hospital officials said Thursday. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., who was at Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center vowing to push for federal funds to help build a new $10 million cardiac center, was stunned by that information...




I sincerely do not mean to be insensitive here, but you do recognize that someone, somewhere has to "lead the nation" in heart disease, or in cancer, or allergies, right?  That's just the nature statistics, especially in the context of such generalized disease categories.


We may suffer an overall rate of fatal cancer in this country that averages 22 - 24%, but there will be areas well outside that range on either side, and one can always draw arbitrary distinctions in populations to drive the stats up or down and then claim to "prove" that the "distintinction" is the "cause."  That's not scientific, but it tends to play well with a scientifically-illiterate, litigation-happy public.


Niagra also notes:


"Federal reports says Niagara County has high deaths due to heart, cancer afflictions.  The report from the The Health Resources and Services Administration states deaths from lung cancer, breast cancer, stroke, and heart disease were significantly above the national average. The report compared Niagara County with counties with similar demographics in 14 other states and in Broome and Oneida Counties in New York."


While it would certainly be more significant if, as NN states, Niagra County were above average in all causes of death individually, NN's comments would have more validity if a link to the actual study were provided, as there are innumerable allegations that one city, county, or industry or another exceeds national averages, but without seeing the data collected, and analyzing the quality of the data, it's impossible to give any real credence to these claims.  (The link provided was to a general website for HRSA, with no direct link to the claims NN made.)


NN finally asks:


"What would the possible health ramifications be associated with these legacy activities, places and "burials" that have gone unaddressed for sixty plus years at Niagara Falls, New York, locations?"


Honestly?  Probably not much different than health effects at any other uranium milling, post-mill processing operations, or other similar operations across the country over the past 60 years.  While the U.S. and international communities keep moving toward more restrictive regulation of radiation and radioactivity, let's keep in mind that most of that is driven by issues of political capital and potential legal liability and not by any scientific determination that low dose or low dose-rate radiation are, in fact (as opposed to hypothetically) harmful.  (And, just for the record, in the U.S. EPA's Federal Guidance Report, No. 13, "Cancer Risk Coefficients for Environmental Exposure to Radiation," (September 1999), the U.S. EPA states that in the context of a discussion of risk from low-levels of radiation that "high doses" generally mean above 20,000 millirem, and "high dose-rates" generally mean above 600 millirem per hour.)  


Barbara L. Hamrick