No brain tumor surge found in NW Missouri

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Northwest Missouri has no higher prevalence of brain tumors than elsewhere in the state, and rates in the Cameron area and the rest of Missouri are actually lower than the national average, state health officials said Tuesday. The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, Department of Natural Resources and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday the amount of chromium in the area wasn't high enough to have caused health problems, and the agencies were concluding their investigation.

The agencies started investigating tumors in the Cameron area in 2008 after residents contacted health officials and the news media about an abnormally high number of brain tumors.

Later that year, the DHSS reported the number of brain tumors in a four-county area around the community of about 6,500 was not statistically higher than elsewhere in the state or nation.

Despite that, area residents insisted that something was causing the tumors and began looking for culprits. A fiber plant outside Cameron was ruled out as the cause, as was the city's water supply. Eventually the focus turned to Prime Tanning Corp., a St. Joseph tannery that for decades had given away sludge to farmers as a free fertilizer.

Lawsuits were filed last year against the tannery with the help of environmental activist Erin Brockovich, who met with Cameron residents and alerted them about the presence of hexavalent chromium in farm fields treated with the tannery's sludge. The tannery was purchased only months before the lawsuits by Kansas City-based National Beef Packing Co. and renamed National Beef Leathers Co.

Hexavalent chromium is the same carcinogen that led to a $333 million settlement from Pacific Gas & Energy in 1996 for exposing a California town to the chemical. That case was the focus of the movie "Erin Brockovich," about a woman who fought the utility and helped win the settlement.

But DNR and EPA officials announced Tuesday the amount of chromium found in the area wasn't high enough to have caused health problems, and the agencies were concluding their investigation.

"Based on the data collected, past land application of tannery wastewater treatment sludge does not appear to have resulted in a health threat to residents or farmers living and working in the sludge application areas," the DNR said in a news release. "Therefore, no further investigation of the site is planned and no cleanup is needed."

Bob Bowcock, an environmental investigator from Claremont, Calif., who worked with Brockovich on the PG&E case, said he didn't disagree with the findings of the state and federal investigators, but he rejects their determination that the chromium levels found on farm fields weren't high enough to pose a public health threat.

"It's unfortunate they would come to that conclusion," Bowcock said. "The report doesn't indicate that should be the conclusion. That's perhaps one of the most unfortunate aspects of it. They wrote a conclusion and tried to write a report around it."

Bowcock said at a July 2009 EPA meeting in Kansas City, Kan., that there are no safe levels of hexavalent chromium, regardless of what state and public investigators say.

"I think they're issuing a report in an effort to close a rather bad chapter in regulatory responsibility in Missouri," he said.

DNR, EPA and DHSS were conducting a meeting Tuesday evening in St. Joseph to discuss the tannery findings.

Lawyers and plaintiffs in the tannery lawsuit did not immediately return calls for comment, nor did a spokesman for National Beef Leathers.