Earlier this month, Bluestem republished Keith Schneider's Circle of Blue article via MinnPost, On ‘Cancer Road,’ a group of southeastern MN families ask if nitrate exposure is to blame.
Now the Star Tribune has picked up on the issue. In On a stretch of gravel road, Dodge County families ravaged by cancer question nitrate, Jennifer Bjorhus reports:
Cancer ravaged Brian Bennerotte's body and those of many around him — his father, five brothers and his sister — as well as others along the gravel road where they grew up in southeast Minnesota.
The cancers just seemed to proliferate down the peaceful 2-mile stretch of County Road B in Dodge County, Bennerotte and his childhood friend Scott Glarner said. By their count, 13 people who lived on the road once lined with dairy farms near West Concord have contracted some type of cancer in the past few decades.
They know they have been exposed to a lot of farm chemicals in their lives, and a link to all the cancers will probably never be found. But Bennerotte said he keeps coming back to one thing: The high levels of nitrate in the water from their private wells, from farm fertilizers and manure.
"That's the only common denominator here," said Bennerotte, now 60.
Their "Cancer Road" story was first reported by Keith Schneider, chief correspondent at the Michigan-based nonprofit environmental news outlet Circle of Blue. The Dodge County water test results he obtained for 18 properties on or near County Road B showed a pattern of elevated nitrate in many of the private wells since the mid 1980s. The tests were voluntary or taken when a property sold. All but about a dozen of the 54 water tests showed elevated nitrate, with some results double the state and federal safety limit.
The types of cancers on the road aren't the types medical experts generally consider related and part of a cancer cluster. And while the International Agency for Research on Cancer deems nitrate to be a "probable carcinogen," only a few of the different cancers on County Road B have a researched association with nitrate-contaminated water. Those include non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, colon and kidney cancers. Some of the cancers have not been studied for a nitrate connection.
The rare public disclosure by the County Road B families highlights how far the understanding of health impacts of nitrate-contaminated water has expanded beyond blue baby syndrome, the rare and potentially fatal disease that drove the country's nitrate health limit of 10 milligram per liter of water officially set in 1992. . . .
The Minnesota Department of Health said this is the first they've heard of the County Road B concerns. Dodge County cancer rates haven't been higher than the state's rate in recent years and are currently lower, department spokesman Scott Smith said. Smith urged people with concerns to contact the state agency and check its Cancer and the Environment web page.
The agency recently set new health risk limits for more than 30 contaminants in Minnesota's groundwater — but not nitrate. That shocked Jean Wagenius, a retired longtime state lawmaker and Minneapolis DFLer who told the agency the nitrate standard should be lowered. In its reply, the Department of Health said it has "growing concern" about the health impacts but the science just isn't there to change the nitrate limit.
Dodge County is one of eight counties in southeast Minnesota that environmental groups have requested the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency take emergency action on under the Safe Drinking Water Act, saying local regulation has failed to reduce nitrate levels and is creating an "imminent and substantial endangerment" to human health.
Despite the fact that so much water in Minnesota is contaminated with nitrate, there is very little current state research into the health impacts. The Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group has estimated that a half-million Minnesotans drink nitrate-tainted water.
A Mayo Clinic team recently studied data on nitrate-contaminated groundwater in southeast Minnesota counties — although not Dodge County. They didn't look at cancer, but found associations between nitrate and a range of childhood maladies such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and bronchiectasis, thyroid disorders, suicide and attention deficit disorders, according to their report this spring in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. . . .
There's much more in the article. Read it at the Star Tribune.
Photo: Scott Glarner doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that he and a dozen others on the country road near West Concord, Minn., got cancer and thinks links high nitrate levels in their well might play a part. Photo by Renee Jones Schneider, Star Tribune.
Related posts
- On ‘Cancer Road,’ a group of southeastern MN families ask if nitrate exposure is to blame
- Strib scrutinizes MN Department of Ag action on nitrate-related Groundwater Protection Rule
- Nitrates in Southwestern Minnesota water: 'Do not give the water to infants' in Ellsworth
- Commentary from MinnPost: Can the state control nitrates in Minnesota waters?
- Minnesota Department of Health isn’t properly enforcing drinking water law, and kids will suffer
- Jean Wagenius: For climate and clean water, state agencies need Walz to lead
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