
Many people are getting rare cancers in a small Georgia town - echelon
https://www.atlantamagazine.com/great-reads/why-are-rare-cancers-killing-so-many-people-in-a-small-georgia-town/
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abeppu
Zooming out from this specific town and article, it's kind of interesting to
look at regional differences in cancer incidence. Like, I get that people live
very different lives in different places, and that states have different
resources to bring to public health problems, but the areas of red in the
midwest, northeast and gulf coast are quite striking.

[https://statecancerprofiles.cancer.gov/map/map.withimage.php...](https://statecancerprofiles.cancer.gov/map/map.withimage.php?99&001&001&00&0&01&0&1&5&0#results)

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hikarudo
Beware of the sample size issue. The Midwest has lots of low-population
counties, for which a single cancer case plus or minus makes a great
difference in the incidence rate.

See also: Bayesian Data Analysis, Gelman et al., 2nd edition, section 2.8.

~~~
Splendor
Wyoming and Idaho should have the same problem but appear pretty blue.

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ceejayoz
That's the plus _or minus_ part.

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psychometry
As always, it's important to remember that even in the absence of
environmental factors, the probability of a particular town of this size
having cancer rates this high might be very low, but the probability of there
existing such a town in the U.S. might actually be high. This is simply due to
variance.

~~~
hammock
"Variance" does not give people cancer. But pollution does. The nuance is lost
in your comment, and what you might more accurately say is
"statistics/variance predicts that there is a high probability that somewhere
in the US there is a town that has enough pollution (or other cause) to create
cancer rates this high. It happens to be Waycross, GA"

~~~
DangerousPie
No, that's not what "statistics/variance predicts". What statistics predicts
is that even if there was no pollution whatsoever in the entire country we
would still see some towns with increased cancer rates.

That said, I didn't do the math and it's entirely possible that the rates in
Waycross are way above what one might expect by chance.

~~~
wtvanhest
Your original comment was still valuable though because it makes people
consider another, and important angle. Someone will probably do the math and
show that even after considering statistical variance, this is still an
outlier, but I feel like I have a more complete view with your comment.

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mieseratte
The answer to the clickbait headline is "pollution," and the town is Waycross,
GA. Here's your "money" paragraph:

> In late 2015, the Georgia Department of Public Health said it could find no
> link among the children’s cancer cases. Then it backtracked and said more
> investigation was needed. In December, the federal government stepped in.
> The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, an arm of the Centers
> for Disease Control and Prevention, said it would work alongside state
> officials in evaluating contamination at the railroad yard as well as an
> Atlanta Gas Light property that once held a power plant, which was torn down
> after closing 60 years ago.

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SolaceQuantum
Added nuance: A government-sponsored investigation using a narrow data set
generated by a company responsible for the cleanup of a single site, of which
Waycross has multiple under investigation, decided there was no conclusive
evidence of Waycross having abnormally high levels of cancer, excluding
diagnoises of cancer that occured outside of the town even if the diagnosises
were on town residents.

Also: A town newspaper did not cover this, and the head editor as well as the
mayor believes this is a case of "Facebook moms" and overly-concerned parents
using personal griefs to wreck Waycross's tenuous economic bounce back.

~~~
mieseratte
> excluding diagnoises of cancer that occured outside of the town even if the
> diagnosises were on town residents.

That's a pretty big exclusion. It's not as if pollution gives a damn about
political boundaries.

~~~
DoctorOetker
it's also clearly irrelevant from a medical standpoint where the diagnosis was
made... unless there's local bribing of doctors going on!

so why insist on only counting local diagnoses?

EDIT: perhaps there are regulations that mandate doctors to diagnose similar
percentages, to prevent overdiagnosis... and perhaps this is being weaponized
against discovering localized exposure to carcinogens?

~~~
strainer
> "On the cancer cluster question, ATSDR cites data from the Georgia
> Comprehensive Cancer Registry to make the case that there isn’t one. GCCR
> data from the past decade shows childhood cancer incidence has been below
> the state average here. GCCR’s Waycross-area data, however, "doesn’t include
> people who are diagnosed at hospitals in other cities", as Lexi, Harris,
> Gage, and Raylee all were."

Charitably, I guess the researchers just don't have resources to locate
patients more accurately than by their diagnosing hospitals location. It's a
huge amount of noise on top of patients actual location history, which would
seem to make their survey only capable of detecting persistent hotspots that
span the location of many hospitals.

~~~
DoctorOetker
>"On the cancer cluster question,"

Either it's on the cancer cluster question, but then you contact and ascertain
the accurate patient location history.

Or the data never was on the cancer cluster question...

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DINKDINK
For the same reason "all the best schools are small" but aren't really [1].
It's the "Law of small numbers" that is: scale-dependency of variance. It's
much easier to get an large variance if you sample in small sets.

[1]
[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/09/th...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/09/the-
small-schools-myth.html)

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smileysteve
This is a reminder that coal, operating under regulation releases more
radioactive material over a few decades than a Nuclear power plants worst
failure mode.

~~~
OrgNet
The coal/natural gas plant near me was burning what appears to be some nasty
coal just yesterday (bright yellow smoke)... is the smoke color a good
indicator of it's toxicity? (most of the time, the smoke is white, not sure if
it is because they were burning natural gas at that time)

~~~
mullen
Yellow would mean coal high in sulfur.

~~~
hanniabu
Ahhh, just what the lungs need!

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lukewrites
The CDC ruled that there isn't a cancer cluster in the town.

> On the cancer cluster question, ATSDR cites data from the Georgia
> Comprehensive Cancer Registry to make the case that there isn’t one. GCCR
> data from the past decade shows childhood cancer incidence has been below
> the state average here. GCCR’s Waycross-area data, however, doesn’t include
> people who are diagnosed at hospitals in other cities, as Lexi, Harris,
> Gage, and Raylee all were.

My blood boils.

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wil421
Here’s a good point near the end of the article.

>On the cancer cluster question, ATSDR cites data from the Georgia
Comprehensive Cancer Registry to make the case that there isn’t one. GCCR data
from the past decade shows childhood cancer incidence has been below the state
average here. GCCR’s Waycross-area data, however, doesn’t include people who
are diagnosed at hospitals in other cities, as Lexi, Harris, Gage, and Raylee
all were.

I’m a Georgia native but from Atlanta. I’ve never been to Waycross. I lived in
South Georgia for about a year a couple hours away.

For anyone who read the Vidalia Onion article on the front page it’s about 1.5
hours north of here. There’s a beautiful college in Valdosta an hour away. The
region is nice because it transitions into more of a Florida type of
landscape.

~~~
jraines
> Florida type of landscape

So flat as a pancake and hotter than Hades? :) The Gulf cloudscapes, though,
are something to behold.

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grayed-down
Hey, c'mon now...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Florida%27s_highest_po...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Florida%27s_highest_points)

And compared to say Venus, FL's pretty comfortable!

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Zhenya
My uncle who grew up and in his Kate years moved back to a tiny town right
next to waycross. He also died of a strange, quick and rare cancer.

I wonder how much of these findings are liability protection for large
lobbying corporations that operate in these towns.

~~~
CptFribble
It probably goes the other way: the responsible company's legal team
determined they can't avoid liability any more, so they get some favorable
studies to mitigate the consequences/reduce the size of the potential class
action.

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watersb
When we lived there, a very large drainage canal ran along our property.
Certainly needed it for summer rainstorms. Never occurred to me that it could
be carrying dangerous toxins too.

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raarts
I _have_ to bring up Erin Brokovich here, very relevant for this situation and
one of my favorite movies.

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dsswh
Is it the same as the radon map?

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_bxg1
Even without the pollution, I'll never understand why people in dead towns
don't just move.

