TOOELE HEALTH STUDY

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>]

From: Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>

TOOELE COUNTY COMMUNITY HEALTH SURVEY
In a remarkable community-based health study, more than 40 volunteers 
from the town of Grantsville, in Tooele County, Utah have uncovered 
what they appear to be alarmingly high rates of serious illness. In the 
study, sponsored by the community-based West Desert Healthy Environment 
Alliance (West Desert HEAL), the volunteers directly contacted 
households representing about half the residents of Grantsville, a 
military-dependent city of about 5,000 people, in January and February 
of this year (1996).
Participants made no pretension about this being a scientific study; 
they don't claim to have the answers. Rather, they say, "Ours was a 
modest and humble effort by citizens to catalyze those with power, 
authority, expertise, and resources to take action on our behalf. Our 
survey and this report can identify problems and set targets and 
directions for further action."
The HEAL survey volunteers identified 201 cancers in half the town - 
that is, 650 households - nearly as many as the 237 identified in all 
of Grantsville by the official cancer registry. Only the 29 skin 
cancers found by HEAL were ignored by the state registry. Other cancers 
included 23 breast, 16 prostate, and 12 colon. Notably, 182 of the 201 
cancers were found among native or long-time residents.
HEAL also found 181 serious respiratory illnesses, including asthma, 
emphysema, and "serious" or "chronic" sinusitis, but excluding 
bronchitis, allergies, colds, and pneumonia. The researchers also 
uncovered 29 serious birth defects, but they felt that many residents 
may have withheld such information. One respondent gave birth to 
seriously deformed twins several months after the Skull Valley sheep 
kill. HEAL also tabulated a number of other health problems, such as 12 
cases of multiple sclerosis and 8 lupus cases.
Grantsville is home to the Tooele Army Depot, site of past as well as 
planned chemical munitions incineration, and the location of extensive 
open burning and open detonation of conventional munitions. It is also 
near the Dugway Proving Ground, where the military conducted open air 
nerve gas tests until an accidental (massive) sheep kill downwind in 
Skull Valley led to their termination. HEAL does not claim that 
hazardous releases from these facilities necessarily caused the high 
rates of illness. However, its survey raises questions that the Army, 
regulatory agencies, and health officials should be prepared to explore 
and answer to the community's satisfaction.
The authors of the study conclude: "the conventional wisdom that too 
many people in our community are suffering poor health is true.... No 
once can convince us this is the way it was or is supposed to be. 
Something is wrong. It is important to find out what and why. We want 
action."