UNDATED (KTHV) -- A new report was released today by the Natural Resource Defense Council pointing out 13 states where researchers have found disease clusters, including one in Arkansas.
The report was released as legislation is being drawn, calling for further investigation into the causes possibly pollution.
Environmental activist Erin Brockovich told lawmakers on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning, she's witnessed the devastating effects of pollution in many communities. Brockovich says, "These communities both large and small and in every corner of the United States are sending out an SOS, from small farming towns like Cameron, Missouri to small desert towns like Midland, Texas to the forgotten town of Leadwood, Missouri where the lead mining tails are so large that the children think they are hills and they play on them."
The Arkansas Department of Health has identified a cluster of testicular cancer in prairie grove, between 1997 to 2001.
3 of the cases involved 14-year old boys. In January, California Senator Barbara Boxer, along with Republican Senator Mike Crapo from Idaho, introduced the "Strengthening protections for children and communities from disease clusters act".
Boxer says the rates of childhood cancer have increased dramatically over the last 32 years, and people should be concerned. "According to the EPA from '75 to '07 rates of childhood cancer have increased by more than 20 percent. So consider this hearing an alarm bell. The country needs to pay attention to a statistic like this."
As for that reported cancer cluster in northwest Arkansas, no cause was ever identified.
But according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the town of 2,500 people is near a now-closed nucear reactor, a low-level radioactive landfill, a poultry plant, and a company that makes poultry feed that contains aresenic.