| Alberni Environmental Coalition | On-Line Library |
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UNIVERSITY AT ALBANY Mr. John Hummel Dear John: Thank you for your note and for sending me all the reprints. I am very interested in these problems of heart disease and diabetes. We have been investigating the incidence of disease in relation to living near to hazardous waste sites, building upon the Health Canada studies and Gilbertson's work in Windsor. Enclosed is our first paper on this, based only on the Buffalo/Niagara Falls area and studying only endocrine diseases. But e have similar data for both diabetes and ischemic heart disease. For diabetes it appears to be an elevation at young adult ages, whereas for heart disease there appears to be an elevation at all ages. We have now expanded our study to all of New York State, comparing people who live in zip codes near PCB-contaminated sites as compared to zip codes with no hazardous waste, or zip codes with other kinds of hazardous waste. We find the same relations here. This is not published yet. I have two grant applications pending to study these issues more directly. The most interesting one is with the Mohawks, where we propose to look at only heart disease and diabetes in people getting care at the St. Regis Health Service Clinic, as compared to controls at the clinic that don't have these diseases. We will obtain blood samples for PCB analysis and some pesticides. Unfortunately, our lab doesn't do dioxin, which is a big concern. I also have a grant pending at Albany Medical Center to look at thyroid disease and diabetes in rather the same fashion. I am not aware of any specific studies in Native populations about dioxin in fish. This is certainly a major concern. I am on a National Academy of Sciences panel which is dealing with the question of dioxin in the food supply, and Ken Jock and another person whom I don't know from another tribe are scheduled to talk at our meeting this week. maybe I will get some additional information. Thanks for your help.
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