Toxic Triangle? Is Contamination Connected to Liver Cancer Cases
By News 4 WOAI Trouble Shooter Tanji Patton
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There is an area in San Antonio where the cancer rate is twice as high as the rest of Texas. A place where, on average, one person dies every single week from liver cancer. It is true and it's the focus of my Trouble Shooters investigation.
"I worked at Kelly 19 years," says Mary Lou Ornelas.
"You liked your job?" I asked her one day in early September, as we sat in the living room of her south side home.
"Yeah, I started working really young there at Kelly," describes Mary Lou. "I liked my job." But she adds, "I didn't know it was going to affect me this way."
Carrying on a conversation with me is difficult for Mary Lou. She struggles to breathe in and breathe out. She speaks slowly and deliberately. And getting up from her chair takes some a lot of effort.
Her illness prevents her from doing things she used to enjoy, such as preparing for house parties with friends and her grandson's ball games.
"I want to be able to drive again and go to the games," she says.
For nearly twenty years, up until Kelly Air Force Base closed in 2001, Mary Lou cleaned the parts for those big jet engines.
"We had our own work benches," she says of her job. "We lead taped the engine parts."
Part of Mary Lou's job included working with chemicals like nitric acid and cyanide. One in particular, called TCE, trichloroethylene, is now a known cancer-causing agent.
"We had gloves, but we didn't wear masks," she says.
"Could you smell anything?" I ask.
"Yeah, the cyanide. You could smell it."
She says those chemicals made her sick. She may be right. Doctors told her she had liver cancer.
"How old were you when you were diagnosed with cancer?" I ask.
"52. Maybe 53."
Mary Lou didn't know when I talked to her in September that she might never get another chance to do the things she loved.
Could Mary Lou's condition be connected to her years of service at Kelly? Or to where she lives?
Now, after all these years, a new study, the first of its kind, may finally give us the answers people like Mary Lou have been searching for.
"Our study will definitely answer the question of whether there is evidence," says Dr. Tim Aldrich. Aldrich was hired by city leaders early this year. It's his job to find out if a high number of liver cancer cases in the area surrounding the former base are connected to contamination there.
Contamination that is still being discovered. TCE was recently found in several drums buried on the 15th tee of the old Kelly golf course. But there is more, a lot more.
There is a contaminated shallow aquifer that runs under about 22,000 homes on the south and southwest sides of town, an area known to some as the toxic triangle.
Some areas of the triangle, tested in 1999, were shown to have amounts of the toxic "TCE" at 20 times the Environmental Protection Agency's acceptable level.
There were places where the contamination was lower, but it was a much larger area of contamination. It spread from Kelly all the way towards parts of the San Antonio River. But the amount of contamination in this area was still twice the rate of the EPA's acceptable level. It's also where Mary Lou's home was located.
Over the years, that plume of TCE contamination has shrunk, but the cleanup is not finished.
Is it killing people? Depends on who you ask. One thing is for sure.
"We have consistently found this excess of liver cancer," says Dr. Melanie Williams, with the Department of State Health Services. She says the Kelly area has double the rate of liver cancer cases when compared to the rest of Texas.
"Liver cancer is a very highly fatal, and quickly fatal, cancer unfortunately," adds Dr. Williams.
That is a stunning reality near Kelly. 500 people in this area have been diagnosed with liver cancer since 1995. Today only 50 of those people are still alive. It is evident in the neighborhoods around Kelly. Many have put up purple crosses in their front yards in memory of cancer victims.
Mary Lou suspected the contamination at was to blame for her condition, but she will never know for sure.
Sadly, she died less than a week after I spoke to her.
The results of the liver cancer study are expected in a matter of weeks. We will let you know what they find as soon as it is released.
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