Earlier this year we wrote about a residential neighborhood called the Acreage in Florida because of the unusually high incident rate of cancer and tumors in children living in the area.
At one point residents and officials suspected that radon may have played a part in making people ill (Radon a Suspect in Florida Tumor and Cancer Cases). Outcry in the community prompted the State of Florida to launch an investigation (State of Florida Agrees to Environmental Testing in Acreage Homes Area).
Now, after meeting with residents in the area, going over their histories, testing their water and testing their soil… the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Florida Department of Health has concluded that living in the Acreage has nothing to do with the unusually high number of brain and central nervous system cancer cases in the area.
In a nutshell, the State of Florida can’t find anything to explain the rash of illnesses.
ACREAGE – The State Health Department’s cancer cluster investigation in the Acreage is coming to an end, with no answers for the hundreds of residents desperate to know why their area is experiencing a higher than usual rate of cancer.
A report released today indicates testing on water and soil samples is over.
Following countless hours of review and concurrence from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Florida Department of Health officials say there’s nothing they can definitively point to as a source of the pediatric brain and central nervous system cancers in the community.
They also determined that having a longer residency in the Acreage posed no higher risk for brain tumors among its children.
Health experts analyzed the history and lifestyle of 13 Acreage families, whose children and teenagers have been diagnosed with cancer.
The group formed to keep an eye on the suspected cancer cluster disbanded just last week. ( source )
So what does Water Testing Blog think about the situation in Acreage? Quite frankly it SCARES us in ways we cannot explain.
Not to sound like the Twilight Zone, but imagine, if you will, that your children and your neighbors’ children have all developed serious and potentially life threatening conditions… and no one can figure out why.
Hopefully someone will figure out why those poor people have gotten sick because in all honesty, if such a ‘random and unexplainable’ spike in cancer can occur there, what would stop it from happening where WE or YOU live?
Plan of action for the rest of us?
In all honesty, we can never truly test for every possible contaminant that could find its way into our drinking water. We can only test for the things most likely to show up on a regular or semi-regular basis and have a ‘full’ analysis performed by a certified water testing lab at set intervals.
The average person has a number of options when it comes to testing their own water. The easiest way, aside from having someone else do the testing, usually involves the use of a test kit from companies like SenSafe and WaterSafe.
You will find several examples of popular home water testing kits from each manufacturer below:
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In the end, though, and as we ALWAYS suggest, if you have serious reason to suspect your well water or municipal/public water supply may have become contaminated, seek the expertise of a certified water testing laboratory such as National Testing Laboratories.
