Two thirds of the 66 water quality tests conducted in May 2021 - 40 to 50 years after the chemical spill - found samples with higher-than-acceptable levels, including samples of as much as 823 TCE parts per billion.For whatever reason, I don’t read too many graphic novels. But there are other risk factors for TCE exposure, which occurs when a person breathes, ingests or touches the chemical.Īccording to the EPA, water is contaminated if it contains more than 5 parts per billion of TCE.
“The study can only really report on whether an increase was observed, not the cause of the increase,” Ahmed said.Īccording to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment report, all but one of the nearly 2,800 properties in the contaminated area were connected to city water before the spill is believed to have occurred, meaning it’s unlikely people would have drank directly from contaminated groundwater wells. Farah Ahmed cautioned that there is no way to know definitively if TCE is responsible for the outsized number of liver cancer diagnoses. Environmental Protection Agency.īut State Epidemiologist and Environmental Health Officer Dr.
TCE can cause cancer in humans - “especially kidney cancer and possibly liver cancer and non-Hodgkin lymphoma,” according to the U.S.
It created a plume of polluted groundwater that runs for 2.9 miles (4.67 kilometers) from the Union Pacific Railroad rail yard site. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment released a study Friday that found a liver and biliary tract cancer diagnosis rate of 15.7 per 100,000 people in the contamination zone, which was more than double the statewide rate of 6.4 per 100,000, The Wichita Eagle reports.Īmong non-Hispanic Black residents, the diagnosis rate was even higher, at 23.9 per 100,000.Įxperts believe that the spill of trichloroethene (TCE), a common solvent that is used to clean off paint and remove grease, could have happened as early as the 1970s, although it wasn't identified until 1994. Kansas health officials have identified elevated levels of liver cancer among people living in several historically Black neighborhoods in Wichita where groundwater was polluted by a rail yard chemical spill.
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