Posted on 02/17/2014 10:44:02 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
A mysterious cluster of severe birth defects in rural Washington state is confounding health experts, who say they can find no cause, even as reports of new cases continue to climb.
Federal and state officials won’t say how many women in a three-county area near Yakima, Wash., have had babies with anencephaly, a heart-breaking condition in which they’re born missing parts of the brain or skull. And they admit they haven't interviewed any of the women in question, or told the mothers there's a potentially widespread problem.
But as of January 2013, officials with the Washington state health department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had counted nearly two dozen cases in three years, a rate four times the national average.
Since then, one local genetic counselor, Susie Ball of the Central Washington Genetics Program at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital, says she has reported “eight or nine” additional cases of anencephaly and spina bifida, another birth defect in which the neural tube, which forms the brain and spine, fails to close properly.
“It does strike me as a lot,” says Ball.
And at least one Yakima mother whose baby is part of the cluster says no one told her there was a problem at all.
“I had no idea,” said Andrea Jackman, 30, whose blue-eyed daughter, Olivia, was born in September with the most severe form of spina bifida. “I honestly was really surprised that nobody had said anything. If my doctor hadn’t wanted us to see the geneticist, I wouldn’t have known.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Their living conditions are on the shitty side to say the least and has not improved even with mandates from the State.
And as the article states that this was noticed 3 to 4 years ago. The Japan Nuke disaster would not be a contributing factor. Also with Hanford being so close.
What are the effects on the other communities in the area? The Tri-Cities (Kennewick, Richland, Pasco and West Richland but they still call it the Tri-Cities) has a pop of close to 200,000 (also with a large pop of legal and illegal migrant workers). Has the rate of these birth defects also risen at the same rate?
Ed
A result of pot smoking and other libertine behaviors after a couple of generations.
DING! DING! DING! Most ignorant post of the day.
Pesticides?
It’s in the taters ....
My daughter lives in apple country in Washington. After moving from Oregon, she was surprised by the amount of cancer in apple country. Nobody publicly says anything about it because $$$$$$$$.
“I’m not familiar with this area but I wonder if there are illegal pot farms around there?”
I know there are a hell of a lot of illegals in the Yakima area, and they and the natives do not get along much.
Hanford, near the Columbia River, right nearby. Oregon environmentalists got Oregon’s only reactor destroyed and buried—in Washington State, across the river.
Oregon plant was buried there later, 1999 I think.
Ed
Ed
I remember hearing about many cases of anencephaly amongst people along the Texas/Mexico border. Especially around Matamoros/Brownsville. If these migrant workers grew up around that area, that may explain it too. The majority of the cases happened on the Mexican side.
“But as of January 2013, officials with the Washington state health department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had counted nearly two dozen cases in three years, a rate four times the national average.”
“Clusters” happen often. Especially with not very common problems. It’s easy to get concerned but consider this.
2 dozen cases in three years. 8 cases a year. Four times national average would be an additional 6 cases a year. In a 3 county area.
Averages are called average exactly because they are the best of the best and the worst of the worse. Heck somebody has to be at the bottom. Or the top.....
One word... LIBERALISM
NBC News wins the ‘stoopid’ prize:
Hanford was an old nuclear plant and one of the only - if NOT the only plant - that didn’t have a containment building around their reactor. The site was a disaster for years... IMHO...
Hanford was an old nuclear plant and one of the only - if NOT the only plant - that didn’t have a containment building around their reactor in it’s early years. The site was a disaster for years... IMHO...
The current commercial operational reactor is outputting isotopes right into an east wind; see the charts. Yakima is, ironically, in the plume shadow.
The Columbia Generating Station (former WPPSS site) is also on the Hanford 'site'.
It's amazing to me that all this data & research spans 40+ years and they're still reticent to give any credence at all to what, for some doctors & scientists, is already well-established.
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