'Pesticides are what is killing our kids'
Rural PEI is an unlikely hotbed of rare cancers, and one doctor has made it his mission to raise awareness about the potential health hazard posed by pesticides used on the region's potato farms. It's a controversial viewpoint, reports MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT, but it has spurred the province to launch a probe
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
KENSINGTON, PEI — The countryside surrounding this small community near the centre of Prince Edward Island is picture-postcard perfect. Neatly tended farm fields devoted to the island's famed potatoes are interspersed with clapboard homes, imagery seemingly taken straight from the pages of Anne of Green Gables.
It is perhaps because of the province's appearance as a bucolic rural idyll that Ron Matsusaki had the biggest shock of his professional career when he moved to the island three years ago. The affable 57-year-old doctor was taken aback by all the rare cancers he began noticing. The illnesses seemed more like what might be expected near a hazardous waste site.
"Nowhere, nowhere did I see cancer that in any way resembles the cancers that I saw when I came to PEI," Dr. Matsusaki said. "I was totally dumbfounded."
In short order after his arrival, he came across an osteosarcoma that led to the heart-wrenching death of a young girl, several lymphomas, an Ewing's sarcoma, and a number of myeloid leukemia cases, all among children. Brain cancers weren't sparing young and middle-aged adults either, with three of them last year.
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061206.wxcancerenviro06/BNStory/cancer/?cid=al_gam_nletter_newsUp