Cancer Clusters
Cancer clusters related to benzene is not an area that we spend a lot of time researching or pursuing cases in. We focus primarily on benzene related leukemias and blood diseases that come from industrial exposures and we focus on individual cases and lawsuits.
That said, cancer clusters do exist and some famous cases have come from them, such as the basis for the book Civil Action involving contaminated water in Massachusetts. I received an email referring me to another blog with an entry or two about a possible cancer cluster in Nevada and the resulting CDC study.
South(west) Paw Blog "fallon,nv &sierra vista, az leukemia clusters"
I had a statistics professor who was very against cancer clusters as evidence of anything. They may be interesting but they must not be seen as evidence. He emphasized that there is a whole discipline of statistics-based epidemiology for measuring strength of evidence and cancer clusters are not part of that legitimate method.
That said, I am totally on the side of trying to reduce benzene-related leukemia.
I like the blog.
Thanks for the comment. At a certain level I can agree with your prof. In the real world cancer cluster cases are really hard to prove because you rely on the numbers so much, and you lack overwhelming exposure proof.
Thanks again.