BBC News, Washington DC
After Kim Visintina put her son to bed every night at the hospital in St Louis, Missouri, she spent the evening at the hospital library. She was determined to know that her boy was seriously ill with a rare brain tumor in just a week.
“The doctors were shocked,” she says. “We were told that his illness was one of the million. Other parents were learning to change diapers, but I taught how to change Luke and IV chemotherapy.”
Kima’s son Zack was diagnosed with a multiform glioblastoma. It is a brain tumor that is very rare in children and is usually seen in adults over the age of 45.
Zack had treatment with chemotherapy, but doctors said there was no hope of ever recovering. He died at just six years.
Years later, social media and chattering community made Kim start thinking that her son was not an isolated case. Maybe it was part of a larger picture that grows in their community surrounding Coldwater Creek.
In this part of the United States, the fears of cancer have encouraged the locals of accusing officials of not doing enough to support those who may have been exposed to radiation for the development of an atomic bomb in the forties.
The compensation program that is conceived to pay off to some Americans who have contracted the disease after exposure to radiation expired last year – before it could extend to the ST Louis area.
This law on radiation exposure compensation has provided one -off payments to people who may have developed cancer or other diseases while living in areas where activities such as testing atomic weapons took place. He paid off $ 2.6 billion (£ 2 billion) for more than 41,000 applicants before he completed in 2024.
Among the covered areas were parts of Novi Mexico, where the first worldwide nuclear weapon test was held in 1945. A survey published by the National Cancer Institute in 2020 suggested that hundreds of cancer in the area would not have occurred without radiation exposure.
In the meantime, St Louis was where Uranus was refined and used to create an atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan project. After the end of World War II, the chemical was discarded near the stream and remained uncovered, allowing waste to pass into the area.
Decades later, federal investigators have recognized the increased risk of cancer for some people who played in the creek as children, but added in their report: “An increase in cancer cases from exposure cases are small and there is no method that would associate a certain cancer with this exposure.”
The cleaning of the stream is still ongoing and it is not expected to end by 2038.
The new bill was made in the House, and Josh Hawley, an American senator representing Missouri, says he raised the issue with President Donald Trump.
When Kim goes through a school year old, she can recognize those who have become sick and those who have died ever since. The numbers are stunning.
“My husband did not grow up in this area, and he told me, ‘Kim, this is not normal. We always seem to talk about one of your friends to go to the funeral, “she says.
Only the streets away from the stream, Karen Nickel grew up the days spent her days near the water cheating or in a nearby park playing baseball. Her brother would often try to catch fish in Coldwater Creek.
“I always tell people that we only had a fairytale childhood that you would expect in what you consider a suburban America,” says Karen. “Big yard, big families, children playing together until the street lights turned on at night.”
But years later, her carefree childhood now looks very different.
“Fifteen people from the street I grew up on died of a few cancer,” she says. “We have neighborhoods here where each house is hit by some cancer or some illness. We have streets where you cannot simply find a house where it has not influenced the family.”
When Karen’s sister was only 11 years old, the doctors found that her ovaries were covered with cysts. The same thing happened with their neighbor when she was only nine years old. Karen’s six -year -old granddaughter was born with a mass on the right ovary.
Karen helped find Just Momb Stl, a group dedicated to the protection of the community from future exposure that could be associated with cancer – and that is advocated to clean up the area.
“We get messages daily from people suffering from illness and we ask if it’s from exposure,” she says. “These are very aggressive diseases that the community gets, from cancer to autoimmune diseases.”
Teresa Rumfelt grew up only the street from Karen and lived in her family home from 1979 to 2010. He remembers each of his animals from cancer, and neighbors got sick of rare diseases.
Years later, her sister via von banka was diagnosed with amiotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a form of motor neurone disease. Some medical studies suggested that there could be a connection between radiation and ALS, but this is not finally – and more research should be done to determine this.
This does not assure people like Teresa who are worried that it is necessary to do more to realize that the locals affect.
“Als took my sister at the age of 50,” Teresa says. “I think it was the worst disease of humanity. When she was diagnosed in 2019, she just started her career and her children divorced. She remained positive through all that.”
Like Hawley, only STL Mama and other members of the community want the Government’s fee law to expand to people in the ST Louis area, despite the program in the tin after expiration.
Extending it to the Coldwater Creek community would mean that the locals could be offered a fee if they could prove that they were aimed at them as a result of a project in Manhattan, during which an atomic bomb was developed with the help of Uranus processing in St Louis. This would also allow projections and further study of the disease other than cancer.
In the BBC statement, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that she received concern very seriously and actively collaborated with federal, state and local partners – as well as members of the community – to understand their health problems and ensure that the members of the community were not exposed to the Manhattan projects.
The BBC also contacted the American Army Engineering Corps, which leads to clean – but did not receive a response to the commentary request.
“My sister would love to be part of the fight. She would be the first she chose,” Teresa says from her effort to receive more support from the Government.
The trend of people around the Coldwater Creek who disagrees did not go unnoticed among healthcare workers.
Dr. Gautum Agwal, a cancer surgeon at Mercy Hospital in St Louis, says he did not notice a “statistical thing”, but notes that he saw husbands and wives and their neighbors representing cancer.
Now it ensures that his patients are asked where they live and how close they are to the Coldwater Creek.
“I tell them that there is a potential that there is a relationship. And if your neighbors or family live nearby, we should look at them more often. And maybe you should review your children earlier.”
He hopes that over time, more knowledge of this issue will be acquired and to enter a study of early detection tests with multiple cancer that could help capture any potential cancer and help to persuade people in the area.
Other experts take a different view of the risks. “There is a narrative that many people are sick of cancer, especially out of exposure while living next to Coldwater Creek for the last few decades,” says Roger Lewis, a professor at the Environmental Protection and Occupations at St Louis University.
“But data and studies do not show it. They show that there is some risk, but it is small. It does not mean that in some way it is not significant, but it is very limited.”
Professor Lewis admits fear in the community, saying that the locals will feel safer if the government is clearer in his efforts to remove any danger.
For many people near Coldwater Creeka, a conversation with the authorities does not alleviate the anger that comes with life in the area known for disposing of nuclear waste.
“It is almost given in our community that at some point we all expect to have some kind of cancer or illness,” says Kim Visintina. “Almost there is this apathy in our group that, well, only a matter of time.”
