Why are so many people getting rare cancers in this small Georgia town?

[TexasTowelie]

In Waycross, there’s a tale about a boy who got a surprise while playing outside one day. He was behind his home on Brunel Street. This was back in the middle of the 20th century in a working-class neighborhood on the southeast side of the railroad yard. He got ahold of some matches. The boy was near a canal. These manmade creeks run all over town and keep the boggy, low-lying land from flooding. The boy was curious, mischievous. He struck a match, lit a piece of newspaper, and tossed it into the water. But when the burning paper touched the surface, it didn’t go out. The water burst into flames.

SUMMER 2015

The girl is in such pain that her parents prop her up in bed so she won’t wince while eating her Chick-fil-A nuggets. It’s a Friday night at 14-year-old Lexi Crawford’s house. She lives on Brunel Street across the road from the 755-acre CSX Rice Yard, the largest railroad switching and maintenance facility in the Southeast. Over the last six weeks, Lexi, an otherwise healthy girl who is tall and slender with long hair of ever-changing colors, has gone nearly 10 times to the emergency room, complaining of back pain. Doctors have prescribed antibiotics, muscle relaxers, Tylenol. They’ve wondered if she’s faking it. Listen, her mother has told them, something’s going on. Lexi, an honor student on both the softball and riflery teams, has missed school repeatedly.

Lexi feels sick and rushes to the bathroom. Her parents, Cristy and Gary Rice, are in the living room watching TV when they hear a shriek. They find Lexi on the floor, her lips turning blue. She’s trembling.

Momma, please.

What is it, Alexis, what happened?

Lexi can hardly breathe. Her whole body seems to hurt. Gary picks her up and they race once again to the ER. This time, a doctor the family hasn’t met before is working. He orders a CT scan, her first ever. The scan shows that Lexi has cancer eating at her spine. The doctor isn’t sure what kind, so he directs them to Wolfson Children’s Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, where the family learns it’s rhabdomyosarcoma, a cancer that forms in muscles along bone. There’s no cure and no proven cause. In the entire United States, only 350 people under the age of 19 are diagnosed with it every year, and only a dozen or so in all of Georgia. But incredibly, in and around Waycross, a spot with far less than one percent of the state’s population, Lexi was not alone. In a span of two months starting June 1, 2015, two other children were also diagnosed with RMS. A fourth family learned their daughter had Ewing sarcoma, an incurable cancer that forms in bone or soft tissue and also has no known cause. It’s diagnosed in fewer than 250 Americans under the age of 19 a year.

Read more: https://www.atlantamagazine.com/great-reads/why-are-rare-cancers-killing-so-many-people-in-a-small-georgia-town/