Toledo Blade: Sen. Brown co-sponsors disease cluster bill
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown’s office Tuesday cited a report published by two advocacy groups as his motivation for co-sponsoring a bill that seeks to provide more federal money to five parts of Ohio and three in Michigan with documented disease clusters, including in and around Clyde and Marion, Ohio.
“Families affected by disease clusters deserve local information and response teams,” Mr. Brown (D., Ohio) was quoted as saying in a prepared statement. “We need to do more to find out why so many lives have been affected by life-threatening diseases in these cluster areas.”
Drawing from U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, the National Resources Defense Council and the National Disease Clusters Alliance issued a report outlining known pockets, or “clusters” of cancer and multiple sclerosis in 13 states.
The unexplained childhood cancer cluster in and around Clyde has been expanded to include much of eastern Sandusky County and the northern tip of Seneca County.
The leukemia cluster in and around Marion has been the largest environmental investigation in Ohio’s history.
