News Conference To Be Held on Thursday, September 29, 2022 at 10 a.m. at 2925 Lavender St, Houston concerning the recent discovery of dioxin in the Kashmere Gardens/Greater Fifth Ward Community.
Joined by residents of Greater 5th Ward, Texas Health and Environment Alliance (THEA) called on the state to perform a thorough investigation into health concerns in the City’s Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens’ neighborhoods.
“The mounting evidence of toxic contamination throughout the area shows that it is time for the Texas Department of State Health Services to stop cherry-picking the data and burying the results in online documents,” said THEA CEO and Founder Jackie Medcalf.
THEA worked with local leaders and residents to form the Northeast Coalition as a way to address community health concerns. Responding to the growing calls for answers, the state investigated and determined that rates of children’s leukemia are five times higher in the Kashmere Gardens area beside the Union Pacific railyard than average. A second investigation showed adult rates of lung, esophagus, and larynx cancers were higher than the statistical average. On September 22, the Houston Health Department announced that dioxin had been found in every one of the 47 soil samples taken in Kashmere Gardens.
Medcalf said, “The discovery of dioxin in the neighborhood is a terrible, frightening thing for the people who live there. It is past time for the state to treat these Texas residents with the respect they deserve. That means doing a thorough study of the cancer and illnesses in the Fifth Ward and an approach that puts people’s health first.”
“The state studies of the area have been inadequate. When the first study showed higher than acceptable cancer rates in adults, the Department of State Health Services quietly posted the results on its website, and it was four months before the public learned about it.”
“The second study uncovered heightened levels of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia. What most people don’t realize was that this wasn’t a case where the only elevated childhood cancer they found was leukemia. In fact, leukemia was the only type of childhood cancer they even looked for.”
“We need our state to get serious about the holistic health problems that plague the local community. Fifth Ward is home to three Superfund Sites and countless abandoned industrial sites. The longer our state government tries to minimize the impact of decades of contamination, the more people will get sick and the longer our children will face the risk of cancer and other diseases.”
Texas Health and Environment Alliance is the only nonprofit focused on Houston and Harris County Superfund Sites. It works through local coalitions to empower Houstonians to defend their health and communities from toxic waste contamination.