FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

THERE IS A CONNECTION: CHRONIC DISEASE AND POLLUTION

FORT LAUDERDALE, OCTOBER 2005:  Fact: the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 7 out of 10 Americans die each year from chronic diseases. Fact: smog, a modern term combining the words smoke and fog, is the consequence of airborne toxins reacting together to create ground-level ozone.  This year alone, smog is predicted to kill 5,800 people in a large Canadian city, and if the air quality doesn’t improve, about 10,000 citizens will perish annually by 2026. Joyce Hansel knows what pollution can do and, thankfully, has determined to let the rest of us know as well.

Many seriously ill people are unaware of how many others nearby share the same chronic disease. Even more are unaware of the toxic chemicals polluting their air and water.  Registered Nurse Joyce Hansel thought it no mere coincidence that twenty-three confirmed cases of multiple sclerosis were located in a six-block area, in fact 8 cases are located on one street. The MS cluster is located near a foundry with a history of EPA noncompliance, ­­in a village of fewer than five thousand people.  When Hansel herself was diagnosed with MS and forced to retire, she searched for other disease clusters, and examined the U.S. healthcare system outside the confines of a hospital.

What she found is both shocking and revealing: clusters of MS, lupus, asthma, birth defects, all forms of cancer—­just about every chronic disease known to man.  In The Chronic Disease Pollution Connection, Hansel uses respected studies and supporting research to show that most chronic disease clusters are located close to polluting industries, and explains why public health studies are unable to make the chronic disease/pollution connection.  She also chronicles the personal stories of some disease clusters across America detailing the struggles of victims to get polluting industries controlled and to get help from the public health organizations paid to protect them but unwilling or unable to do so.

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