Child cancer cases in Orange County community elicit strong concerns, demand for federal investigation
By Dean Fioresi, Michele Gile, Lesley Marin
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ORANGE COUNTY, California (KCAL, KCBS) — Hundreds of Orange County residents and some lawmakers filled the halls of a community meeting on Tuesday evening as they voiced their concerns over an extremely rare childhood cancer that several children have been diagnosed with in recent years.
Last week, Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley wrote a letter to California’s Department of Public Health Director Dr. Erica Pan, asking that they expedite their ongoing review of the reported Ewing sarcoma cases in the Ladera Ranch neighborhood.
“Ladera Ranch families have reported six children diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, an exceptionally rare cancer that most often affects children and young adults,” Foley’s office said in a statement after her letter was sent. “The number of reported diagnoses in a community of approximately 26,000 residents has raised serious concerns among families and residents.”
Some community members have raised concerns about an herbicide used in their community as a potential cause, including Brian Dalton, whose daughter Lily spent most of her time in Ladera Ranch throughout high school with her boyfriend and his family.
“Spent a lot of nights, weekends and summers in Ladera Ranch, and we also lived six miles away,” Dalton said.
Lily died in January of a rare soft tissue cancer that had been diagnosed a few years earlier. Doctors told him that her tumor had an Ewing sarcoma gene fusion.
“This is so rare that there has to be something, and if it’s not pesticides, then what is it?” he said.
During Tuesday night’s meeting, Dalton offered an emotionally charged plea to the crowd, hopeful that some sort of answers could help others from having to deal with the same thing they’ve had to.
“I don’t want another family planning a funeral instead of a future,” Dalton said. “I don’t want another father standing where I stand today.”
Foley said that the Orange County Health Care Agency asked the California Cancer Registry to evaluate concerns in Ladera Ranch in 2024, but no discernible pattern of cases was discovered at that time. After renewed concerns from the community, they again asked CCR, UCI’s Cancer Center and the Orange County Agricultural Commissioner to revisit the issue.
The results of that assessment are still pending.
“Ladera Ranch families deserve answers, transparency, and urgency from the state,” Foley said in a statement. “We do not yet know what caused these cancers, but that uncertainty demands a comprehensive review of every credible factor, including possible environmental exposures, along with direct communication and the public release of the findings.”
The California Cancer Registry tells CBS LA that the purpose of their assessment is to determine whether the number of cancers diagnosed in the area appears higher than expected based on population-based cancer registry data.
A spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health says that because Ewing sarcoma is so rare, small numbers can make statistical interpretation difficult, and that they cannot determine if an environmental exposure caused the cancers. Ewing sarcoma typically affects 200 to 250 children throughout the U.S. annually, according to the American Cancer Society.
During Tuesday night’s meeting, the Ladera Ranch Civic Council, which is made up of community members, presented a special agenda item titled “Community Health Concerns,” where they spoke about banning toxic herbicides in their neighborhoods.
Another parent at the meeting, Lisa Edgerton, held a sign showing her son’s steps to recovery after battling the same soft tissue cancer as Lily Dalton. He was diagnosed in 2015, when he was just 15 years old.
“I needed to come and make sure that we remembered that there were more cases, back 10 years ago,” Edgerton said.
Orange County-based oncologist and the physician in chief at City of Hope, Edward Kim, who is not involved in the study, says that sometimes cancer cases like this are happenstance.
“Sometimes it is just by chance that a certain location, over a certain amount of time, has a higher number of cases, but it may still fall within the norm of the cases described through the country,” Kim said.
Logan Spector, an epidemiologist who studies the causes of childhood cancers, and Ewing sarcoma in particular, says that he has already been contacted by some Ladera Ranch families over the concerns.
“There are environmental causes of some childhood cancers; Ewing sarcoma is not really one of them,” Spector said. “The other thing about Ewing sarcoma is the strongest risk factor is actually the ancestry of a child.”
U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli has also raised concerns, penning a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency to “conduct an appropriate investigation to determine if there are any environmental factors causing this cancer cluster” and to see if any federal environmental laws are implicated.
State Assemblymember Kate Sanchez on Monday addressed the topic as well, stating that she formally called on Gov. Newsom to launch a “coordinated, state-led investigation” into the cancer cases.
“This is bigger than any one agency. It requires California to bring together state, local and federal partners under one unified effort to investigate every reasonable environmental factor, follow the evidence where it leads, and keep the public informed every step of the way,” Sanchez said.
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