Kettleman City and two other Valley communities are among dozens of places nationally where people have died in mysterious disease clusters, environmentalists say in a report being released today.
Nine California locations are discussed in a report being released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Disease Clusters Alliance.
The groups say federal authorities need to study these clusters quickly and help local officials.
"The faster we can identify such clusters, and the sooner we can figure out the causes, the better we can protect residents living in the affected communities," said Dr. Gina Solomon, NRDC senior scientist and co-author of the paper.
Earlimart and McFarland also are discussed in the study, which will be the subject of testimony Tuesday in Washington, D.C., at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee oversight hearing. Activist Erin Brockovich is scheduled to testify.
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The two groups that wrote the new study support legislation introduced by Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Michael Crapo, R-Idaho, that would improve federal coordination to assist state and local officials.
In the most recent of the San Joaquin Valley clusters, 11 babies were born with birth defects between 2007 and March 2010 to mothers who lived in Kettleman City in western Kings County. Five babies had a cleft palate facial deformity. Three of them died.
Environmental activists suspect toxic waste from the Waste Management landfill near Kettleman City -- the largest such landfill in the West -- is to blame.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ruled out now-banned polychlorinated biphenyls or toxic PCBs -- accepted as waste at the Waste Management landfill -- as the cause of the birth defects. But a broader analysis is needed, activists say.
"There are a lot of sources of contamination in the environment," said Maricela Mares-Alatorre, a Kettleman City resident and activist.
Kings County health officials said that different types of birth defects are involved, so it's not clear whether the birth-defect rate was high enough to qualify as a cluster.
Nationally, very few reports of elevated birth-defect rates are statistically out of line enough to be identified as clusters, experts say. Even when they do qualify as a cluster, it would be difficult to establish a clear underlying cause, they say.
In the Southern California community of Hinkley, the setting of the film Erin Brockovich, there were not enough cancers between 1988 and 2008 to qualify as a cancer cluster, said the California Cancer Registry.
"The case is an example of why disease clusters are difficult to prove," the new study says.
The study also says that among the 13 states cited, a specific source of chemical contamination was identified in only one: Montana, where asbestos was blamed.
In the Kern County city of McFarland, cancer struck five children on the same quiet street nearly three decades ago. Three of them died.
About 15 miles away in the southern Tulare County city of Earlimart, six children developed cancer and three died in another cluster during the 1980s.
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