Should FL believe new map?
By Cynthia Washam 3/4/2010 © Health News Florida A new study by a team of North Florida researchers that suggests an elevated risk of pediatric cancer in two large swaths of Florida is drawing skepticism from many epidemiologists. One of the two zones, which takes up most of the lower third of the state, has a risk 52 percent higher than that in most of the state, the researchers said. A risk zone in the north of the state is somewhat weaker, they said. “We’re very concerned about what’s going on in our state,” said co-author Chatchawin Assanasen, pediatric hematologist/oncologist with the Nemours Center for Childhood Cancer Research in Pensacola. “Clusters of this size are unusual.” The results, which appeared Jan. 6 in the online version of the medical journal Pediatric Blood & Cancer, are just too unusual to give many epidemiologists confidence in them. One who tried to replicate the study and couldn’t is epidemiologist Jill MacKinnon, director of the Florida Cancer Data System at t
