Near Nantes, families looking for answers

“These are years of treatment with daily chemotherapy and intrathecal injections. Lumbar punctures, bone marrow punctures.” “My son was put on morphine to reduce his hair pain, hair fall, food craze, low courage.” 2,500 children or adolescents each year in France, The sons of Mary Thibod and Anglic Bocher, both four-year-olds, were diagnosed with cancer in the towns of Saint-Pazon and Machecol-Saint-Evening in the Lower-Atlantic.

And diseases diagnosed as pediatric cancers – leukemias, tumors or lymphomas – are also considered Rare diseasesHowever, 23 other cases have been reported since 2015 within a 15 km radius.

There is no cluster that the authorities do not recognize

With a The increase in pediatric cancer cases in Pace de Retz‌ is worrying And following an initial report from an individual, the Regional Health Agency (ARS) first intervened in 2017, then made the first diagnostic estimate. “ Leukemia cases are more common in children under 15 than in two-year-olds.

In 2019, a new report prompted the Regional Health Agency to request an epidemiological investigation from Public Health France. As Lisa King, regional manager of the regional intervention unit, explained, these new researches, specifically with 600 samples and 80,000 environmental analyzes, are not allowed based on scientific approaches. “To identify the common source of disclosure” In Saint-Pazanne sector. “We have reached the limit of what we can do, so we had to hand over the research at that point.”

France in the “Stone Age” of environmental health and prevention

However leaving the hand to research, current knowledge on the causes of pediatric cancer is still intact. “Broken and incomplete” As noted by Chantal Glogen, Deputy Director of Health and Environment at ARS Pace de la Lrez. 90% of acute childhood leukemia remain unexplained, but predictable “Multiple factors, genetic, environmental factors or factors associated with infections. There are many suspected factors such as exposure to pesticides, living space, exposure at home, pesticides during pregnancy, home use, low frequency frequency electromagnetic fields …”

Faced with this limited knowledge, it was decided to set up public investigations in the Saint-Pazanne sector and at the end of treatments with the most serious after-effects on patients, especially minors, Mary Tibad and others. March 2019 Collectively “Stop our children’s cancers”, initiated by citizens’ committees, to conduct new environmental research on various potential causes of their children’s diseases but also to promote and raise awareness on environmental health issues.

“Environmental health is the impact of man on the environment, fauna and flora, and its effects on the health of all living things” Deputy Modem Sandrine describes Jose as her part. In December 2020, this elected representative of the Lower-Atlantic, questioned by the circumstances in her department, was appointed as a reporter Commission of Inquiry into Environmental Health. The goal? Diagnoses and proposals aimed at “re-examining the place of environmental health in the public action body” and placing prevention of diseases such as pediatric cancer, diabetes, obesity or certain neurodegenerative diseases at the heart of changes in the health system of the country.

“We are in the Stone Age in this area. We know how to treat illnesses in France, but unfortunately, we do very little cure.” Sandrin believes Jose, reports of potential pediatric cancer clusters have multiplied in recent years beyond the Saint-Pazanne sector, even in the Charente-Maritime, the Euro or the Hout-Jura.