In the late 1970s, the nation belatedly learned about Love Canal, the toxic waste dump near Niagara Falls that sickened hundreds of people and led to a whole neighborhood being demolished.
After that came the lawsuit against a California utility over carcinogenic chromium contamination led by then law clerk Erin Brockovich.
Most recently, there was the discovery that although Michigan officials long knew about the lead contamination of Flint’s municipal water system, they did not notify the public or remedy the problem until hundreds of children were poisoned with possible lifetime effects.
That leads us to the cancer cluster in Rye, a town in New Hampshire’s Seacoast region that has long worried about pollution from the airbase at Pease and radiation from Seabrook Station.
Alerted by the parents of children diagnosed with rare forms of cancer, the state Department of Health and Human Services launched an investigation, but did so without notifying the public.
Not all of the press accounts of the cluster gave readers a clue as to the number of children affected. That led to alarm and rumors.
The types of cancers are so rare that all it took was a number of children described by the department as fewer than five to qualify as a cluster. A New Hampshire law geared to protect patient privacy forbids release of an exact number when it’s small enough that it might contribute to the identification of the victim.
That law needs reconsideration, because in this case it contributed to fear and uncertainty.
In a press conference, state epidemiologist Dr. Benjamin Chan apologized because the public did not learn about the investigation until after it was concluded. Apology accepted, lesson learned. As the World Health Organization has said repeatedly, during public health emergencies, real or perceived, transparency is critical.