Welcome!

Welcome to our website spawned from public interest on the topic Cancer in Bedford, MA on the Classmates.com message board.

Please be advised, this blog is not for defending positions for or against the effects of air or water quality on health. It presupposes that poor water and air quality impacts the health and well being of all residents, and asserts that it is essential to inform the public wherever possible for personal and public planning and remediation.

Based on the information gathered, citizens may lobby for upgrading infrastructure for handling overflows, rivers, and public areas, and/or request the state study the incidences of Cancer in Bedford as a benchmark for future generations. We feel the information gathered may serve to support and remediate what has passively gone by without proper recognition.

According to published studies, these items have been confirmed:

• Hanscom Air force base was a double superfund site. One of the sites contaminated a drinking well on Hartwell road, servicing a three mile radius, in 1983 and was closed in 1984, serving the community for 6 to 8 months.
• 2 of the 3 Shawsheen wells were closed due to contamination of the rivershed.
• BASF on Crosby Drive improperly disposed of chemical waste and infiltrated ground water, closing at least one of the town wells. Dioxin was found as one of the chemical agents infiltrating ground water, and Dioxin has been proven in 1997 to be an very aggressive known cause of cancer.

From http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/index.php?id=1&L=0target%3D_blank%22%20onfocus%20title%3D%20target%3D%20target%3D

"Growth in human populations, increasing consumption, infrastructure development, land conversion, poor land use and massive use of pollutants in water all threaten the ecosystem functions that produce our freshwater resources. Ecosystems evolve far too slow to adapt to quick and brutal changes, and cannot play their purifying and regulating role anymore.

Pollution: With urbanization and industrialization, the quality of rivers, lakes, and aquifers may deteriorate seriously. This phenomenon has accelerated since 1970’s, due to the increase of human and industrial waste. With current water treatment systems, eliminating some toxic particles is sometimes not possible anymore. Surface water as well as groundwater run the risk to be neither proper to human consumption, nor to ecosystems.

Water scarcity: Water resources depletion generates tensions among water users and sometimes between states or countries. Every country wants to maintain sovereignty on its resources and to maximize its storage and withdrawals. Water scarcity already affects one third of the total world population" (World Water Vision)