Radium

Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren who were given a nasal radium treatment pioneered at John Hopkins may have an increased risk of cancer, but a federal advisory board concluded yesterday that notifying them would be of little benefit.The treatment, nasopharyngeal irradiation, was considered standard medical care in the 1940s and 1950s for middle ear obstructions, infections and deafness. According to a recent estimate by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 500,000 schoolchildren may have received the procedure as late as the 1960s.

Sifting through old files and stacks of boxes, staffers from the Department of Veterans Affairs are trying to track down thousands of submariners and pilots who received radiation treatment for ear troubles during World War II. The government wants to tell them they may be at increased risk of cancer.But no one has stepped forward to do the same for civilians who got the treatment as children, even though their risk from the radiation is as much as 10 times higher -- and they may number as many as 2 million.

An obscure state loan program created to help rural residents install or fix indoor plumbing also can be used for a different purpose, a state legislator has discovered: the purchase of water-treatment systems to remove radium from private wells. Some Pasadena residents concerned about the quality of their drinking water say the household water purifiers are not enough. For them, nothing short of public water will do, but the county has no plans to extend the service farther down Mountain Road.

A state bill that would help some families pay to treat their radium-tainted wells gained momentum yesterday by winning public endorsements from Anne Arundel County and state officials. Under the proposal heard by the House Environmental Matters Committee, the county and state would combine to pay for up to one-quarter of the cost of radium-treatment systems. A treatment system costs $800 to $3,000, health officials said. The legislation, which is co-sponsored by 11 Anne Arundel delegates, is intended to help families near Pasadena, where some estimate that more than 6,000 wells have unsafe levels of the radioactive metal.

Schools, county, state will hold meeting on radium in well waterThe Maryland Department of the Environment and the Anne Arundel County Health Department will hold an information session on radium in well water from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday at Chesapeake High School in Pasadena.Staff members from the schools, county Department of Public Works, the state Geological Survey and other experts will talk about recent water quality tests from the wells serving homes and schools in the northern part of the county that have shown elevated levels of radium.

Rec-parks bureau holding budget hearing tomorrow The Howard County Department of Recreation and Parks and the Recreation and Parks Advisory Board will hold a public hearing on the department's capital budget and capital improvement programs at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at department headquarters, 7120 Oakland Mills Road, Columbia. On the agenda are the Capital Budget Request for the 2002 fiscal year, which runs July 1, 2001, to June 30, 2002, and the 10-year Capital Improvement Program, which runs from fiscal year 2003 to fiscal year 2011, for the acquisition and development of park and recreation lands.

A radium treatment given to hundreds of Maryland children from the 1940s to the 1960s and presumed harmless is being restudied by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the National Cancer Institute to determine the cancer risk that might associated with it.Pioneered at Hopkins 70 years ago, nasopharyngeal irradiation was prescribed to correct hearing, sinus and adenoid problems in children. The treatment involved inserting radium-tipped rods into the nose to shrink excess adenoid tissue that had caused the ailments.

3 county schools damaged by storm set to reopen today For the first time since Feb. 14, all Anne Arundel County public schools were expected to open today, school officials said. The three schools that were closed yesterday because of storm damage - Severn River and Magothy River middle schools, in Arnold, and Marley Elementary School, in Glen Burnie - have been cleared to open, school spokesman Michael Walsh said. The roof collapsed Saturday on the building that houses Severn River and Magothy River middle schools.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A presidential panel decided yesterday to attempt to assess the possible cancer risk from a radium procedure developed at a Johns Hopkins medical institution and decide if those treated decades ago need medical follow-up.The procedure, known as nasopharyngeal irradiation, was used to treat hundreds of children with hearing problems from the 1940s until the 1960s. At the time, it was presumed harmless.The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments decided to review the procedure because people who underwent the treatment as children are now questioning its possible long-term effects.

House committee kills amended cigarette vending machines 0) billA bill that would have prohibited most coin-operated cigarette vending machines was killed by a House committee yesterday after it was amended so severely that its sponsor turned against it.Del. Dan K. Morhaim, a Baltimore County Democrat, joined the majority of the Environmental Matters Committee in the 10-9 vote after opponents succeeded in tacking on amendments that he said would have permitted too many exceptions to the ban.The bill was intended to curb access to cigarettes by teen-agers.