Medical News & Exposé
epi
Fallon cancer cluster activist dies of brain cancer
by Bryant Furlow
The activist who discovered evidence that the Fallon, Nevada childhood leukemia cluster was
accompanied by an adult brain cancer cluster, has himself died of brain cancer.
Floyd Sands, 56, whose daughter was one of three children to die in the Fallon childhood
leukemia cluster, died of brain cancer May 29 in Pennsylvania. Stephanie was diagnosed and
died in Pennsylvania after having grown up in Fallon.
Fifteen children and young adults in the rural Navy air base and tungsten smelter community
were diagnosed with leukemia between 1999 and 2003. Another boy had been diagnosed in
1997. Other children were diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, brain cancer and bone cancer,
but these cases were not considered by health authorities to be part of the more pronounced
leukemia cluster.
The odds of the leukemia cluster being due to chance alone were calculated to be 1 in 232
million by state and University of California epidemiologists.
After losing his daughter Stephanie, 21, to leukemia in 2001, Sands became frustrated with
the slow pace of state and federal health agencies’ investigations into the Fallon cluster.
Sands came to believe the state and federal investigations in Fallon were “inconclusive by
design," meant to protect powerful economic and military interests rather than to identify the
roots of the cluster.
Sands argued that state health departments were ill-equipped to identify and investigate
cancer clusters, a conclusion supported by surveys of states' epidemiological resources.
“Despite experiencing the great loss of losing his daughter Stephanie, he was determined to
channel his grief into justice,” oncology nurse and mother of a cancer survivor Agnes
Reynolds said of Sands. “He was passionate, articulate, and never afraid to confront the
‘enemy.’”
A former Republican Party organizer, Sands became a vocal proponent for investigations into
the role of environmental pollution in areas with elevated cancer rates. He filed suit against
Kennametal, a tungsten refinery with Pentagon ties, for polluting the Fallon area with tungsten
alloy dusts, which Sands believed had contributed to the town’s cancers.
Tungsten has been found to cause rhabdomyosarcoma in rodents.
"He never stopped fighting to determine the causes of the Fallon cancer cluster," attorney Cal
Dunlap said.
In 2003, Sands led a door-to-door cancer survey of Fallon, an effort known as “Stephanie’s
Walk” that seemed to uncover high rates of adult cancers—particularly brain cancer.
While the individual cases of Stephanie’s Walk have not been independently confirmed, state
Health Department and cancer registry authorities have acknowledged that Churchill County,
where Fallon is the County seat, suffered significantly elevated brain cancer rates and adult
cancer rates generally.
State cancer registry data show that overall adult cancer rates for Churchill County rose
dramatically during the years of the childhood leukemia cluster.
But Nevada State Epidemiologist Randall Todd argued that despite the 1 in 232 million odds
of the leukemia cluster being due to chance alone, chance was still the best explanation for
Fallon’s cancers.
“A very small possibility is still a possibility (that the cluster’s due to chance),” Todd said.
Sands co-founded the National Disease Clusters Alliance.
“He was intimidating from his articulate outspokenness of the Fallon Nevada Childhood
Cancer Cluster,” Jill McElheney recalled. “Floyd was the kind of guy that pounded the table
when the facts and law were on his side. And when they weren't, he still pounded the table
because children dying from corporate abuse of the environment evoked a moral outrage in
him.”
Other parents recalled Sands as a tough, sometimes abrasive, but abidingly kind man who
was dedicated to preventing disease clusters.
“He was one of the kindest, most caring warm hearted SOBs out there,” Matt Warneke said.
“Floyd's first love was that he held for his children. Any and every chance he got he would
brag about one of them. Not a conversation could be had that you didn't hear about
something one of his kids had accomplished.”
Warneke’s daughter Anastacia was diagnosed with leukemia shortly after the family moved to
Fallon in 2000. Another childhood leukemia cluster was subsequently identified in Sierra
Vista, Arizona, where the Warnekes lived prior to moving to Fallon.
Both towns were under flight paths for military aircraft using JP-8 jet fuel found to be
carcinogenic and to cause blood cell abnormalities in rodents. Both towns were also found to
have airborne tungsten, a carcinogenic heavy metal found in Army-funded studies to cause
rhabdomyosarcoma in lab animals.
Sands arranged to have samples of his tumor tissue archived for analysis alongside those of
the Fallon leukemia case children.
Sands wrote of his efforts in 2008.