The weekend after the group project is due, you are also required to write a one-page evaluation of the project process, and suggest an individual grade for yourself. Finally, suggest what your individual grade should be, and why. A coincidental L.A. Times article on methyl bromide use being curtailed in California. This incidence of cancer was 8 times the national average. The victims had a variety of cancer types.
Cancer clusters are very difficult to analyze.
With a large enough number of communities, some will always be suspiciously high as a result of chance, whether or not there is a shared cause for the illnesses. However, the towns containing the cancer clusters are in close proximity to one another and are farming communities where pesticides are used regularly and profusely. The state conducted epidemiological studies of the Earlimart, McFarland, and Fowler clusters and found no direct evidence implicating pesticides to the cancer cases. These studies, however, were measuring environmental concentrations years after the clusters were identified. Since pesticides degrade, it can not be concluded that the low pesticide concentrations detected in the study are the same as those to which the children were originally exposed.