GIST Support WikiRadiation
While I am sometimes skeptical of catalysts for certain cancers I have now wondered about the area where I grew up, Marion, Ohio. Marion was home to a bomb factory during WWII. A little over a decade ago parents at one of the local high schools began speculating that the high incidence of teen age cancer at the school was somehow linked to the fact the school had been built on an ordinance site. Eventually the school was fenced off, shut down, and a new school was built on another site. The controversy with the EPA and the federal govt was never resolved. I did not attend that school but my grandparents farm was just beyond the factory site and my grandfather farmed some of the old ordinance ground. I spent a lot of time fishing in a creek that ran through the site. I also found out from a friend years later who worked on the manhatten project that there was a heavy water facility at the bomb plant. For anyone interested there are all kinds of stories on the net re this. I keep hearing of cases of Leukemia among Marion residents. My relative who still lives there knew immediately what gleevec was when I first mentioned it. Her close friend was taking it for cml. She of course grew up there. This may all be coincidence and I am sure we all wonder why we were chosen to carry this burden. At the same time my old friends in Marion are not surprised that I have a rare form of sarcoma.
I had radiation treatments as an infant in 1951 and I have GIST. I don't know if there is a connection, but I thought I would report in since there is a discussion about this.
I read somewhere that children whose tonsils were irradiated (as mine were) in the 50s and 60s are at high risk for GIST. This was a common "treatment" for tonsillitis back then. I also had hyperparathyroidism, which is also linked to tonsil irradiation.
I also had my tonsils removed in the early 50's and I had a hyperparathyroidism condition with resulting surgery about 5 years ago. I had my primary stomach GIST appear in June '06.
Just for the record, I too had radiation treatment when I was a child. Nasal radiation to prevent re-ocurrence of adenoids at about age 8 or 9. This was done about 1955 or '56.
In addition to GIST I have non-malignant (so far) nodules in my thyroid, and granulomas(?) in my cervical lymph nodes, one in my left lung and one in my spleen. None showed hot on recent PET, hopefully that is definitive for now.
In regards to children whose tonsils were irradiated in the 50s and 60s etc., hyperparathyroidism, radiation treatments on infants in the 1950s and GIST..... Radiation treatment during childhood (1940s, 50s and 60s) for benign head and neck conditions is a well-known risk factor for the development of various tumors in the area of treatment. In addition to benign and malignant thyroid growths, radiation-exposed individuals are more likely to develop hyperparathyroidism, salivary gland tumors, and benign neural tumors of the head and neck.
http://www.columbiasurgery.org/cli/endo/thyroid_cancer.html
I am not aware of any study linking radiation to GIST.
Pesticides/Herbicides
I also subscribe to the idea that there are environmental causes of GIST but I include DDT in that group. My husband and my cousin both grew up in the coastal area of central California and were both heavily exposed to DDT in their teens; my husband worked for an uncle who owned a farm supply store and Dave delivered DDT to farmers and my cousin's father was a farmer who used it and they lived near the fields and I believe had a well. None of this can be proven but I think these are reasonable speculations. A great book on this subject is "Living Downstream" by Sondra Steingraber, an environmental biologist who began investigating environmental causes of bladder cancers in her family.
The City of Philadelphia sprayed DDT for mosquito control out of the back of trucks driving through my neighborhood (circa 1965, 1966). We rode our bikes behind the truck in the cloud. They dumped the excess DDT in a pond (or creek leading to the pond) where we built rafts and crossed the "white ocean". We played in the woods around that pond every day. There are houses built there today.
I rode my bike behind trucks spraying for mosquitoes in South Florida probably around the late 50's and early 60's. My brother was right there with me along with most kids in the neighborhood. Would that not cause cancer in the lungs though? My brother and I are amazed we have not had that happen along with skin cancer for so many weekends spent at the beach before knowledge of sunscreen.
Oh my gosh - I did the same thing in Long Island circa 1967ish. We all got excited when the "bug truck" was coming down our street and got out our bikes and rode through the fog. In general, I think the east coast is a hot bed for environmental exposure.