EDITOR’S NOTE: Three years ago this month, I shared a report under the headline, Missouri Health Agency Officials Refuse to Answer Questions About New Weldon Spring Cancer Report. It was the first of several reports I shared on the topic. Because another updated Weldon Spring Cancer Report is due to be released by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services by early January 2016, I decided to revisit the subject with details gleaned from the BobMcCarty.com archives. Those details appear below.
On March 11, 2011, a major earthquake off the coast of Japan triggered a tsunami that, in addition to killing more than 15,000 people, contributed to the disaster at the Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Plant – the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. After watching the Fukushima disaster unfold, I began to wonder about all things nuclear, including the Weldon Spring Site.
Located in a once-rural area 30 miles west of St. Louis, the site was placed on the EPA’s National Priorities List in 1987 because of the potential for groundwater contamination to adversely affect a drinking water well field less than a mile away that served 60,000 users in the area, according to the Department of Energy’s history of the Weldon Spring Site. That same year, DOE began cleanup actions. Most of the soils were removed and deposited into a 42-acre disposal cell located on-site in the vicinity of the former feed materials plant.
What was it, exactly, that required cleaning?
According to the summary of a nine-page document published by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services and known unofficially as the 2005 Weldon Spring Cancer Report, the Weldon Spring Site in St. Charles County, Mo., was contaminated during the production of 2, 4, 6 – trinitrotoluene (TNT) and 2, 4 and 2,6 dinitrotoluene (DNT) by the U.S. Department of Army from 1941 to 1945 and from enrichment of uranium ore and thorium processing by the Atomic Energy Commission, the predecessor of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, from 1958 to 1966.
Also contained in the 2005 report was a call for follow-up testing to be conducted in response to concerns that radiological and chemical contamination related to the Weldon Spring Site might be negatively impacting the health of residents in the area. Specifically, the report’s authors recommended “the Cancer Inquiry Program should continue to monitor the cancer incidence and mortality rates in Weldon Spring and its surrounding areas.” These types of lawsuits could take a long time to process, so if you find yourself in such similar situation, you might want to get in touch someone like these GJEL Accident Attorneys to help your case. When it comes to lawsuits regarding cancer, it isn’t just radiological hotspots that are to blame – everyday household products are often linked to cancer cases too. For example, there are some people who have been able to identify cancer caused by use of talcum powder in their own personal circumstances. There are lawyers who have expertise in this specific issue and so those looking for their assistance should get in contact with the likes of Terry Bryant. Of course, if you are worried that you have a critical illness like cancer, then you might also want to make sure that you are covered by your health insurance for this (you can find the best critical illness insurance here), just in case you find that you are unable to work due to this illness – you don’t want to lose out on income if you can avoid it.
Ever curious, I decided to find out if the “continue to monitor” recommendation had been taken to heart by MDHSS decision-makers.
On March 24, 2011, I contacted the agency via email and asked if a new report was taking shape. Then-Communications Director Jacqueline Lapine responded by telling me that an update to the 2005 report would be published in December 2011.
During the next nine months, I checked with her several times on the status of the report and was told each time that it was still on schedule. Then, just after 5 o’clock Dec. 29, 2011, a message from Gena Terlizzi arrived in my mailbox. Included as an attachment to the message from Terlizzi, a woman who had only recently replaced Lapine as the agency’s communications director, was a copy of the new report, known officially as the Analysis of Leukemia Incidence and Mortality Data for St. Charles County, Weldon Spring and Surrounding Areas December 2011 (Update to April 2005 Report) and unofficially as the “Weldon Spring Update” or “2011 Weldon Spring Cancer Inquiry Report.”
I read the new report and found it contained two noteworthy statements in its “Updated Analysis” section on page two. The first appears below:
Based on updated data from the 5-zip code area, the total number of leukemia deaths and the total number of leukemia deaths in those age 65 and older appears to be significantly higher than expected (Table 4 updated) but the actual leukemia death rates in the 5-zip code area were not significantly different from the statewide leukemia death rates (Table B).
While the first noteworthy statement resembles bureaucratic doublespeak, the second statement (below) left me feeling perplexed:
Based on this analysis, we have concluded that there is no increased environmental risk of developing leukemia in the five ZIP-code area during 1996-2004 over that of the entire state.
Together, the two statements combined to raise at least one serious question in my mind:
Should the report’s conclusions about the total number of leukemia deaths and the total number of leukemia deaths among people 65 and older warrant concern among St. Charles County residents, especially those living within the five zip codes (63301, 63303, 63304, 63366 and 63376) targeted by the study?
With that question in my mind, I fired off another email message to MDHSS shortly after noon Central Dec. 30, 2011. In it, I asked several questions, including the two below:

MDHSS officials buried the Weldon Spring Cancer Inquiry Report near the bottom of the “Data & Statistics” page of the agency’s website.
1. Can you tell me why, in both the 2005 report and the 2011 Weldon Spring Update, MDHSS has looked only at leukemia deaths instead of deaths attributed to a wider variety of cancers? and
2. I noticed MDHSS has not posted the 2011 Weldon Spring Update on its website or issued a news release about the findings. Do you plan to issue a news release about it and/or share information contained in the 2011 Weldon Spring Update with residents who live within the five zip codes studied? If so, when and how?
Though I discovered a link to the PDF version of the 2011 report a short time after sending my questions to Terlizzi, the fact that MDHSS officials had buried it – without explanation among a half-dozen “special reports” at the bottom of the Data & Statistics page on the MDHSS website – prompted me to let question #2 stand.
On Jan. 3, 2012, at 3:36 p.m. Central, I received the following response from Terlizzi:
Hi Bob,
We don’t have any additional information or comments aside from what’s included in the report.
Thank you,
Gena
Surprised by the brief response, I placed a follow-up phone call and sent a follow-up email message to Terlizzi, hoping to get some clarification. Both went unreturned.
As an Air Force public affairs officer during the 1980s and ’90s, I learned quite a bit through firsthand experience dealing with the public and the news media on serious topics, including environmental health concerns related to nuclear-capable military operations. Among the most important things I learned was that public relations strategies that involve covering up, sugarcoating or otherwise trying to hide bad news from the public never turn out well and should be avoided at all cost. Those who employ such shortsighted strategies end up facing more questions.
In the case of MDHSS, the agency’s no-comment stance caused two immediate questions to form in my mind:
Are state health agency officials trying to hide something from the public? and
Do residents living within the target zip codes deserve (1) to have the findings contained in the 2011 report shared with them in a proactive fashion and (2) to get answers to their questions about the report?
While I hope the answer to the first question is “No,” I know the answer to the second question is a resounding “YES!”
* * *
I began this piece some 1,100 words ago by mentioning the disaster at Fukushima. That event, however, wasn’t the only one to cause me to be interested in the Weldon Spring Site.
During more than 14 years of living in the St. Louis area, I’ve heard many people joke about not allowing their children to drink from the water fountains at Francis Howell High School, located a stone’s throw from the Weldon Spring Site. Most recently, however, I received a phone call.

From the top of the disposal cell at the Weldon Spring Site, one can see nearby Francis Howell High School.
A few days before Halloween 2010, a 40-something mother of two who lives near the Weldon Spring Site contacted me with concerns about what she perceived to be an unusually-high number of cancer cases in her neighborhood.
During multiple conversations over six days, she told me she knew of several people who were either battling cancer or had recently died from the disease. All lived within three blocks of her home in a subdivision of approximately 150 homes, one of many new housing areas to spring up out of farmland in fast-growing St. Charles County during the 1980s and 1990s.
What concerned her most was the fact that the types of cancer involved were varied and included several types of breast cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer and a rare blood cancer. I took some notes, told the woman I would look into the matter and agreed not to share her name with readers if/when I published anything about the serious subject of our conversations. In reality, though, I didn’t expect our conversations to lead to anything.
Five months later, she contacted me again and told me that another of her neighbors – a child living two blocks away – had been diagnosed with cancer. In addition, she told me about several more cases of children attending schools close to her home who had died from different forms of brain cancer. I filed the information just in case.
Some might consider information provided by a nameless suburban housewife unreliable and label it “rumor” and “hearsay” – and I can’t blame them. I was skeptical myself.
Another two weeks passed, and the same woman forwarded more information to me in the form of links to two articles.
One link led me to an article published March 7, 2001, in St. Louis’ Riverfront Times, the Voice Media Group-owned alternative weekly newspaper in which one can occasionally find a well-researched, long-form investigative piece. This particular article contained several hard-to-ignore paragraphs, but none stood out more than the one below which contains the observations of a Catholic priest, Father Gerry Kleba:
Last spring, Kleba’s vow of obedience brought him to a new assignment as a senior associate pastor in the placid suburbs of St. Charles County. What he saw shocked him. “This parish has more sick and dying children than I have ever experienced in my 35 years as a priest,” he told the new social-concerns committee.
The second link led to an article published May 24, 2010, in the Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald. It highlighted the story of a couple who, before moving to Nebraska, lived for four years near the Weldon Spring Site. They said they believed environmental toxins from the site were responsible for their two sons’ cases of leukemia.
While the two articles were, at a minimum, thought-provoking, they didn’t convince me of the need to write anything about the Weldon Spring Site. But I remained curious.
During the next few months, I had several off-the-record conversations with long-time residents of the area – people I thought might know something about the subject at hand. One pointed me in the direction of Fernald, Ohio, a small township 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati that was home to a “sister site” of Weldon Spring that had also operated as a feed materials plant.
The Fernald Site was the subject of a New York Times article dated July 27, 1994, that offered some interesting information, including the two tidbits below:
1. The Department of Energy settled a lawsuit in 1994 with former Fernald Site workers, guaranteeing them lifetime medical monitoring paid for by the government at an expected cost to the government of at least $20 million; and
2. In 1989, DOE reached a settlement of $78 million in a lawsuit brought against the government by 14,000 residents of Fernald who contended that their property had been contaminated by uranium.
A source familiar with both the Weldon Spring and Fernald sites told me the 1994 settlement mentioned in the Times story would serve as a precursor of sorts to federal legislation passed 11 years later that would provide up to $400,000 in payments for former nuclear workers and/or their survivors nationwide as well as lifetime medical care. Among those covered were individuals who had worked at the Weldon Spring Site.
Shortly before publishing my first story on the Weldon Spring Cancer Report, that same source told me at least two lawsuits similar to the $78 million Fernald lawsuit had been filed on behalf of citizens living near Apollo/Parks Township, Pa., about 15 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, where activities similar to those conducted at Weldon Spring and Fernald took place for many years. Though I could find no evidence of any mass tort lawsuits being filed by residents living near the Weldon Spring Site, the same source told me a group of lawyers was studying that costly possibility. Seventeen days later, I found myself in attendance at an evening meeting at a hotel near Lambert International Airport. There, I watched and listened as representatives from the New York City-based Napoli Bern law firm introduced themselves to a crowd of potential St. Louis-area clients. Since then, however, I have not heard any news about the filing of any actual lawsuits.
* * *
Worth noting is the fact Weldon Spring isn’t the only radiological hotspot in the St. Louis area. There are, in fact, several others. Two, Westlake Landfill and Coldwater Creek, have received the most attention in the local news media in recent years.
On Feb. 1 2013, more than a year after I published my first report about Weldon Springs, KSDK-TV’s Leisa Zigman highlighted a cancer cluster map of St. Louis and spotlighted dumping of radioactive waste near St. Louis’ Lambert International Airport and toxic runoff into nearby Coldwater Creek. One day later, she focused her second report on the Westlake Landfill, where a reported 8,000 tons of radioactive waste was allowed to be dumped in a flood plain, close to public water sources and without any barriers or other protective measures installed.
* * *
When I began publishing information about radioactive contamination issues in the St. Louis area three years ago, I knew my stories might fray some nerves.
That being said, radioactive contamination is an extremely important issue that must be brought to light. As this useful guide to dangerous goods on the storemasta website explains, radioactive material must be stored and managed in a safe and compliant manner. Failure to meet these standards poses a risk to our health and safety.
At the same time, I explained that the folks at MDHSS bore responsibility for my first story being published.
“Had they answered my straight-forward questions in the first place, I might not have felt the need to search for answers on my own,” I wrote. “I might not have published a story at all; and I might have continued living in ignorant bliss smack in the heart of one of the targeted zip codes.”
Please know I plan to contact MDHSS officials soon about the status of the upcoming 2016 Weldon Springs Cancer Report.
FINAL WORD: Though I cannot attest to the accuracy of the information that appears on the websites linked below, I recommend you visit them to learn more about the scope of this crisis:
Coldwater Creek, Just the Facts Facebook Page;
St. Louis Radiation Waste Legacy;
Weldon Spring Facebook Page; and
West Lake Landfill Facebook Page.
For links to other articles of interest as well as photos and commentary, join me on Facebook and Twitter. Please show your support by buying my books and encouraging your friends and loved ones to do the same. To learn how to order signed copies, click here. Thanks in advance!











I was in the Army Reserves from 1984-1991. I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer on March 1, 2007. My unit would pull Field Duty in Weldson Springs, MO at least 4 times a year. Please inform me on what I can do to find out if my Cancer could have been related to being in that area.
Thank you
Hello ,my name is Tyreesa Sims , I attended high school at Francis Howell High School from 1983-1985 , in 2010 I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer . I was wanting to find out if my cancer was related to the contamination in Weldon Springs. Thank You
Hello my name is khristine(robbins)wadley,I attended Francis Howell high school 1981-1984,in 2009 I was diagnosed with a 5 pound tumor and 2010 with rectal cancer,I was wanting to find out if my cancer was related to the contamination in Weldon Springs. Thank You
Sorry, but I’m not qualified to answer your question. Perhaps the state health department and/or your doctor might be able to assist you.
I am also very curious of this situation… my son attended Francis Howell. He was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma in 1995 and passed away in 1998. Sometime in 1999(?) a women reporter w/Post published a story regarding the Weldon Springs area cancer report. I tried to contact her but she was no longer available, Cottleville parish had a reported several cases of various blood disorders in the grade school. My sons cancer doctor, through MO Cancer Care, added his name to a class action claim, knowing no money was associated but maybe could be an asset to others.
I attended FHHS 1963 to 1967 . My 4 siblings also attended between 1962 and 1973. My sister died of cancer earlier this year. Me and my 3 brothers were Scouts and camped at Lost Valley just below the Monsanto plant. We played sports after school and ran Cross country thru Busch Wildlife area. Please let me know how to investigate this further.
Sir, I read your article with a lump in my heart. My two son’s both attended Francis Howell High School and both had cancer, My oldest leukemia, and the youngest Hodgkins Disease followed one year later by Thyroid cancer. Mike was only fifteen at the time and, has since had two heart attacks and, a heart full of stints, from the radiation to his chest. Allen the oldest had two brain bleeds and has left sided damage. He has lost most of the coordination in his left hand and leg, has had two foot drop surgeries, a gall bladder , neck fusion, and multiple bouts of kidney stones all chemo related. I guess we should count ourselves as lucky at least they are both alive. I tried to get information out of Francis Howell, but they have a wall of attorneys around them. So, to say the least your article really hit home. Thank you for digging and, letting people know that they can’t keep on covering this issue up. Gratefully yours Sharon Myers, St. Peters, Mo 63376
Hello, both my parents have had breast cancer with one bout of skin cancer too…grew up in O’Fallon & Cottleville. My father, 78 years old, worked construction at Weldon Springs, & I believe he is the only worker from that time still alive! Feel free to contact me if you could use more information…
Holly
My older sister attended FHHS from 1963-1967
She has had 3 boughts of brest cancer starting at age 39
My younger sister attended FHHS from 1973-1977
Died from leukemia at age 39
My Father managed Busch Wildlife Area and our family lived there many years. My daughter Sarah Cassady was diagnosed with monocytic leukemia at age 2 and died 2 weeks after her 3rd birthday.
Went to Francis Howell 1978 to 1982, roamed the weldon area water works plant, fished busch wildlife as well.
Had Melanoma removed from leg in 2012, have friends diagnosed with cancer that went to Francis Howell…
I have had breast cancer and several of my friends that went to Howell in the ’70’s are fighting cancer now! I have always wondered if it was because I went to high school there from 1972-1977, because we also went to junior high there back then .
My son worked on the big mound built to bury the radioactive material. At that time he passed out and was rushed to SSM in St. Charles and was diagnosed with an enlarged heart ( in his 20’s at the time). He died of a massive heart attack in 2009 due to enlarged heart and 3 main arteries blocked at 90% at the age of 35. I, and one of my brothers, attended FHJHS & HS 1961-1968. We were both in the band which always performed at the uranium plant for United Fund. I toured the plant as a physics student. Every time we left we were checked with Geiger counters. One of my classmates, Karen Battiger, does of spinal cancer in 1968. My brother and I and both of my sons spent time at Lost Valley for various scouting and church events. My brother ran cross country. We all, as well as my parents, spent much time in Busch Wildlife since the 1950’s. Back in the 1980′ s I had a doctor that was part of a task force studying cancers related to that plant and the water tables of the area. He felt it was a serious problem. When I was in Jr High in the old barracks buildings the uranium ore trucks rolled down 94 with no covers and dust from the ore blowing everywhere; even into the open windows of the classrooms. Thought nothing of it at that time. How can I keep up to date on what is learned? I really believe my son’s death was related to excessive exposure to radioactivity.
Cindy Kielty
I attended Francis Howell high school in1976 to 1980. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011. I have lived in 63376 area since the age of 11 and still do. Please tell me what to do about this and include me in all the new research. Linda M.
I attended Francis Howell Junior High and High School from 1966 to 1971. In the last 17 years I’ve had three forms of cancer: testicular, thyroid and prostate.
Francis Howell Weldon Springs Mo 1968 to 1974. I have had two skin cancer tumors removed. I also have Crohns . Drank the water and showered after gym class for 6 years. Use to hunt south of school around that concrete tower was. I remember seeing glowing green yellow puddles on the ground. I ate the animals that were hunted. As well as the fish caught at Busch Wildlife Area. Also drank from weldon Spring. Im 62 years old.