Fifth Ward residents demand action after confirmation of second cancer cluster
After years of organizing, they say they want to be compensated for health care costs and relocated out of harm's way.
In 2019, the Texas Department of Health and Human Services confirmed a cancer cluster in Houston's Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens neighborhoods near known creosote contamination from a railyard owned by Union-Pacific; now, a second cluster of lymphoblastic leukemia in children has been confirmed.
The state's study found rates of this leukemia to be five times higher than expected. "Residents are demanding accountability from Union Pacific," Sara Willa Ernst reports for Houston Public Media. "They’ve asked to be relocated, for their health care costs to be paid and for the area to be declared a Superfund site by state and federal environmental agencies."
Sandra Edwards, president of IMPACT Greater Fifth Ward, tells her: "We don’t know what’s next, but we know what we want. [Union Pacific needs] to do something. We are tired of being sick and tired over here."
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