Mobile Homes Suspected in Rare Cancer

A rare throat cancer appears to have a “significant association” with longtime occupancy of mobile homes, according to research conducted for the Environmental Protection Agency.

The cancer is nasopharyngeal cancer, or a cancer of the part of the throat leading to the nose. Although rare, it is frequently fatal soon after diagnosis.

Researchers who discovered the association are not yet ready to say that their chief suspect in the atmosphere of mobile homes, formaldehyde, causes the cancer. Their report advised “extreme caution” in interpretation.

The chief mobile home trade organization, which says formaldehyde concentrations in new mobile homes have been reduced by up to 90% from what they were a few years ago, said it was surprised and baffled by the finding.

‘Just a Suggestion’

“One study by itself is just a suggestion. You need two or three studies, preferably in different geographical areas,” cautioned Thomas L. Vaughan, assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington in Seattle and staff member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center there.

Vaughan, leader of the center’s research team under contract to EPA, said in an interview that he was surprised that “this finding popped out like this.”

Although statistical tests conclude that the association is unlikely to be the result of chance, “the more experience you get in this field the more you realize these are small numbers,” he said.