Los Alamos Deaths to Be Studied : Health: A reported flurry of fatal brain tumors leads to cancer investigation in area of nuclear lab. A resident has listed 40 possible victims.

Responding to a flurry of deaths near Los Alamos National Laboratory that has been blamed on brain tumors, the U.S. Department of Energy and the New Mexico state health department said Friday that they will study cancer deaths around the nuclear weapons laboratory over the last 22 years.

Federal and state officials said that the investigation, based on records compiled by the New Mexico tumor registry and on death statistics, will seek to determine whether an excessive number of cancers have occurred around the laboratory.

If so, the study will examine what type of cancer and whether the cases can be attributed to radiation or toxic materials at the lab. The tumor registry, kept by the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, includes 100,000 cancer cases in the state since 1969.

The impetus for the study is a list compiled by an area resident of people in Los Alamos County who reportedly died of malignant brain tumors. Tyler Mercier, 34, began the list last fall with a dozen names. Two months ago, the number rose to 20 and, in the wake of recent New Mexico press reports, to 40. Residents feared that the cancers were associated with the historic site where the atomic bomb was tested during World War II.

But Dr. Jon Johnson, a Los Alamos physician who has been examining the medical records of persons on the list, said Friday that he has studied 26 of the cases so far and has found only nine deaths attributable to primary brain cancer. Primary brain cancer means that the cancer originated in the brain, not in some other part of the body first.

The other 17 deaths he has studied, he said, include cases in which cancer originated elsewhere and spread to the brain and instances in which there was really no brain tumor at all.

According to the National Cancer Institute, brain cancer causes about four deaths per 100,000 persons per year.

“There is still some concern,” Johnson said, “but the Los Alamos numbers are not as dramatic as people have been led to believe.”

Nevertheless, Energy Department officials said that, because the cancer list has worried the community, a full-scale epidemiological study is warranted.

The New Mexico health department has asked the federal agency for $250,000 to conduct a 15-month study, with a yearlong follow-up, if necessary.

Scientists said that it will be extremely difficult to statistically establish whether the brain tumors--or any other cancers included in the study--are associated with the weapons laboratory because the numbers involved are so small.

“The smaller the numbers, the more unstable the results,” said Dr. Millicent Eidson, an environmental epidemiologist with the state health department. “I can almost guarantee you that we will find some types of cancers above the state average and others below it.” That is, even if the numbers appear high, they could be attributable to a statistical aberration.

Despite northern New Mexico’s long familiarity with Los Alamos, concern over radiation exposure and the disposal of radioactive waste has persisted, especially since recent publicity about radioactive contamination at U.S. weapons facilities.

Ironically, Mercier’s brain tumor list grew out of an interest in helping allay concerns about radiation. At his request, laboratory officials provided him with inexpensive radiation monitoring devices last year, and he began taking measurements in areas not monitored by the lab itself.

His readings were slightly higher than those found by laboratory experts, but they were written off to background sources, such as naturally occurring uranium in the soil, and the fact that his instruments had not been calibrated.

He began counting brain-cancer cases last fall after another resident told him that four neighbors had died of brain cancer. Within weeks, Mercier’s list reached 12, and he provided the names to the lab.

When nothing happened, he took his findings to epidemiologists and wrote to Energy Secretary James D. Watkins.

“This is something that is long overdue,” said Johnson, who expects to find another five or 10 cases of primary brain cancer among the people on Mercier’s list. “If for nothing else, it needs to be done for the reassurance of the community.”