HOUSTON – The Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens area has been at the center of soil testing due to the cancer cluster discovered in the area for some time now.
KPRC 2 has been covering cancer clusters in the area extensively over the past few years, bringing you the latest Environmental Protection Agency reports, new developments and concerns from residents who have been forced to endure the consequences.
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This week, KPRC 2 News learned that Union Pacific will start the process of testing soil surrounding the former Houston Wood Preserving site in Fifth Ward.
This comes after the EPA released its latest finding in March, which showed nearly eight percent of the 51 tested locations exceeded the EPA’s screening levels for Creosote-related chemicals.
The elevated levels were found in numerous areas throughout the Fifth Ward community, including in a sanitary sewer, a storm sewer, and a monitoring well.
Since November 2023, the EPA and Union Pacific have been conducting tests on the groundwater, soil, and sewers in the Greater Fifth Ward. This initiative responds to long-term contamination from a rail yard site in the area, historically used by Southern Pacific Railroad for wood preservation, which continues to operate today.
From 1899 to 1984, workers at the site applied creosote, a tar-like substance derived from coal and wood, to railroad ties. Creosote contains several known carcinogens, which, over time, seeped into the ground and spread throughout the community, forming a contaminated groundwater plume beneath residential homes north of the site.
In 2019, the state classified the Greater Fifth Ward, along with Kashmere Gardens and Denver Harbor, as a cancer cluster due to a higher-than-average incidence of cancer cases.
For years residents have been complaining about getting sick due to the railroad. Some of the chemicals that have been found in the EPA and Union Pacific testing, which include:
- Benzene - High levels can lead to death or cause leukemia
- Ethylbenzene - Exposure to high levels of ethylbenzene in air for short periods can cause eye and throat irritation. Exposure to higher levels can result in dizziness. Also, can cause cancer
- m,p-Xylenes - High levels of exposure for short or long periods can cause headaches, lack of muscle coordination, dizziness, confusion, and changes in one’s sense of balance.
- Chloroform - Breathing low levels of chloroform for a short amount of time can cause you to become dizzy, tired, or give you a headache. At high levels, you may also have trouble breathing and may pass out.
- Naphthalene - People who breathe in air containing naphthalene had irritation and inflammation in their noses, decreased lung function, headaches, and confusion, or felt tired and dizzy.
- n-Nonane
- 1,4-Dichlorobnzene
- Ethylene Dibromide
- Bromodichlororomethane - Exposure to high levels can cause cancer, according to the CDC.
- Tetrachloroethylene - Breathing high levels of tetrachloroethylene for a brief period may cause dizziness or drowsiness, headache, and incoordination; higher levels may cause unconsciousness and even death. Studies in humans suggest that exposure to tetrachloroethylene might lead to a higher risk of getting bladder cancer, multiple myeloma, or non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
- Xylenes, Total - No health effects have been noted at the background levels that people are exposed to on a daily basis.
According to several residents in the Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens area that KPRC 2 has spoken to in the past years, they suffer from sicknesses and cancers that they say likely came from inhaling toxic chemicals over the years.
Carolyn Green, a 75-year-old Fifth Ward resident, said the railyard caused her to get diagnosed with cancer twice.
“Well, when I was young, it used to rain in Fifth Ward. When it would rain in Fifth Ward, we always had rainbows on the ground for some reason but never knew what they were. We used to play in the rainbows and as time went on, we were told it was contamination. I assumed it was creosote, but they said it was tar,” Green said. “My mother died from cancer, colon cancer and so did my sister. I had cancer twice. I had a double mastectomy,” she said.
In 2021, a family sued Union Pacific Railroad and the City of Houston over a 13-year-old Fifth Ward resident’s death from leukemia.
The family said the Union Pacific Railroad Company “knowingly contaminated the area with creosote and other toxic chemicals, attempted to conceal the scope and danger caused by the contamination, and failed to clean it up.”
Months prior to the teen’s death, in January 2021, a state health and human services report showed children sickened with Leukemia at nearly five times the expected rate. In 2020, a state health and human services report found higher rates of lung, esophagus and throat cancer among adults in the area.
One of the most common sicknesses in the area, according to the Texas Health and Human Services are:
- Kidney
- Renal pelvis cancers
- Lymphoblastic leukemia
See more of KPRC 2′s coverage of cancer clusters: