More Than 500 Cancer Families Around Fort Detrick

FREDERICK, Md. - More than 500 families who live (or once lived) around Fort Detrick have reported cancer cases, according to an activist organization. The number has grown from over 300 families to 500 families over the last few months, according to the Kristen Renee Foundation, which is prodding the government to investigate "cancer clusters" around the military research facility.

Farmer Bill Krantz, who has worked the fields around Fort Detrick for more than 50 years, says several family members have gotten cancer and he wonders if they were contaminated from aerial experiments he remembers seeing in the late 1950s.

Krantz remembers seeing what looked like confetti coming from planes, helicopters and small blimps over Fort Detrick. The debris, said Krantz, came down both inside and outside the boundaries of the military post.

"That stuff was spread high and it came down all over us,’ according to Krantz.

Some of the new anecdotal evidence has come from residents of the Clover Hill neighborhood which borders Fort Detrick.

"They talk about, when they were kids, Army jeeps coming up and asking that the children be kept inside because they were going to be spraying some, 'harmless chemicals,’" explained environmental investigator John Bee, who is working for the Renee Foundation. "But the man who reported this to us said, 'Well, we saw the animals staked out there, on area A. We saw the caged animals. We saw them - during the test - fall down and die.'"

The Maryland Department of Health is investigating the claims of the Renee Foundation that biological or chemical research at Fort Detrick (or sloppy disposal procedures) have caused an unusual number of cancer cases among the surrounding population.

A spokesman for Fort Detrick told FOX 5 by phone that the Army is fully cooperating with local, state, or federal investigations into past practices that may have led to contamination of civilian areas.

Area residents will get a briefing on the status of the investigation from the Frederick County Health officer on Thursday evening at 6:30 p.m. That meeting will be held in Winchester Hall in downtown Frederick.