Action | Student News
Undergrads Use Stanback Internships for Real-World Study on Suicide Rates, Cancers and Environmental Toxins
by Katherine Jennrich
Lisa Turner could smell the paper plant even before she drove into the city limits of Canton, N.C. But as the highway crested the last hill and she saw the Haywood County community spread out below her, it was the size and location of the enormous plant that shocked her.
“It looked like the mill was practically
in a neighborhood,” she recalls.
Turner, a Duke undergraduate majoring in environmental sciences, was visiting the small mountain town to research its mortality rate as part of her Stanback Internship, conducted in conjunction with the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League (BREDL).
The suicide rate in Haywood County is twice as high as is typically found in similar communities, and past studies by BREDL suggested that the alarming rate could be linked to hydrogen sulfide and other airborne toxins released from the local paper plant.
Turner’s job was to collect data that could support or refute the hypothesis.
BREDL is a regional, communitybased, nonprofit environmental organization that aims to empower communities to fight social and environmental injustice. Based in Glendale Springs, N.C., it is one of many grassroots organizations that benefit from the Stanback Internship program, which is made possible through the support of Fred and Alice Stanback of Salisbury, N.C.
The Stanback program is a partnership between the Nicholas School and targeted conservation organizations. The purpose is to provide Duke graduate and undergraduate students with significant work experience in conservation, advocacy, applied resource management or environmental policy.
Participating students, such as Turner, rate it as one of the most important experiences in their educational careers. Many of them use the opportunity to pursue work that captures their interest, not just to meet their financial needs.
Richard Weisler, an adjunct assistant professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center and an adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the scientific advisor for the BREDL project.
He began working with BREDL as a volunteer in 2003 after his mother was diagnosed with cancer. She lived in one of two neighborhoods in Salisbury where researchers had noted higher than normal cancer rates.
“Our group helped identify what turned out to be elevated rates of brain cancer, lymphomas, pancreatic cancers and all cancers as a group,” Weisler says. “This represents North Carolina’s first documented cancer cluster.”
In the process of reviewing death certificates, Weisler’s team noticed a higher than normal rate of suicides, too. The suicide rate in the two affected neighborhoods in 2003 was found to be 128 per 100,000 individuals, which was approximately 10 times the statewide average that year. For the decade, the suicide rate was more than three times the statewide average.
Noting that more than 600 formal complaints had been filed about foul odors, “bad air” and breathing problems in the same neighborhoods, Weisler’s team began investigating links between the suicide rates to hydrogen sulfide and other airborne chemicals from nearby asphalt plants.