For five years, our community waited for what we were told would be a cancer study for the Housatonic River area. People rearranged their hope around that word: study. A study tests causes, handles latency, uses exposure data, and applies modern statistics. A study tries to answer the hard question.

What arrived in September 2025 was not that.

What the state released

Massachusetts DPH published something they call an “Updated Cancer Incidence Evaluation in Response to Community Concerns about PCB Contamination.” Translation: a screening exercise that compares registry counts in our towns to statewide averages and eyeballs maps of where cases lived at the time of diagnosis. It explicitly says it did not reconstruct where people lived over time and did not integrate measured PCB exposure data from blood or indoor air. It reports no consistent elevations for cancers most strongly linked to PCBs, highlights elevated colorectal cancer across several towns, and leans on tobacco as a likely driver. Mass.gov

Local coverage repeated the topline: “no correlation found,” “no unusual clustering,” and similar language that sounds definitive to a casual reader.

What we asked for

From the start, residents and city officials asked for a real epidemiologic study. That means:

• Include melanoma, a cancer with stronger evidence of PCB association.
• Account for cancer latency by considering residential history, not just address at diagnosis.
• Incorporate exposure data already measured here, including serum PCBs and indoor air results.
• Use modern statistical tools that do not erase rare cancers or smooth away signals.
• Run real spatial statistics, not just visual dot maps.

That is the floor, not the ceiling.

What DPH delivered instead

Let’s call out the core choices in the state’s own materials and response:

• They excluded melanoma because non-hospital reporting is incomplete and would bias rates downward locally. They did not present sensitivity analyses that would still inform the public. Melanoma is a major endpoint in PCB science. Leaving it out removes an important signal. Mass.gov
• They used address at diagnosis only. That ignores decades-long latency and erases people who lived here for years, then moved before diagnosis. The report admits this limitation and proceeds anyway.
• They did not integrate exposure data. The evaluation was “not designed” to use blood or air measurements. That choice detaches the analysis from what residents actually breathed or carried in their blood.
• They relied on SIRs and suppressed “small numbers.” This standard can guarantee that rarer cancers never rise above the noise, especially without pooling, smoothing, or longer windows built to find environmental signals.
• They used qualitative mapping instead of spatial statistics. “No unusual clustering” is a conclusion drawn from basic mapping and census-tract summaries, not rigorous distance-to-source or latency-adjusted models.

DPH’s reply to my letter spells this out even more plainly: this was “a cancer incidence evaluation, not a full epidemiologic study,” the scope approved by the City Council subcommittee was a “screening-level review,” melanoma was excluded due to reporting bias, residential histories weren’t used because registries don’t collect them, and more complex spatial modeling was “beyond the scope.” In other words, the scope was drawn to miss what we needed measured.

Here is the response.

The bait-and-switch

For years, the public heard “study.” At release, the state re-labels it a “screening-level review.” A screen is a quick check. A study is an investigation. Communities do not wait five years for a screen. The word swap matters because officials and headlines then say “no unusual patterns” and “no correlation,” which most people reasonably hear as “PCBs not linked to cancer here.” That is not what a limited screen can prove. The Berkshire Edge

Why this framing is harmful

When an agency excludes a key cancer, ignores latency, omits measured exposure data, and trims methods to the most basic registry math, the result is pre-decided silence. That silence travels faster than the footnotes. It buys time for polluters and regulators, not answers for families.

What I asked DPH, in writing

I wrote to DPH with specific questions:

• Why exclude melanoma rather than present careful, qualified analyses.
• Why use address at diagnosis only when latency is measured in decades.
• Why exclude exposure data we already have, including documented blood and indoor air PCB levels in Pittsfield homes.
• Why rely on SIRs and small-number suppression without modern tools.
• Why point back to smoking as a catch-all while acknowledging smoking data limitations.
• Why reduce spatial analysis to mapping by density.

DPH’s response confirms each of those choices, and confirms the product was never designed to answer the community’s core question.

What needs to happen now

1. Correct the record. State plainly that this was not a study. Headlines and talking points that say “no correlation” or “no unusual clustering” mislead the public when based on a screen with these constraints.
   
2. Commission a real study. Scope an independent epidemiologic investigation that:

• includes melanoma,
• reconstructs residential histories,
• integrates measured exposure data from blood, indoor air, soil, dust, fish, and waterfowl,
• applies modern statistical and spatial methods that can actually detect environmental signals.

3. Center transparency. Post all correspondence, meeting notes, scope drafts, and data dictionaries in one public place so residents can follow the process without translation.

Where we go from here

Public health is not available for manipulation. If the methods cannot see, the conclusion cannot speak. Our community deserves science that is worthy of the people who lived this history in their bodies, not a checkbox exercise that treats absence of evidence like evidence of absence.

I’m asking DPH to correct the public messaging, commit to a full study with modern methods, and put the community at the table for scope and oversight. I’m also asking local officials and our federal partners to back that demand with timelines, funding, and an independent team.

If you’re a resident: share this post, attend the next council meeting, and add your name to the open letter calling for a real study with real methods. If you’re press: quote the scope accurately. If you’re a policymaker: choose the science that can answer the question.

No more blurry mirrors. We can handle the truth. We just need tools that can see it.