A Boston area hospital is investigating five nurses who worked in the same bed after developing a brain tumor.
In total, mass general Brigham Newton Wellesley Hospital said 11 employees in the fifth floor obstetrics department have identified health concerns. There are five brain tumors, all of which are benign. Two of these are the most common and benign types, according to a hospital in Newton, Massachusetts, about 10 miles west of Boston. It’s a meningioma.
“The investigation found no environmental risks associated with brain tumor development,” hospital Jonathan Sonis said in a statement with Associate Nurse Sandy Muse Jonathan Sonis.
The hospital said the investigation was completed in collaboration with government health and safety officials and considered multiple possible sources. It ruled out disposable masks, water supplies, nearby X-rays and chemotherapy treatments on the floor below, the hospital said.
“Based on these results, we can confidently reassure our dedicated team…and we will make every patient patient that there are no environmental risks in our facilities,” the administrator said.
The Massachusetts Nurse Association, a union negotiating nurse compensation at Newton Wellesley Hospital, said it will continue to investigate.
“The best way we can help now is to complete an independent scientific investigation,” MNA spokesman Joe Markman said in a statement Friday. “The efforts are ongoing and may take several more weeks.”
The union showed that nurses have advanced workplace health concerns, leading to the discovery of people with tumors.
“The hospital only spoke to a small number of nurses and their environmental tests were not comprehensive,” he said in a statement. “The hospital cannot erase this issue by trying to provide a given conclusion.”
A spokesman for the state agency was unable to provide definitive information on the issue by the deadline. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The American Cancer Society states that in order to meet the definition of cancer clusters, it needs to affect many people “larger than expected” when the baseline of outbreak is established, with the same area, of the same type, with the same cause.
“Four out of four out of 10 people in the United States develop cancer during their lifetime,” the association said on the Cancer Cluster webpage. “So it’s not uncommon for some people in a relatively small area to develop cancer at about the same time.”
