TAMPA - Cancer rates around the Coronet Industries factory in Plant City are below the state average, a state report released Thursday concludes - a finding that suggests fears about a pollution epidemic may be overblown.
Officials at the much-maligned plant said they were thrilled with the state Department of Health report, but health officials continue to urge caution.
The report is "reassuring but it does not absolutely prove there has been no illness caused in that area," said Doug Holt, who directs the Hillsborough County Health Department and heads a multiagency investigation into Coronet. Thursday's report is part of that wider inquiry.
The latest findings come as the aging factory, which turns phosphate into a chicken-feed additive, prepares to shut down at the end of this month. Company officials blame a shrinking market, not environmental problems.
But the plant has drawn a barrage of negative media reports and the attention of U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, celebrity lawyer Johnnie Cochran and the California law firm that employs Erin Brockovich.
The new report isn't likely to quell fears or stymie lawsuits, including one that Brockovich's firm filed on behalf of 1,200 residents. But it adds to mounting evidence that the plant is not poisoning its neighbors.
Since public concern swelled into near panic last summer, a team of government agencies has examined water, air and soil around the plant and found no major problems.
Perhaps the most troubling findings came in tests showing elevated levels of arsenic, boron and radioactive articles - all pollutants linked to phosphate processing - in dozens of drinking-water wells near the plant. In response, the state is providing bottled water to more than 40 families.
But even so, health officials say the pollution levels are not high enough to cause either serious or widespread health problems.
For the most recent report, officials pored through the Florida Cancer Data System, a statewide registry that includes 1.3-million cancer cases. Virtually all cancers diagnosed by Florida doctors are included in the system.
Investigators zeroed in on a 48-square-mile area around the plant and looked at data between 1990 and 2000. They limited the review to cancers known to be caused by the pollutants in question, including bone, bladder, breast, lung and prostate cancers.
The result: Cancer rates were lower than the state average for both black and white residents.
The only exception was higher melanoma rates among white residents, but officials said those rates were not high enough to be "statistically significant."
Residents were stumped.
The report "doesn't make any sense," said Elaine Edenfield, the mother of a cancer survivor and one of the people who first brought cancer rates to the attention of authorities. "We've got more cases out here than we've ever had. And it's house to house to house to house."
Authorities have not looked into the rates of other reported illnesses, including developmental disorders, but said Thursday they will do so. They also said other tests remain to be done, including an analysis of fish in ponds near the plant.
