What Waycross wonders: Did pollution give kids cancer?

What would you think if four children in a sparsely populated region of Georgia were diagnosed with very rare forms of cancer during a two-month period of the same summer?

Here's what the residents of Waycross and neighboring Brantley County think: That the cause could be environmental pollution.

Waycross — the only incorporated community in Ware County, which sits on the Florida line — in particular has a history of problems with industrial contamination.

State Rep. Jason Spencer, a Woodbine Republican whose district includes Ware County, has heard the community's concerns and believes the childhood cancers are a red flag.

“I want (the Department of Public Health) to really dive into this issue,’’ said Spencer, a physician assistant.

But there are challenges to establishing a direct cause to cancer, as well as to determining whether a cancer outbreak is a “cancer cluster.”

What are those challenges? What is a cancer cluster? And what environmental pollution problems has Waycross wrestled?