Six law firms in Ontario, Canada, have filed for permission to launch a $C300m (£135m; $203m) class action suit on behalf of victims of Canada's worst incident of contamination of water by Escherichia coli, in which 14 people have died.The defendants are the public utilities commission of the town of Walkerton, where the contamination took place; its manager Stan Koebel; the corporation of the municipality of Brockton; and the Bruce-GreyOwen Sound health unit, the district health unit that Walkerton is in. The Ontario government will be added if the class action is approved by the Ontario Superior Court.Lead plaintiffs Jamie Smith and Alana Dalton are each claiming $C200m. Mr Smith was unable to continue to work as a teacher because of E coli infection and moved his family to avoid further exposure. Ms Dalton and her 3 year old son, Matthew Cronin, were both infected and also relocated.Some 2000 of the town's 5000 residents became ill as a result of the outbreak.
Bladder tumors initially may be diagnosed by excretory urography in patients undergoing the examination because of specific symptoms or unrelated complaints. Among seven strategies tested by six experienced readers, the combination of early, full-bladder, and postvoiding anteroposterior radiographs was most successful in identifying bladder tumors in a series including 20 cases of biopsy-proved bladder tumor and 19 cases of cystoscopically normal bladders. The postvoiding radiograph, when viewed alone, was the single most valuable projection, and resulted in the correct diagnosis of 14 cancers that were not appreciated on any other single radiograph for a given case. The addition of oblique projections to the other three views did not significantly increase diagnostic sensitivity.
Calcium oxalate crystals were obtained from urine specimens submitted to a hospital laboratory. The incidence of crystalluria was 4.2 per cent of 42 times the maximum reported incidence of urinary calculi. In our opinion the crystalluria was real and not artifactual. The crystalline structure was determined by polarized light, x-ray diffraction and electron microprobe analysis. Calcium oxalate occurs in several forms--the dihydrate as bipyramidal and dodecahedral prisms, the monohydrate as biconcave ovals, dumbbell shapes and intermediate forms.
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