The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit has identified a cancer cluster in Remington Park.
While the Health Unit is conducting its own investigation, so is a group of concerned residents that feel the air quality could be causing harm.
On Saturday, they started a white flag campaign.
A group of six individuals went canvassing the area and placing white flags on lawns and leave them for the next two months.
They hope by doing this they can determine what the air quality is like and whether or not it's a factor in many community members falling ill.
Something's got to be done to find out what's causing this," says Mark Langlois, a concerned resident.
The flags will pick up airborne particulate from local businesses and traffic areas.
Cancer Care Ontario says Remington Park has twice the provincial average of lung cancer between 2000 and 2009.
The Health Unit has been conducting town halls along with their own investigation to determine why the rate of lung cancer is so high in this concentrated area.
"The next stages of the investigation really involve reaching out to those individuals or their next of kin to gather the detailed information to tell us if there's something we should be chasing down even further," says Dr. Gary Kirk.
The next step for the group is to collect the flags once the two month duration is over.
They will then take the flags to a lab at the University of Windsor to find out what the air quality is like.
After that, they plan to distribute their findings to local businesses as well as the Health Unit.
