PARKERSBURG
— The C8 Health Project estimates completion of the
ongoing testing of area residents around mid-summer.
Officials
with Brookmar Inc., appointed by the Wood County Circuit
Court to conduct the testing, encourages anyone who qualifies
for the tests to file a survey as soon as possible before
the funding runs out.
Dr.
Paul Brooks, of Brookmar, said about 39,000 people have
been tested so far. Another 32,000 people have filled out
applications and are awaiting testing. He estimated about
70,000 residents of the six affected water districts would
be tested as part of the health project.
Anyone
who resided, or worked full-time, or attended school and
would have obtained drinking water in Ohio from water systems
in Belpre, Little Hocking, Tuppers Plains, or Chester, or
Lubeck, or Mason County in West Virginia for at least a
year before December 2004 is eligible to be tested.
Residents
must provide official documents to prove their identity
and their residency, work or school attendance.
"For
a specific in-depth look at one community, this is probably
the largest study ever done. We are
identifying as many other possible risk factors, so we don’t
get misleading results; things like other exposures, diet,
other socioeconomic factors, and by doing so we may
help identify other health issues, and that could be carried
forward and be useful for the health of the community,"
said Dr. Tony Fletcher, one of the members of the C8 science
panel that will be reviewing the test results to see if
there is a possible link between C8 and human health.
PFOA,
or C8, has been used by DuPont to make Teflon since the
1950s. DuPont, which runs a plant at Washington, W.Va.,
across the Ohio River from western Washington County, maintains
that PFOA has no negative impacts on human health.
"This
is probably the most ambitious study of an environmental
health concern and quite unusual in the level of detail,"
said Dr. David Savitz, another C8 science panel member. |
What
to remember when preparing for testing
•
Children can only participate if their parent or guardian
is present. •
An adult cannot restrain a child or force him or her to
have blood drawn. •
Participants might be at the testing site for an hour or
more, and there are no public restrooms on site.
•
A post office box is not an acceptable address. All documentation
must have the participant's physical address.
•
Minors must have an official birth certificate from the
courthouse, the souvenir birth certificate received at the
hospital is not a legal birth certificate. •
Make sure you have all documentation to prove identity and
residency, work or school attendance for the qualifying
periods when you arrive.
•
For more information and lists of qualifying documents,
check the C8 Health project Web site:
http://www.c8healthproject.org/ |
