State Seeking People to Test in East Metro for PFCs

By Paul Walsh, Star Tribune, Minneapolis

Jul. 9–State health officials said today that they will soon begin recruiting participants in the east metro for a study that will try to measure how much perfluorochemicals (PFCs) are in their bodies.

The 3M Co. produced PFCs at its Cottage Grove facility from the late 1940s until 2002. Common products that contain the chemicals include nonstick cookware, stain-resistant carpets and fabrics, firefighting foam and other industrial applications.

PFC-containing wastes were disposed in a number of landfills in the east metro and have seeped into the groundwater and contaminated numerous private wells and some municipal wells.

3M has financed a filtering system for two Oakdale wells and hookups with city water for more than 200 Lake Elmo homes whose wells showed PFC levels above state health guidelines.

Meanwhile, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is overseeing plans to clean up the sources of the PFCs that remain buried in one area landfill, two former 3M dumps and at the company’s Cottage Grove plant.

The legislatively required study will measure PFC levels in 200 adults who live in the east metro area, where the drinking water has been found to contain PFCs, the state Health Department said.

The study will help to determine whether the adults have elevated levels of PFCs in their bodies compared to the general population, the Health Department said.

To be eligible, adults must live in one of the two communities that are part of the study:

–Households served by the Oakdale municipal water supply.

–Households in Lake Elmo and Cottage Grove with private wells contaminated with perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and/or perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA).

Also, potential study participants must have been living at their current home before Jan. 1, 2005.

This month, the Health Department will send letters to 500 randomly selected households served by the Oakdale’s water supply. In Cottage Grove and Lake Elmo, letters will be sent to all eligible households based on Health Department records of private wells that were sampled in the area.

From the forms that are returned, 100 people from each of the two communities (Oakdale and Lake Elmo/Cottage Grove) will be selected at random and asked to be part of the study.

The study’s results will help health officials make recommendations about further public health actions, including possibly developing an ongoing program at the Health Department for measuring environmental chemicals in people’s bodies. There is little information available on the health effects of PFCs in the general population. Studies by 3M of workers exposed to PFCs during manufacturing show no apparent impact on their health. Studies on animals have shown some health effects, such as on the liver, thyroid and pancreas. But it is unclear whether these problems are likely to occur in humans and at what levels of exposure.

“Research into the effects that PFCs may have on people’s health is relatively new. It will take many years — and many studies — before scientists understand any links between PFCs and human health,” said Jean Johnson, the Health Department’s director for environmental health tracking and biomonitoring.

Star Tribune staff writer Tom Meersman contributed to this report.

–Paul Walsh –612-673-4482

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