Published August 21, 2003 in the Midland (MI) Daily News

By Beth Medley Bellor

FREELAND — More than 100 people were interested enough in dioxin and its potential health impact to spend their Tuesday evening inside a high school auditorium.

Susan Carrington of The Dow Chemical Co., who has been put in charge of addressing area concerns about dioxin, opened the public comment period by saying the company wants to go beyond the 25-person study proposed by the Michigan Department of Community Health and start with a much larger study, totally designed and conducted by an agency such as the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry or the Centers for Disease Control. If the only barrier is funding, she said, Dow will pay, even for testing residents outside the designated area, if that will give them peace of mind.

Further criticism of the 25-person study proposed in June led the MDCH’’s Dr. David Wade to step forward.

“I’’m getting a little bit tired of being misunderstood,” he said, emphasizing the small study is only an initial step. The state has looked at four homes so far of 30, and will ask those residents if they want to be tested.

The ATSDR gave conditional approval for the $40,000 study just Tuesday, and once the MDCH answers some questions, it will release the protocol for the study. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality also plans a $300,000 soil sampling.

Wade said the pilot study is meant to get quick information because his department does not yet know if soil is a significant pathway. It also will help determine logistics for a larger study, for example, how to get the needed 80 milliliters of blood from each test subject.

Dr. Suzanne White, medical director of the Regional Poison Control Center, had said the body burden of dioxin in the general population is estimated at 25 parts per trillion in body fat, or 5 nanograms per kilogram. Freeland resident Vince Castellanos asked how to tie that to the 90 ppt action level set by the DEQ.

DEQ staffers hastened to explain that 90 ppt is a soil concentration level, not a blood level, although it was established in response to cancer incidence and adult dioxin exposure.

A soil level of 90 ppt does not automatically bring ill effects, Wade said. “But how far above 90, that’’s the question we’’re trying to answer.” He added that while the MDCH conducts its exposure studies, the DEQ may use that information to order remediation by Dow.

Carrington had the handwashing stations installed recently at Freeland Festival and Imerman parks and said the company wants to arrange meetings with area residents and mentioned wild animal studies she said Dow hopes will be done in time for this year’’s deer hunting season.

Ruth Averill, a Tittabawassee Township trustee and member of the Saginaw County parks board, expressed some frustration with the length of time health studies will take –– perhaps several years.

“I want short-term action to control this risk,” she said. “We have athletes who run in Imerman Park. Just washing their hands is not going to work.”

The meeting was held in part to introduce area residents to Dr. Henry Falk, who heads the ATSDR and recently also was tapped for the National Center for Environmental Health. It was a petition to the ATSDR that initially brought renewed interest in dioxin.

The ATSDR was created by Superfund legislation and works at about 500 sites a year, often helping set up action groups, he explained. It does not have its own laboratories but partners with the CDC.

“There is no perfect design in terms of a study,” Falk said, noting any work must answer questions most important to residents and not necessarily those that most interest researchers. “It takes a lot of thought to do the right kind of investigation.”

White presented an overview of the toxicity and human health effects of dioxin. One of the few chemical families labeled as a known carcinogen, dioxin increases the risk of cancer at multiple sites, including lung cancer, and may be tied to soft-tissue sarcoma; it seems to have little if any link to non-Hodgkins lymphoma or skin cancer.

The non-cancer ties are many:

• •There is good evidence linking dioxin exposure to chloracne; liver enzyme changes, without evidence of disease; and reproductive hormone changes such as lowered testosterone and libido.
• •Possible but debatable effects include blood lipid abnormalities such as higher cholesterol or triglycerides, diabetes, and postnatal development, especially neurobehavioral, thyroid, liver enzyme and platelet abnormalities.
• •Good evidence in animals, but for which human data is inconclusive, ties dioxin exposure to circulatory and immunologic problems, semen changes and endometriosis. Sensitivity varies widely; it is high in guinea pigs and low in hamsters, with humans falling somewhere in between.
• •There is lack of evidence for long-term thyroid gland, renal, pulmonary or adult neurological effects.