A study of chemical exposure in Brunswick had already revealed elevated blood levels of pollutants including PCBs. But at a community meeting Tuesday Emory toxicologist Prinn Panuwet still drew applause for his succinct summary of the study’s importance.
“I think we have added fundamental information to prove that these chemicals make their way to our body,” said Panuwet, assistant professor at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health.
Brunswick residents live with a toxic legacy from industry in the area, with much of that industry adjacent to historically Black neighborhoods. The county is home to four Superfund cleanup sites — including ones associated with LCP Chemicals and Hercules, Inc. — as well as 12 state-designated hazardous waste sites. The study was designed to look for contaminants known to be associated with these sites, like mercury, PCBs, and certain pesticides.
Last spring, Emory researchers took blood samples from 100 volunteers last and analyzed them for a host of contaminants including many used or produced by local industries. Individuals received their personal results privately. At a community meeting in September, the study’s co-leader, Noah Scovronick, shared a preliminary analysis of the group results showing blood levels higher in some of those contaminants, including PCBs, than for average Americans.
Scovronick’s team had crunched the numbers further by Tuesday and reported that some risk factors for higher exposure appeared to be emerging, including older age, being an angler, being Black and working at LCP Chemicals or Hercules or living with someone who worked at these plants. But these results are still preliminary and have not been peer-reviewed or published, stressed Scovronick, assistant professor in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. The study size is also a limitation. Scrovronick have already applied to the National Institutes of Health for funding to expand the exposure study to 500 participants and look at potential health impacts. While in Brunswick on Tuesday his team also collected additional samples from about 10 of the original participants to complete tests that weren’t possible with the limited volume of their first blood draw.
Community partners at the meeting emphasized the next steps they would be taking. For Dr. Kavanaugh Chandler, CEO of the nonprofit Coastal Community Health, that means paying attention to residents’ health now.
“The fact is that, yes, there’s toxins, there are issues here. But people still have to live with their day to day, and how do you deal with the existing health issues that you may have, that potentially may be associated to this or not?” he said. “The very issue is that many of these individuals throughout our community don’t have the appropriate access. So as a federally qualified health center, I thought it’s important that we be part of this process.”
Coastal Community Health is using webinars provided by Emory to educate local healthcare providers about health issues that could be associated with these pollutants.
“If you hear someone discussing they’re not feeling well, let’s not just bypass that, right?” Chandler urged. “Go, go check it out. You know, you’re coughing, maybe it might be something deeper to that. And really, that’s about preventive care. And we want to ensure that while we try to figure out the long term solutions, whether it’s legally, financially, and otherwise, you still have to deal with that today. “In the moment, right? So if you’re sick, we want to be able to address that at the same time.”
Tuesday’s forum attracted about 100 residents and allowed community members like Alice Norman, 72, to share her knowledge of how the area developed, which could provide clues to exposures.
“Anything north of Elm Street is on the Hercules dump, including the hospital because that’s where it originally started,” she said.
Norman said after the meeting that while she hadn’t been aware of the the first round of blood testing she would be interested in participating in an expanded study.
Along with Coastal Community Health, other community groups involved in the study include the Environmental Justice Advisory Board, One Hundred Miles, Glynn Environmental Coalition, UGA Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant, the Coastal Equity and Resilience Hub, the Community First Planning Commission, and the Urbana/Perry Park Neighborhood Planning Assembly.
Alice Keyes of One Hundred Miles advocated for residents to push the state and federal government to conduct a natural resources damage assessment.
“A natural resources damage assessment is a process that the federal and state agencies go through to evaluate how much has been lost to the public from the damage caused by hazardous spills,” Keyes said. “There was a natural resource damage assessment done in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil spill, and it resulted in billions of dollars invested in restoration. These natural resource damage assessments are also done for these Superfund sites.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration leads these assessments after a site with a marine component has been cleaned up, Keyes said. With remediation of the marsh portion of the LCP Chemicals Superfund site nearing completion, that window is opening.
Brunswick residents in the audience at Howard Coffin Park Community Center repeatedly raised the issue of continuing pollution in Glynn County.
“I’m a high school science teacher,” said one woman. “It just annoys me that the children are being exposed to it. Everybody’s being exposed and nobody wants to say, you know, what’s that smell? ‘Oh, it’s eggs and bacon.’ No, it’s not. It’s toxins.”
Rachael Thompson of Glynn Environmental Coalition, which has a grant to begin monitoring air quality, urged residents to report any air pollution they detect.
“One of the most important things you can do is ‘smell something, tell something,'” she said. “There are reporting tools. There are some on our website. There’s also a group on Facebook that’s called ‘Smell something tell something’ that was a group that was created by a resident downtown.”
Glynn Environmental Coalition’s online reporting tool is available here.
The Tide brings regular notes and observations on news and events by The Current staff.