Health

HEALTH AGENCIES, STUDIES, AND TESTS INVOLVED

Illinois Department of Public Health Assessment and Health Consultation in cooperation with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry

• IDPH is a federal agency that reviews information about hazardous substances at waste sites and evaluates whether exposure to these substances might cause human risk.
• The ATSDR uses existing scientific information, including the results of medical, toxicologic, and epidemiologic studies and the data collected in disease registries to determine the health effects of exposure.
• The assessment said that the receptor population includes nearby residents, recreational users, and fishers potentially exposed to the past, present, or future contaminants.
• high levels of pentachlorophenol (PCP) or PAHs from groundwater
• low levels of arsenic and lead
• The assessment concluded that the levels of contaminants found meet the benchmark to be considered no risk to humans.
• Darryl Weber, a retired electrician who lost his mother, Nannie Tisdale, to breast cancer after living near the Koppers plant over a series of years.

Independent genetic study

• Eva Tidwell and her genetic specialists concluded that the cancer she was diagnosed with was not due to hereditary reasons.
• Tidwell’s clinical summary documented by Invitae, which offers health consultations about cancer and genetic illness, said there was a negative result for pathogenic sequence variants, deletions, or duplicates identified.
• According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), a government agency for cancer research, there was no sign of a pathogenic variant, genetic alteration that increases an individual’s susceptibility to disease in Tidwell’s case.
• However, this result does not eliminate the possibility that her condition had a genetic component.