An Ohio lawyer who represents an estimated 3,500 people in a class-action lawsuit against DuPont is urging the state Health Department not to downplay the health risks of a dangerous chemical that contaminated drinking water supplies in eastern Rensselaer County.

Robert A. Bilott, in a letter sent this week to the state agency’s Bureau of Water Supply Protection, said a fact sheet it posted on its website early last week fails to cite information from validated scientific studies that found a “probable link” between six serious diseases, including cancer, in people who were exposed to drinking water contaminated with PFOA.

The Health Department’s information sheet was posted on the agency’s website Aug. 1 and said “nearly all people in the United States have PFOA in their blood” and that “some human health studies have found associations between PFOA exposure and health effects. Others have not. The studies that found associations were not able to determine with certainty if the health effects were caused by PFOA or some other factors. These studies did not show that PFOA caused diseases.”

Bilott said the information is misleading, neglects to include any citations to the scientific studies that were conducted on PFOA exposure in humans, and ignores recent information on the health risks of PFOA exposure that have been put forth by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the European Union. He said the agency also is citing “outdated” information on PFOA from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

Dr. Nathan Graber, director of the state Health Department’s Center for Environmental Health, said the agency is “not trying to downplay” the health risks of exposure to perfluorooctanoic acid or other perfluoronated chemicals, and that the science on the effects of the chemicals is evolving. “It was only put on the Web and it’s only one piece of all the information we’ve put out to the community,” Graber said.

“We’re trying to be objective about providing to the public information they can use in making decisions about their health,” Graber added, explaining the fact sheet challenged by Bilott was intended to provide information ahead of blood test results released last Thursday. “Essentially, there’s always uncertainty and there’s always things that we don’t know because of the emerging science … a lot of gaps in the data that’s available.”

The Health Department’s information sheet was posted on its website several days before the agency conducted a public meeting in the village of Hoosick Falls and announced that the levels of PFOA in adult residents of the village are more than 30 times the national average. In older residents, the levels of PFOA in their blood stream were significantly higher, at roughly 91 parts per billion. The national average is about 2 ppb.

“The agency’s recent document includes language suggesting that people should ‘expect’ to find PFOA in their blood,” Bilott said. “Although it may be true that PFOA has been found in blood across the country, that data does not suggest or imply that there is any ‘normal’ or acceptable ‘background’ level of PFOA in human blood, as PFOA is a man-made, non-naturally occurring substance, and its presence in any human blood is the result of non-naturally occurring contamination.”

Bilott said the Health Department’s newest information does not provide any links, or citations of, the findings of a science panel that was formed as a result of the class-action litigation with DuPont and other manufacturers of PFOA. The panel conducted a comprehensive health study on the exposure to PFOA of people in the Ohio and West Virginia areas where PFOA was manufactured for decades. The scientists issued a peer-reviewed report that concluded the chemical has a “probable link” to six diseases: kidney cancer; testicular cancer; ulcerative colitis; thyroid disease; preeclampsia/pregnan-cy-induced hypertension; and medically diagnosed high cholesterol.

DuPont paid for the study by a group of scientists known as the “C8 Science Panel,” and, as a result of the panel’s findings, the company has to concede in the personal injury lawsuits that PFOA causes cancer.

It’s the second time Bilott has urged the Health Department to strengthen its characterization of the health effects of PFOA. In December, he criticized the agency for distributing a fact sheet to residents stating “Health effects are not expected to occur from normal use of the water.”

Graber said the advisories for PFOA exposure set by the federal government are conservative estimates based largely on animal studies and they include statistics that take into account humans will face exposure to the chemical from sources other than water.

In May, the EPA issued a new health advisory setting a long-term exposure limit of 70 parts per trillion for drinking water, down from the 400 ppt level recommended by the agency in 2009 for short-term exposure.

“There’s always emerging literature and we’ve recognized that in all of our documents,” Graber said.

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