WV spill updates

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4. CDC defends MCHM screening level

The Charleston Gazette
Thursday, May 22, 2014
CDC defends MCHM screening level
By Ken Ward Jr., Staff writer

The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is defending his agency’s actions in setting a screening level for exposure to the chemicals that contaminated the drinking water of 300,000 West Virginians following the Crude MCHM leak at Freedom Industries in early January.

Dr. Thomas Frieden insisted in a letter to Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., that the CDC had used “established, scientifically validated and recognized methods” to develop the 1-part-per-million number that state officials used as a guideline to advice residents it was safe to resume drinking and otherwise using tap water provided by West Virginia American Water after the coal-cleaning chemical leaked into the Elk River in Charleston.

The CDC’s work has been widely criticized by residents and outside experts and, recently, a team of experts appointed by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin concluded the federal agency’s screening level was not nearly stringent enough to fully protect public health.

In a Tuesday letter to Capito, Frieden responded to a list of questions the congresswoman had submitted a month ago, after a Gazette report that detailed how the CDC considered — but then abandoned — development of a separate screening level to address potential health impacts from not just drinking MCHM-contaminated water but also breathing the chemical’s fumes.

- See more at: http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20140522/GZ01/140529699/1419#sthash.ABsUhKoO.dpuf