State health officials held a meeting in Portsmouth Thursday night to discuss the results of over 1500 blood tests from people exposed to contaminated water at the former Pease Air Force base.
After perfluorochemicals, or PFCs, were detected in a well that supplied the former Pease Air Force base in 2014, the State Department of Health and Human Services began offering blood tests to people who were potentially exposed.
Last night at the Community Campus in Portsmouth, State Epidemiologist Ben Chan reviewed the aggregate results of those tests. The takeaway:
“PFOS, PFOA, and PFHxS, all three of these were all found in statistically higher levels in the Pease population compared to the general U.S. population.”
But Chan says compared to other exposed communities around the country, the PFC blood levels of the Pease population are much lower.
Still, many who attended expressed frustration that the data from the blood tests isn’t being used to study the health effects of PFCs, which are so far poorly understood.