Tag: MCHM

One Year After the Chemical Leak, Mother and Daughter Still Don't Drink Tap Water

It was some ten days before all of the families affected by the tap water ban following Charleston’s chemical spill were able to return to life as usual within their homes. And many did just that, once again drinking, cooking and bathing with water straight from the tap. The same, however, can’t be said for every family in the valley including Lida Shepherd, who says she still won’t drink the water.

Lida Shepherd and her two-year-old daughter, Lucia live in a small apartment on the East End of Charleston. Lucia loves tea.

This time last year, tea wasn’t so easy to make. Lida and her daughter were one of many families directly affected by the January 9th chemical leak.

“When I first got the word of the chemical leak, and the chemical spill, it was very frightening,” Lida remembered, “It was very frightening to turn on the water, and that smell was, I mean it gave me headaches, I mean I had a, definitely like a physical reaction to it.”

Her reaction was similar to hundreds of Kanawha Valley residents’ reports to their doctors.

Lida and her daughter now use city water to bathe and wash dishes and laundry in, but they still refuse to drink from the tap. Instead, Lida drives 20 miles to her parent’s farm in Sissonville to collect 4 to 6 gallons of water each week from their well. It’s a practice she began a year ago when the water use ban was still in place.

“It certainly has had lasting effects on me,” she said, “It’s now, even when I travel anywhere, whereas before I absolutely, I would just drink water from tap where I go, that’s not the case anymore. I always just sort of think about where I am, and like what’s going on with the water here? There’s definitely some sort of lasting fears, and like I said, I still don’t drink the water.”

Lida is an advocate for West Virginia Free, an organization that focuses on rights for women, and she also works with the American Friends Service Committee where she directs a youth leadership program in Boone County, an area also affected by the spill.

Credit Nikthestoned / wikimedia Commons
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wikimedia Commons

“They grew up in communities where not being able to drink the water comes up a lot,” Lida noted, “This was not a new experience for them to get word that the water wasn’t safe. And so when the chemical spill happened, some of them very much reacted just like, I’m not dead yet, literally that’s one of the girls said, she’s like, oh I’m showering in it.”

Lida says some of her students, however, felt angry at their lawmakers, blaming them for letting this happen or in some cases continue to happen.

After the spill and hearing from her students, Lida says it empowered her to want to make a difference in her state. She’s often advocated for stricter regulations and held a fundraiser at the time to provide bottled water to those who needed it.

“Reflecting on the year after the chemical spill, what we’ve been able to achieve and organize around, I’m pretty impressed by. I think because Charleston, you know, sort of a population center was largely impacted; it shed light on an issue that was an issue before this chemical spill,” she said.

As for Lucia, Lida says her daughter will continue to have tea parties with drinks made from her parents’ well water. At least, for now.

Feds Say MCHM Toxic to Pregnant Rats

Federal health researchers say a chemical that spilled into 300,000 people's water supply in January is toxic to pregnant rats in high doses.The National…

Federal health researchers say a chemical that spilled into 300,000 people’s water supply in January is toxic to pregnant rats in high doses.

The National Toxicology Program provided the update Friday on MCHM, a coal-cleaning agent.

Researchers found slight fetal weight changes for rats given daily doses 150 times stronger than what officials called safe for human drinking.

At 300 times the safe level, fetal weight decreased. At 600, some rats’ fetal weight dropped, while miscarriages increased.

Others at 600 and 900 showed obvious clinical toxicity.

None showed increased external fetal birth defects.

The spill spurred a tap-water ban for days.

After declaring the water safe in January, federal officials advised pregnant women to find other water until chemicals dissipated.

They later said the water was fine for pregnant women.

Feds Describe New W.Va. Chemical Spill Studies

Federal health officials are outlining new studies on the chemicals that spilled into West Virginia’s largest drinking water supply.

The National Toxicology Program said in a Thursday memo that potential pregnancy and liver complications are among study topics.

One study will see if pregnant rats exposed to MCHM show birth defects or health issues in their offspring.

Another will see how the chemicals affect zebrafish and roundworms over their entire lifespans.

Researchers will also look at more subtle short-term changes to gene expression in rats’ livers from the chemicals.

They will keep using computer modeling to predict harmful effects of the chemicals.

Study results should be available within a year.

The January spill at Freedom Industries contaminated 300,000 people’s water for days.

The Final Moments of Freedom Industries' Tank 396

The storage tank that was the source of a chemical spill that contaminated the drinking water supply for 300,000 West Virginians on January 9 has been demolished. Tank 396, which housed the coal-scrubbing compound MCHM, was demolished Tuesday afternoon. Contractors began demolition of the tank farm on July 15.

Volunteer video producer Mike Youngren sent us this video.

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection approved a stormwater management plan for the demolition process on Monday, July 14, just one day before the demolition of the site began. As we previously reported, that plan included:

  • Freedom Industries contractors will place liners over the footprint of the tanks to prevent stormwater from unintentionally entering the ground.
  • Contractors will also halt the demolition process if more than two inches of rain falls within a six-hour period.
  • Dismantled materials will be stored within the containment wall at the site before being loaded and hauled away in roll off containers or on a truck.

Feds Commit to Health Studies on Elk River Chemical Spill

Federal, state, and Kanawha county officials met Wednesday in U.S. Senator Joe  Manchin’s Washington D.C. office to pin down plans for more studies on the January 9 chemical spill at Freedom Industries. The announcement comes as a relief to those who’ve been pressing for this development since almost day one. 

Members of the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Health, and the West Virginia Department and Health and Human Resources were part of the meeting.

The CDC denied Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s  requests for more animal toxicological studies on June 26, but Dr. Rahul Gupta of the Kanawha Charleston Health Department reports the National Toxicology Program will spend $750,000 to over a million on the studies. He says they’ll take up to a year to complete, and will address health implications on humans of the spilled chemicals.

Gupta says that, while the CDC’s early drinking water standard was sufficient at the time, he’s been calling for more information since the earliest moments of the crisis. He says the manufacturer’s studies on MCHM exposure were for industry and regulatory purposes only and shouldn’t be applied to human health.

“We need to make sure that, while this initial industry data was adequate enough initially—because that’s all we had to develop a screening level on an emergency basis—we must go back to the laboratory,” said Gupta.

Gupta points to studies conducted by his own organization as well as the DHHR–in conjunction with the CDC. Studies that show that somewhere between a third and one and five residents reported health symptoms related to the spill. 

“Lots of data and studies have been established since that demonstrates that it seems that significant exposure may have happened,” he said. “In that light, what we have been talking about is having some way of having some surveillance system in place that will take into account the long term impact—if any exists—on human health.” 

The CDC has also committed to visit West Virginia within the next two months to start crafting a long-term health monitoring program.

Study: MCHM Could Be More Toxic Than Previously Thought

  A new study shows a chemical that spilled into West Virginia’s biggest drinking water supply in January could be more toxic than a previous test indicated. But the researcher behind the study cautions there are differences between his tests and earlier studies.

University of South Alabama researcher Dr. Andrew Whelton released the findings Thursday from crude MCHM toxicity tests on freshwater fleas.

His results indicate it takes much less exposure for the chemical to be toxic to fleas than a 1998 study showed. Eastman Chemical, crude MCHM’s manufacturer, conducted the older study.

Whelton tried to replicate Eastman’s results three times and was unsuccessful.

“To conduct the study, we used the same organism that they used, we used the same environmental conditions, we used the same water chemistry, we conducted it for the same length of time, the same water temperature—and we didn’t get the same results as they did,” explained Whelton.

But, Whelton noted there are some differences, including the exact compound his study used as compared to Eastman’s research.

“If you look at the [Material Safety Data Sheet], there’s a variation in how much of each different ingredient is present. And, so, that could be one of the reasons why our data do not match their data,” he said.

The study has not yet undergone peer review although Whelton said he plans to go through the process that will allow other scientists to scrutinize his work. He also noted the tests on freshwater fleas are far removed from directly applying to human exposure.

Whelton used a $70,000 National Science Foundation grant for that project and others. He presented the research Thursday to National Association of City and County Health Officials at their annual conference in Atlanta.

Whelton, who also led the taxpayer-funded West Virginia Testing Assessment Project to sample homes affected by the spill at Freedom Industries, said he is planning stages of teaming with the U.S. Geological Survey to research MCHM’s toxicity on fish and other aquatic life.

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