University of Pennsylvania - Folklore and Folklife - Center for Folklore and Ethnography

For more information about the Center for Folklore & Ethnography,at UPenn, contact Professor Mary Hufford at mhufford@sas.upenn.edu.

To be added to the CFE mailing list, contact Joyce Roselle, at jroselle@sas.upenn.edu

For assistance with the Folklore and Folklife website, contact Linda Lee at lindalee@sas.upenn.edu.

Monitoring for Community Exposure to Perfluorooctonate (C8) 2003-2007

The principal investigator on this project is Dr. Ted Emmett, of the University of Pennsylvania's Occupational Medicine program, in the Medical School. Dr. Emmett received a four year grant from NIH to study the presence of C8 in the community of the Little Hocking Watershed, located in Washington County, Ohio. The source of the C8 is the DuPont Washington Works plant in Wood County, West Virginia. The plant is located downstream of the community, but upwind. C8 is a surfactant used in the process of manufacturing Teflon. It has been linked with cancer in studies of laboratory animals, travels through the air, and is biopersistent. Because this is an environmental justice grant, and entails working with a community within the Appalachian region, Emmett requested the CFE to provide social scientific measures for evaluating the study's outcomes. Mary Hufford serves in this capacity.

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