GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — If you've received an invitation to take part in a PFAS assessment by giving a blood sample, you're encouraged to do so.
In conjunction with the Kent County Health Department, the state is conducting an exposure assessment to determine the relationship between drinking water with PFAS and the amount in the body.
Only a little more than 400 people have participated so far and they're hoping for another 400.
"They want to know, 'does our area, have more PFAS in their blood than other communities of similar size,'" Belmont neighbor Sandy Wynn-Stelt said.
It's a simple blood test followed by an at-home visit to test your water that the state, Kent County and Wynn-Stelt, is urging you to do.
"If you were given the letter to do it, or if you think you were given the letter or if you could have been given the letter, call the health department to get some more information about it," Wynn-Stelt said.
Wynn-Stelt was one of the 800 households selected. She first found out about her exposure to PFAS in 2017.
"I knew it was bad when like five or six governmental officials show up at your door. They're not bringing you a lottery ticket," Wynn-Stelt said.
These officials took a sample of her well water and tested it.
"The EPA recommends a 70, so 7-0, and mine was 24 and then three zeros after it [24,000]," Wynn-Stelt said.
That was in 2017. Today?
"My results just a week ago were well over 70,000 parts per trillion," Wynn-Stelt said. "My blood results are like 750 times what anyone else would have."
The news that her blood and her water were contaminated with this chemical substance caused her to question many things, including the death of her husband.
"My husband passed away in 2016 of liver cancer," Wynn-Stelt said. "My rates are extraordinarily high, and I can't even imagine what my husband's blood levels were."
She's putting her focus on the future generations, protecting them from hazardous chemicals.
"I'm not going to let my husband's death and my circumstance go to waste. I'm going to make sure this doesn't happen to someone else or at least model what to do for someone else when this happens," Wynn-Stelt said.
She says if you were selected, you would have received a letter in the mail around the holidays last year. If you're unsure if you did, call the Kent County Health Department or the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
"It's obviously too late for my husband, it's too late for me, but there are 18 kids in my neighborhood that live within a quarter mile of this dump site and they deserve to know if they're going to have clean drinking water in the future and what the health concerns are for them," Wynn-Stelt said.
Not all residents with PFAS in their private drinking water are invited to participate in the testing.
Officials said the letters were strategically sent out to provide a specific community sampling.
There is no long term commitment, just a blood test that Wynn-Stelt said took less than an hour, and a water sample.
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