Stella selected for five-year, $3.48 million PFAS study

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has agreed to fund a five-year study on how Stella residents are being exposed to PFAS “forever chemicals” and how that exposure may be affecting their health.

Dr. Amy Schultz, an epidemiologist at UW-Madison, announced the newly awarded funding to the Stella town board on Sept. 8. Speaking later with the Star Journal, she explained that the five-year grant totals about $3.48 million with just under $500,000 to be allocated in the first year.

The study comes nearly four years after residents first learned that some of the highest PFAS levels recorded in the country were in their rural township. PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are a large group of manmade chemicals used since the 1940s to make products resistant to water, grease, and stains — think nonstick cookware, waterproof fabrics, food packaging, and firefighting foam. They’re often called “forever chemicals” because their carbon-fluorine bonds are extremely strong and don’t break down naturally, so they persist in the environment and can accumulate in the human body.

The situation in Stella is also the subject of an ongoing federal lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. The plaintiffs, a group of Stella property owners, allege land-spreading of paper mill sludge, or fiber cake, from the Rhinelander mill, now owned by Ahlstrom and formerly known as Wausau Paper, caused the contamination. Recently, the plaintiffs filed a motion asking the court to certify the lawsuit as a class action.

What the study will look at

Schultz first pitched the study to the Stella Town Board and to a town hall meeting that drew a couple hundred residents last October, before the grant application was submitted. Community feedback at those meetings shaped the final proposal, Schultz noted. The study was originally going to focus only on PFAS exposure in adults, reflecting the community’s demographics, but Schultz expanded eligibility to residents age 6 and older after residents asked that children be included. She also added a food-testing component after residents raised concerns about contamination in home gardens.

As proposed, the study will test for PFAS in:

Blood and, optionally, urine from participants

Household dust and indoor and outdoor air

Garden soil

Garden produce such as tomatoes and potatoes

Deer meat and fish

Household drinking water

Environmental and food samples will be collected separate from the blood-draw appointments, Schultz noted.

The study has two main objectives, according to Schultz. The first is to identify the sources and pathways of PFAS exposure in the community, including testing for PFAS compounds that aren’t part of routine government monitoring.

“It’s not really necessarily hypothesis driven, although we anticipate finding some novel PFAS compounds that aren’t typically looked at,” Schultz said in an interview with the Star Journal, adding that researchers suspect some PFAS precursor compounds break down in soil, under certain conditions, into compounds such as PFOS and PFOA that have shown up at high levels in local groundwater.

The second objective focuses on a possible biological mechanism: whether PFAS exposure affects how the body metabolizes fats and lipids, including cholesterol.

“I’m hypothesizing that we’ll find it affects how fats or lipids in the body, like cholesterol levels, for instance, are presented,” Schultz said, noting the analysis will account for factors such as diet and exercise. Participants will also fill out a broader health survey, which Schultz said could help researchers spot patterns among residents that go beyond the study’s two formal hypotheses.

Schultz described the project as a large, multi-institution collaboration featuring multiple University of Wisconsin scientists. She said she is setting up two advisory groups. A governmental advisory board will include representatives from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the county health department, aimed at coordinating with work those agencies are already doing. A separate, community advisory board of about six residents will help guide the study and make sure researchers are “asking the right questions.” Schultz said she envisions a selection process — not yet finalized — in which a committee made up of community members and study-team members would review open applications and select residents representing a range of backgrounds and experiences: for example, a hunter or angler, a teacher or parent, a longtime resident, or a former mill worker.

Details about how to apply for the community advisory board, along with compensation for both advisory board members and study participants, will be released once finalized, Schultz said.

Timeline

Schultz said researchers need about two to three months to prepare study materials, including a consent form and research protocol, and to hire and train phlebotomists. The study protocol must also be approved by UW-Madison’s institutional review board, the ethics oversight body required for any human-subjects research. Schultz said she hopes to begin recruiting participants around December, with the goal of holding the first appointments before the end of the year. Enrolling the study’s full target of 450 participants could take three to six months, given the study will likely have only one or two phlebotomists conducting appointments. Each participant appointment is expected to take about an hour to an hour and a half, including the informed-consent process, a blood draw — about five teaspoons total, Schultz said — an optional urine sample, height and weight measurements, and a survey that can be completed independently or with an interviewer’s help. Researchers will not access participants’ medical records, Schultz said; all health information will come from what participants report themselves. Participants will be asked to complete the full study twice, about two years apart, so researchers can track changes over time. Some participants may also be asked if researchers can visit their homes to collect water samples and, in some cases, additional environmental and food samples. Blood will be split among certified labs for different tests, Schultz said: a lipid panel through Marshfield Clinic Laboratories, and targeted PFAS testing through the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene, which is certified under the federal Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) program. Participants’ individual PFAS results will be mailed to them within about six months of their appointment, along with a comparison to national blood-PFAS levels from the CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, Schultz said. Aggregate, anonymized results for the study as a whole are not expected until the study concludes.

Schultz said she plans to launch a study website with a timeline, frequently asked questions and short videos as more details are finalized, including how to apply for the community advisory board and how to enroll as a participant.