Body Burden: The amount of a chemical stored in the body at a given time, especially a potential toxin in the body as the result of exposure.

BODY BURDEN STUDY UPDATE (May 15, 2010) Dear Community Member, Thank you for your continued interest in the East Bay Body Burden project. Global Community Monitor and the Study Team continue to move this project forward. We are working on a partnership with the Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit at University of California, San Francisco. With their involvement, we are revising our protocol to produce the most in depth study that accurately portrays the industrial metals exposure in the West Berkeley and West Oakland communities. Our study time line is currently being revised to reflect the new partnership and protocol revisions. Our goal is to submit all paperwork throughout April and early May and start the study in late spring/early summer (May/June) with a final report by fall 2010. Our current protocol includes blood testing of children, middle age and elderly residents living with in .6 miles of Pacific Steel Casting (Berkeley) or Custom Alloy Scrap Sales (Oakland). However, one of the aspects of the protocol we are debating is whether the study should focus ONLY on children ages 5-12. As soon as the protocol is approved, the study team will be in touch to conduct a screening questionnaire to see if you or your family would be eligible for the study. If you are not eligible, GCM and the study team will prepare a packet of informational resources that will be made available to interested community members that may want to pursue their own independent testing. If you, have any questions, comments, suggestions or concerns, or would like to be removed from this update list, please feel free to contact me by email: ruth@gcmonitor.org or by phone: (510) 233-1870. You can get all the latest information on the East Bay Body Burden Study at www.gcmonitor.org OR www.berkeleymonitor.org. For clean air and healthy communities, Ruth Breech, East Bay Body Burden Study Principal Investigator Program Director, Global Community Monitor Print: PDF version

 

Body Burden Study for Northwest Berkeley

The ongoing debate about toxic emissions in northwest Berkeley and their health impacts may be closer to resolve with the advent of a project that will collect blood samples during the next several months. This community effort is funded by the Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation to provide a better understanding of the toxic impacts from the area’s poor air quality. The principal focus of this study centers on those who live, work, and attend schools and childcare facilities downwind from Pacific Steel Casting, a local foundry and Berkeley’s biggest air polluter. 

This area, often referred to as the Oceanview district, has more than a twenty-five year history of noxious odors and unanswered questions about its air quality. For years, the City of Berkeley, its zoning board, and even our regional air regulator, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, have dismissed the idea that there could be any health impacts associated with the foundry’s emissions. This posture has been bolstered by their lack of effective offsite monitoring.

Two years ago, the emissions dilemma took a turn for the better when Global Community Monitor, an internationally renowned environmental justice group, began working within the affected Berkeley community. The body burden project, designed by GCM to test for evidence of accumulated metals in blood, is the newest in a series of community-directed monitoring efforts. The results should very interesting indeed. -Read more-
Source: L A Wood, Berkeley Daily Planet, October 29, 2009

ALSO see: California Environmental Contaminant Biomonitoring Program
also called the CECBP