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PCB CONTAMINATION Tap canoe voyagers a control group
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Posted on May 29 2000
The Tanapag Action Committee has asked Public Health Secretary Joseph Kevin Villagomez to use the voyagers from Polowat and Satawal as control group so that doctors can compare the results of polychlorinated biphenyl screening with the Tanapag villagers.
According to Juan I. Tenorio, chair of the TAC, the voyagers came from a place with no modern technology and they have not been exposed to PCB. “We strongly feel that any control group from Saipan, Tinian and Rota would be bias because they had taken part in our fiesta and other community activity in the past,” Mr. Tenorio said.
The committee members believe that the voyagers would be the best health screening control group to give a more credible comparison of the different health problems that exist within the community.
After all, the creation of a controlled group was promised to the villagers during the May 3 meeting in Tanapag, Mr. Tenorio said.
Unfortunately, nothing has been done to the request as Mr. Villagomez is off-island. At the same time, the voyagers has already left
for home.
The Tanapag health center is expected to be closed down in two weeks after 90 percent of the target number for screening in connection with potential exposure to PCB have showed up for testing.
Dr. Richard Brostrom, head of the medical team, urged all former residents of Tanapag to visit the clinic and avail of the free health evaluation. The Tanapag health clinic is open to all residents and for anyone who lived in the village for a total of three years from 1968 to the present or whose mother lived there while pregnant.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has also finished gathering more than 400 samples of soil, sediments, groundwater and food in the village which will be used to determine the level of PCB contamination in the village.
PCB contamination in the village began when an unknown quantity of capacitors containing the highly toxic chemical were shipped to Saipan in the 1960s. The Division of Environmental Quality was only notified about their presence in Tanapag village in 1988.
