The court appointed panel of 3 epidemiologists hoped to begin releasing their findings early this spring, but lacking the body of data to do so they're now embarking on a new study using their own blood draws.

Yesterday, Dr. Kyle Steenland made the announcement:

“We're here to announce the half-life study, which is a study about how fast C8 clears from the body,” Steenland said. “So, people drink water with C8 in it and then it is excreted. The question is how fast that process happens.”

Some studies have suggested the half life of C8 may be between 4 and 8 years. The Science Panel hopes they can pinpoint a more specific number by observing 200 local people over four years time. Steenland said 200 residents of Lubeck and Little Hocking will be randomly selected to participate.

“We're focusing on Lubeck and Little Hocking because those filtration systems have not been installed yet,” Steenland said. “So, we'll take people from the C8 Health Project and ask them to participate for 200 we'll take blood now, before the filtration systems and then afterwards, for a period of up to four years.”

Over that time, the random participants may be asked for as many as eight blood draws to monitor the chemical's progress on leaving the human body. But, they'll also be paid a stipend of $50 for their inconvenience.

The panel still hopes to obtain the voluminous database from health project administrators later this year. Steenland said cleaning up the data has proven to be a very time consuming process, but the trio will need the information to proceed with many of their planned studies.

“We have not yet received the final data set from Brookmar and that has slowed us down a little bit on the analysis we were going to do with that database. We anticipate still receiving it in the near future and being able to do those analysis,” Steenland said.

The Science Panel is charged with reviewing available human data to determine specifically if C8 poses health problems for humans. Their findings will determine the outcome of a class action lawsuit against DuPont, which was filed after area residents learned their water supplies had been contaminated with the manufacturing chemical.