PARKERSBURG - DuPont and attorneys who represented area residents in the C8 class-action lawsuit announced Thursday they have jointly selected a three-member panel of physicians to determine "the nature and extent of whatever medical monitoring may be appropriate" for class members under the terms of the lawsuit settlement.
The class-action lawsuit, filed over releases of ammonium perfluorooctanoate, also known as C8, from DuPont Washington Works, was settled in 2005. As part of that settlement a three-member independent panel of epidemiologists was jointly chosen by the parties.
The C8 Science Panel is to determine whether there are any probable links between C8 exposure and human disease.
The newly appointed C8 Medical Panel will determine the nature and extent of any medical monitoring that would be appropriate for class members for any disease of which the C8 Science Panel finds a probable link.
The C8 Medical Panel members are:
* Dr. Dean Baker, a professor of medicine, pediatrics and epidemiology at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine. He is also director of the UC Irvine Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, a state-mandated center for the study and prevention of occupational and environmental exposures, diseases and injuries. For more than three decades, Baker has conducted substantive and methodological research in occupational and environmental health particularly on environmental exposures and diseases of children and work-related diseases of adults. He also directs an occupational medicine residency program to train physicians as specialists in occupational and environmental health.
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Panel
Dr. Dean Baker, a professor of medicine, pediatrics and epidemiology at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine.
Dr. Melissa McDiarmid is a professor of medicine, epidemiology and public health at the University of Maryland.
Dr. Harold Sox, a professor of medicine emeritus at Dartmouth Medical School and the associate director for faculty at Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.
* Dr. Melissa McDiarmid is a professor of medicine, epidemiology and public health at the University of Maryland. She is also director of the school's Occupational/Environmental Health Program. From 1991-1996 McDiarmid was director of the Office of Occupational Medicine for the United Staets Occupational Safety and Health Administration. She has authored numerous journal articles and book chapters on occupational and environmental medicine related to health care workers, medical surveillance and management, reproductive hazards, occupational cancers and Gulf War environmental exposures.
* Dr. Harold Sox, a professor of medicine emeritus at Dartmouth Medical School and the associate director for faculty at Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. Sox was the president of the American College of Physicians from 1998-1999. He was chairman of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force from 1990-1995 and chaired the Institute of Medicine Committee to Study HIV Transmission through Blood Products and the Institute of Medicine Committee on Health Effects Associated with Exposures Experienced in the Gulf War.
The C8 Science Panel is expected to announce its final reports by July.
