Some 263 Bennington-area residents have qualified to participate in a PFOA medical monitoring program that started this month, about seven years after locals discovered that the chemical contaminant had made its way into their drinking water.
Participants have been asked to set up medical monitoring appointments at the hospital in Bennington, and the first took place on Feb. 1, said Katherine Harbison Benson, an attorney with the Alabama law firm of Ed Gentle, the medical monitoring administrator.
About 700 other people have applied to participate in the 15-year program, and the court-appointed administrator is further reviewing their claims, Benson said in an email Wednesday.
The free medical monitoring aims to screen for certain diseases among people exposed to PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid. It’s a variant of the PFAS group of chemicals that has been linked to health problems.
The program was established under a $34 million settlement in a class-action suit brought by Bennington-area residents against Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics in 2016. The plaintiffs alleged that two previous ChemFab factories — acquired by Saint-Gobain — had emitted PFOA that contaminated surrounding water and soil while they were in operation.
The French multinational company agreed to pay up to $6 million for medical monitoring, which is available to area residents who ingested PFOA-contaminated water and who have more than 2.1 parts per billion of PFOA in their blood. The median blood concentration of PFOA for the U.S. general population is 2.08 parts per billion, according to one study.
Saint-Gobain denied any wrongdoing under the settlement.
Participants receive a one-time incentive payment of $100 after they’ve completed their first medical monitoring test and the associated paperwork, Benson said. It’s currently taking 45 to 60 days for the program administrator to receive the test results and other paperwork.
The program is run by Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, the Bennington hospital.
Beneficiaries who now live more than 50 miles away can participate in the monitoring remotely. Benson said attorneys are still finalizing the testing process for people who no longer live in the Bennington area.
Participants who need help scheduling appointments, or who have questions about the incentive payments, can call the medical monitoring administrator’s office at 877-229-1937. Information about the class-action suit settlement can be found at benningtonvtclassaction.com.
