Field Office Compliance - Assistance

Assistance ID - 63058
North Central Iowa Regional Sanitary Landfill - 310204356
2150 South 22nd Street Fort Dodge, IA 50501
Webster County

FO 2

Report
File Name File Type File Date Note
Comments
8/21/2013 Jack Brady at Webster County Health called and wanted to brainstorm about potential investigative methods for the health claims by certain Coleman area residents. He asked me what I thought about sampling the water in the home floor drain traps. I expressed some concern about this strategy, because there might be anything in a floor drain trap and it may or may not be associated with landfill leachate. With the caveat that I am not a qualified industrial hygienist or human health toxicologist, I suggested that two sampling rationales came to mind. The first was to determine if any leachate-related analytes were in the house, and one could sample the leachate in the sewer and say, the trap water in the houses, to see if there was as correlation between the two. I also pointed out that if there was no correlation, it would remain be a mystery why the alleged health effects were occurring and, if there was a correlation, it would be inconclusive because there was not necessarily a complete human health exposure pathway between the water in the trap and the people reporting the symptoms. I then suggested that another approach might be to conduct a testing regimen similar to a “sick building syndrome” analysis. Again, with the caveat that this was not my area of expertise, I suggested that an industrial hygiene-type indoor air quality survey might be considered (e.g., mold, airborne particulates, microbes, aerosols, volatile organics, etc.) because it would screen for a wider number of potential causes and not be limited to landfill leachate analytes and exposure pathways. Mr. Brady indicated he would consider the matter further. DAVID MILLER
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