Mid Hudson Times Apr. 12 2017 | Page 2

2 Mid Hudson Times, Wednesday, April 12, 2017 IN THIS ISSUE Calendar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 City of Newburgh.. . . . . . . . . . . 24 Classifieds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Crossword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Letters to the Editor. . . . . . . . . . 8 Meadow Hill. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Town of Newburgh. . . . . . . . . . . 23 Newburgh Heritage. . . . . . . . . . . 10 New Windsor.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Obituaries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Opinion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Police Blotter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Service Directory. . . . . . . . . . . 38 PUBLIC AGENDA MONDAY, APRIL 17 City of Newburgh Industrial Development Agency, 7 p.m. Council Chambers, 3rd Floor, City of Newburgh THURSDAY, APRIL 20 Newburgh City Council Work Session, 6 p.m. City Hall, 83 Broadway. Town of Newburgh Planning Board, 7 p.m. Town Hall, 1496 Route 300, Town of Newburgh. MONDAY, APRIL 24 Newburgh City Council meeting. 7 p.m. City Hall, 83 Broadway. Town of Newburgh Workshop meeting, 7 p.m. Town Hall, 1496 Route 300, Town of Newburgh. Not just a simple blood test Continued from page 1 simple blood test,” said environmental epidemiologist Elizabeth Lewis-Michl, DOH director of environmental health assessments for the Center for Environmental Health. There are only a few laboratories in the country that have the ability to test blood for PFOS, she said, and results can take up to three months. The laboratory is where thousands of blood samples will be tested for perfluorinated chemicals, or PFCs – specifically PFOS, also known as perfluorooctane sulfonate, the chemical responsible for the wholesale contamination of the City of Newburgh water supply. “The main objective of blood testing effort is to try to find out the level the community was exposed to this chemical,” Lewis-Michl said. She spoke at a meeting hosted by the DOH at the Newburgh Armory Unity Center last month to present the findings from the first round of blood tests offered through the DOH biomonitoring program in the fall. The program currently offers free blood tests to anyone who drank water in the City of Newburgh. The test results S pecial R eport : N ewburgh ’ s T ainted W ater So far, almost 1,200 people have had their blood tested; 740 people have received test results as of this month. Testing is expected to continue into June. “When we get to the City of Newburgh, the levels of people in the city were 20.2,” said Lewis-Michl. She was referring to 20.2 micrograms per liter – the 50th-percentile level of PFOS in the blood of residents served by City of Newburgh who were tested so far. “The 50th percentile is the middle result among all individual results: half the people had levels higher and half had lower than the 50th percentile,” the DOH explains. (For report