Report concludes that more than 100,000 in West Virginia were sickened by January chemical spill

Health officials in West Virginia said Tuesday that more than 100,000 people may have been made sick by chemical exposure following the January spill of the coal-washing chemical 4-methylcyclohexylmethanol into its water supply, Ken Ward Jr. reports for the Charleston Gazette. (Gazette photo by Chris Dorst: Bill Lepp carries a jug of water on the day after the spill)

The number is significantly higher than previous estimates, Ward notes. The state Department of Health and Human Resources had "said that 26 people were admitted to area hospitals and 533 treated at released at those facilities for symptoms that could have been related to the spill. Those figures did not include any data for the day of the Jan. 9 spill or the day after. Also, DHHR tracked only hospital treatments, and agency officials stopped counting after Jan. 23, records show."

The new data, from Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the local health department, and University of South Alabama environmental engineer Andrew Whelton, who was hired by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, "is based on local physicians who reported patient information to the health department," Ward writes. After the spill Gupta had called for more testing, fearing the long-term health effects of the spill.

To obtain the new data "Gupta’s agency received ongoing reports from 10 physicians, and extrapolated that sampling to account for all 1,600 medical providers in Kanawha and Putnam counties," Ward writes. "Also, Whelton had surveyed 16 households in early January. Those surveys provided useful data on how many residents had experienced common spill symptoms -- skin reactions, eye irritation, nausea, and headaches -- but never sought medical treatment. That data was also used to extrapolate further from the physician reports collected by the health department. (Read more)