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WATER GRE.M..LI.N PUBLIC HEALTH ASSESSMENT: PUBLIC COMMENT DRAFT In addition,. MDH provided a notice of potential residential lead contamination for current and former employees (within the last -two years) along with information on how. to.clean up lead dust.in a home and 'information on lead exposure during pregnancy and breastfeeding, The .Court ordered Water Gremlin to offer home lead testing, and if needed, home cleaning: Water.Grem [in appealed the residential testing and cleaning, but a ruling in 2020 upheld this requirem.e.nt. Stantec, on behalf of Water Gremlin, initiated contact in mid-2021 for nine. employees who requested this service. The. identities of the nine employees were withheld from Water Gremlin. Starting in.mtd-2021, MDH is receiving approximately $1.3 million per year in additional General Funds to conduct in=home lead risk assessments for all children in Minnesota with an elevated blood lead level above.5. micrograms of lead. per deciliter of blood (the .current CDC definition of.an elevated blood: lead level).. This is a significant.public health equity measure, as until now only children. living in M.i.nneapolis and Ramsey County.received th is. important service due to inadequate funds for case investigations outside those two jurisdictions: The new legislation permits this work for children up to age 18, as well as.provides.new.enforcement authority for caseswhere the lead exposure. originated outside.the home- -as in the Water Gremlin situation. VII. Minnesota Public Health Data MDH collects public health data on various diseases and conditions in order to provide Minnesotans with meaningful statistics on rates and trends across the state. This data can also inform health professionals and citizens about. risks and, when warranted, provide a more complete and accurate profile of health outcomes for communities having questions or concerns about disease rates in their area. Collecting this data is mandated by state law. Surveillance data for certain cancers, birth. defects; .and blood lead test results col lected.by MDH were of particular interest fo I lowing the discovery of a history of airborne. release of TCE.and other.issues at Water Gremlin. Several MDH programs responded to inquiries and concerns about various potential health outcomes among people who.live, or previously lived, near the facility. Findings from the Minnesota Cancer Reporting System, the Rirth Defects. In€ormation System; and the Blood Lead Information System evaluated to respond to community concerns are summarized below along with the limitations of each data analysis, More information on these programs and health statistics, and many others, can be found on the MN Public Health Data Access Portal htt s: dat8.web.health.stato-rhh:us web rindata . A. Cancer The Minnesota Cancer Reporting System (MCRS) completed a cancer occurrence report in March 2019 that analyzed cancer occurrence for the most recent 10-year period.for which complete data were available (2006-2017). The study area (see Figure 1Z below) was comprised of five census tracts surrounding the Water Gremlin facility. The geography represented by the tracts is larger thanthe area where annual average TCE. concentrations 1n outdoor air (based on reported total TCE emissions in 2018) were predicted to. be above the.M.DH health -based value .(HBV) of 2 µg/m3, but smaller groupings. of cancer occurrence and population were not available in the MCRS database for use. in the analysis. 41