CLARKTON — A UNC Wilmington student and former Clarkton resident is adding a new team member to his project that is focusing on GenX, as well as going to New Mexico in March to discuss the issue of the chemical on a national level.
Grey Caballero, an anthropology student, is working with Dr. Bill Alexander, a cultural anthropologist and the chairman of UNCW’s Department of Anthropology. Ashley Davis is the new team member.
Davis has a master’s degree in anthropology.
“She is going to help with interviews and will be doing a separate project related to GenX with Dr. Alexander,” Caballero said.
Interviews for the project are still be lined up. Some plans were delayed by Hurricane Dorian.
“We are trying to set up a time to formally interview these individuals,” Caballero said.
Some of the people that he is looking to talk with are involved in the GenX controversy and are members of the “Grays Creek Residents united against PFAS in our wells and Rivers” group on Facebook.
“Dr. Alexander is putting together a session for the Society for Applied Anthropology annual conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in March,” Caballero said.
The session will be centered on the issue of PFAS, either with a concentration on it in North Carolina or the issue on a national level.
“Dr. Alexander, Ashley and I will be discussants, along with several other researchers from other parts of the country including anthropologists from other universities and researchers in the field of chemistry who work on the physical compound of GenX,” Caballero said.
The research project is about understanding how people view the risks involved in GenX and learning about how people organize against the state and places like Chemours, that produce and release these chemicals into the environment.
The study is called “Contamination in the Cape Fear: Risk Perception and Community Organization in the GenX Issue.”
Chemours has been under the microscope regionally since June 2017, when the StarNews newspaper of Wilmington reported GenX was being discharged into the Cape Fear River. The river supplies drinking water to some municipalities downstream, including Wilmington.
GenX is a trade name for C3 dimer acid, a compound used in the manufacture of products such as food packaging, nonstick coatings and firefighting foam. It’s also a byproduct of certain manufacturing processes. HFPO-DA, an acronym for hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid, is another name for the member of a family of chemical compounds known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
The effects of GenX on humans isn’t fully known. State regulation has been evolving.
Caballero said that he is going to continue to work on reaching out to the community and will be contacting people to line up their interviews.