Most people these days know the importance of keeping up with your vaccines. One very important one is the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. This vaccine can help prevent not only HPV, but cervical cancer, too. 

As January’s Cervical Health Awareness Month comes to a close, it’s a great time to talk about cervical health.

Cervical cancer is cancer of the cervix. The cervix is what connects the uterus to the vagina. Cervical cancer is caused by certain types of HPV, which is spread through sexual contact. Sometimes HPV can go away on its own, but if it does not, it can cause cancer.

It is very important to get screened for cervical cancer before you show any symptoms. This can help find cells that are abnormal or show signs of HPV before they turn into cancer. Cervical cancer can be tested by pap smears and HPV tests. 

How often you should be tested for cervical cancer and HPV depends on your age. From ages 21 to 29, you should be getting a pap smear every three years. After you reach 30-65 years old, you have the option to get a pap test every three years, an HPV test every five years, or get both tests every five years. The option that is best for you depends on your past test results and other factors. Some women may need tested more often than others.

You are more likely to develop cervical cancer if you have HIV, are a smoker, or use birth control pills for more than five years. There is also an increased risk if you have several sexual partners or have given birth three or more times. 

You can lower your risk of contracting HPV and cervical cancer by being proactive with your health. Beginning as early as age 9, both girls and boys can get the HPV vaccine, which consists of two shots that are six months to a year apart. You can get the vaccine after this age, but it is more effective if received at the recommended age of 11 or 12. 

Adult women should make sure to visit a doctor annually for a well-woman visit. The goals of a well-woman visit consist of a physical exam, learning about your health history and habits and setting health goals. You can prepare for this by learning about your family health history and making a list of topics and questions to discuss with your doctor. Cervical cancer is most commonly found among women who have not had annual check-ups. 

It is also helpful to use condoms and limit your number of sexual partners. Using condoms correctly for each encounter is especially important. Avoiding smoking can help prevent HPV and cervical cancer as well, because smoking lowers your immune system’s ability to fight the infection. You should also be careful about how much you drink and in what situations. Alcohol lowers inhibitions, prompting people to make choices that they otherwise wouldn’t.

According to the National Cancer Institute, the HPV vaccine decreased the number of HPV 16 and 18 infections — the strains that cause cervical cancer — by 83 percent in girls aged 15-19 years old. Infection rates among women aged 20-24 decreased by 66 percent. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are often no symptoms of cervical cancer until it is advanced, and even then, the only symptom may be abnormal discharge or bleeding. If you experience this, see a doctor as soon as possible. 

If you are diagnosed with cervical cancer, there is treatment available. The treatment plan is determined by the size of the cancer or how far it has spread. Cervical cancer is typically treated with surgery, chemotherapy, radiation or a combination of those procedures.
 
Monongalia County Health Department’s Clinical Services offers exams, including the Pap test. We also offer the HPV vaccine. For more information or to make an appointment, call 304-598-5119.

Are you living in a realm with potentially dangerous, odorless, colorless gas that forms from the breakdown of uranium in the soil? A radioactive gas that is undetectable to the human senses that may be seeping up from the earth and into the crevices of your floors and walls? 

If so, you may have just crossed over into … The Radon Zone.

OK, so it sounds a little melodramatic, but that’s what happens when you try to tailor information about radon in the style of Rod Serling.

That’s what Monongalia County Health Department has done with its video, which can be viewed by going here.

The idea came from the fact that Monongalia County is in “the red zone” when it comes to this odorless gas that seeps up from the breakdown of rocks in the soil. It then can seep into homes and other buildings and accumulate.

Nationally, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, 1 in 15 homes have high levels of radon. 

But in Monongalia County, that figure is 1 in 5.

Making a video in the style of the old 1960s “Twilight Zone” series was a way to get the message across.

It was also great to have “Rod Serling” — local actor Michael Vozniak, a Fairmont native and WVU grad student and teaching assistant — inform audiences about radon while channeling the icon and intense chain-smoking screenwriter, TV producer and narrator of the show.

The fact that Serling was a chain smoker was a convenient coincidence. Exposure to too much radon is the No. 2 leading cause of lung cancer in the United States, next to smoking. In a given year, about 21,000 Americans die from lung cancer caused by high levels of radon. Serling, who could often be seen with a cigarette in his hand with smoke billowing next to him, died of the disease at the age of 50.

Because we’re the health department, we did not ask Michael to actually use cigarettes in “The Radon Zone.” Those are smoke-free cocoa bean sticks playing the role of Serling’s ever-present cig.

The video also gives the viewers a chance to see what it’s like to get a radon test. Joe Lawson, an MCHD Environmental Health sanitarian as well as a certified radon measurement specialist, crosses the colossal cosmos, or at least parts of North Central West Virginia, to detect this noxious yet noble gas, as Serling notes in the video.

That means that Joe will come to your home and set up a continuous radon monitor that will run for 48 hours. Two days later, he returns to collect the device, which generates a report that is mailed or emailed to the customer.

If the reading is 4 picocuries per liter or higher, then the homeowner should consider mitigation techniques that will lower the radon levels in their home. A certified radon contractor can do the job and the average cost is $1,500.

The cost for a test by MCHD Environmental Health is $125 in Monongalia County and $150 in surrounding areas. How often should you get one? Every few years. Radon can be elusive, with one house measuring a high level while the one next door is OK. One year, your house can be fine. A few years later, the radon level can be higher. 

So, submitted for your approval: Radon, an invisible, odorless gas, might be skulking and lying in wait in your home. But we can detect it, and it can be mitigated. A case to be filed under Rn — for radon.

​For more information or to make an appointment for a test, call MCHD Environmental Health at 304-598-5131.

My boss, Dr. Lee B. Smith, executive director of Monongalia County Health Department and county health officer, often slips this line in when giving an overview of the different types of issues public health workers address. These actions sometimes occur without the public’s awareness of behind-the-scenes work that takes place to keep them safe. 

And to be sure, Americans are lucky to be able to drink tap water without having to worry much about coming down with illnesses such as cholera, typhoid and dysentery.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintains the Waterborne Disease and Outbreak Surveillance System, which investigates waterborne disease outbreaks in the United States and its territories. 

Unfortunately, keeping water pure has gotten more difficult in recent years.  

One newer threat has come to light in the past decade or so: per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS, a type of synthetic chemicals found in many consumer products like cookware, food packaging, stain repellents and firefighting foam. PFAS has seeped into water systems but also can be found adjacent to several packaged grocery items such as candy and fast food wrappers.

A captivating and absorbing new film, “Dark Waters,” has been in theaters for a couple of weeks now. It didn’t receive any Oscar nominations on Monday but it could be one of the most important movies you see. It should be of interest to just about everyone, because, according to information provided at the end, PFAS can be found in about 99% of all humans. 

It should especially intrigue West Virginians, however, because the key locale of the film is the Parkersburg, West Virginia area, home to the former DuPont chemical plant that is the antagonist in “Dark Waters.”

The type of chemical used at this plant was perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, a type of PFAS.

But when the movie’s timeline begins, in the late 1990s, actor Mark Ruffalo, playing Cincinnati attorney Robert Bilott, can’t find any reference to PFOA on the rudimentary internet that existed at the time. He finally tracks down an industry chemist to explain it to him. As depicted in the film, this was the beginning of PFAS becoming known to the public. A settlement wasn’t reached until early 2017.

Bilott, an environmental attorney who usually represented major industries, got pulled into the case by an acquaintance of his grandmother’s in Parkersburg. The man’s cows were dying mysteriously. When Bilott examined the situation more thoroughly, he also found people in the area with black, rotting teeth and women who had worked on the line of one of the company’s more popular products, Teflon, bearing babies with birth defects.

Dr. Smith learned about PFAS when he attended the Executive Leaders Program at the Naval Postgraduate Academy in Monterey, California. Upon his return, he sent Jamie Moore, MCHD’s Threat Preparedness coordinator, and Richard McCord, an MCHD Environmental Health registered sanitarian, to a conference in Pittsburgh to get more information.

Here is what they found out:
 
• PFAS have been manufactured and used in a variety of industries around the globe since the 1940s. U.S. manufacturers voluntarily phased out PFOA and PFOS, two specific PFAS chemicals, but they still import them from other countries. PFAS also have been replaced by GenX chemicals, the safety of which have been questioned.

• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has developed additional toxicity values and analytical methods for PFAS and non-drinking water media as well as treatment options for PFAS in drinking water.

• PFAS don’t break down over time, so they build up in the environment and our bodies.

• Health effects caused by PFAS can cause reproductive and developmental, liver, kidney and immunological effects in laboratory animals. In humans, the chemicals have been connected to higher cholesterol, infant birth weights, adverse effects on the immune system, cancer (PFOA) and thyroid hormone effects (PFOS).

So how can you keep safe from PFAS? The CDC has published a list at atsdr.cdc.gov/pfas/pfas-exposure.html. You can also get more information from the EPA.  

Also, Delegate Evan Hansen of Monongalia County, a water research scientist, announced in December that he will introduce a water safety bill during the upcoming state legislative session that would, among other things, identify where PFAS are being used and discharged so they can be regulated.

And finally, see “Dark Waters,” which will be available to purchase on DVD and Blu-ray in early March. 

It’s a great introduction into the topic of PFAS. It’s also an enthralling movie that hits very close to home, using the song “Take Me Home, Country Roads” ironically rather than in victory. 

Consider this from the World Health Organization:

“Vaccines prevented at least 10 million deaths between 2010 and 2015, and many millions more lives were protected from illness. The global push to end polio has reached its final stages, with just three remaining countries still working to eradicate this debilitating disease.”

And consider this from the past year: Measles was declared eliminated in the year 2000, following a goal that was set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1978 to eliminate it by 1982. 

But in under two decades, 2019 became the year of a major measles resurgence, with 1,276 individual cases of measles in 31 states from Jan. 1 through Dec. 5. Those figures will be updated soon.

And guess which state was one of 19 that didn’t have a measles case? West Virginia, which has some of the strictest vaccination laws, only allowing exceptions for those who truly cannot safely have vaccinations for medical reasons, but not religious, philosophical or exemptions based on personal beliefs.

Yet, our local legislators tell us that those who want to weaken our vaccination laws are coming on stronger and stronger. 
​
Monongalia County Health Department hosted legislators from around North Central West Virginia in mid-December review what public health officials wish to see addressed in the upcoming legislative session that begins today.

Sure, we’d love to see state health department budgets restored to previous funding levels that were cut by 25% a few years ago.

Public health is an important investment that helps keep everyone safe. Our services include not only immunizations but also free and anonymous STD testing and treatment; family planning; inspections of restaurants, day care centers, pools, hotels, motels and tattoo parlors; surveillance of diseases including those carried by vectors such as raccoons, ticks and mosquitoes as well as infectious illnesses such as influenza, hepatitis and tuberculosis; and unfunded public health issues of opioids, substance use disorder, unintentional overdose deaths, human trafficking, hepatitis and HIV outbreaks.

But as it stands now, we’ve already lost ground recently in West Virginia when it comes to children’s immunization and three vaccines: hepatitis A, Haemophilus influenza B (Hib) and pneumococcal disease. Those were part of the schedule for kids to be able to get into a West Virginia-approved preschool classroom.
​
Because of a loophole—it’s not specified in the state code—officials were convinced by those opposed to vaccines to remove this requirement. These vaccinations are recommended by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
 
At Monongalia County Health Department, this is especially frustrating. It hasn’t even been three months since a Morgantown restaurant employee was found to have been working while infectious with hepatitis A. That put everyone who had eaten at that restaurant within a certain time frame potentially at risk and on notice to get vaccinated. The health department fielded many phone calls and our public health nurses worked extra hours in order to get everyone who showed up immunized against hepatitis A.
 
Anyone who already had the vaccine could breathe easy knowing they were protected.
 
It’s like my boss, Dr. Lee B. Smith, MCHD executive director and county health officer, notes about rabies. People who are bitten by a rabid cat or who tussle with their bloody dog who just got into a fight with a rabid raccoon do not question the safety of a lifesaving rabies vaccine.
 
I am also reminded of an anti-vaxxer acquaintance who posted a video about measles vaccines meant to scare the public. There are times when parents, looking for an answer as to why their baby died from sudden infant death (SIDS), wonder if vaccines are the cause.
 
The CDC has addressed this issue, noting that babies receive many vaccines between the ages of 2 and 4 months old, which is also the peak timing of death attributed to SIDS. “However, studies have found that vaccines do not cause and are not linked to SIDS,” the CDC states.
 
Undeterred, however, my friend couldn’t understand why the vaccine was required when there are so few measles deaths.
 
I had to ask if she had ever considered that there were not many measles deaths because of the vaccine. She had not.
 
It’s also not fair for people to expect for their children to be protected by herd immunity provided by those kids whose parents understand that the science is clearly on the side of vaccines. If fewer children are vaccinated, herd immunity will dwindle. To be effective, herd immunity requires 95% participation. It is unfortunate that children with legitimate medical reasons to not be vaccinated must rely on others to become vaccinated, but that is the case.
 
Some consider measles and chickenpox to be common childhood illnesses that are almost a rite of passage. But they can cause serious complications. Of the 1,276 reported measles cases in 2019, 124 people were hospitalized and 61 reported complications that included pneumonia and encephalitis.
 
All from a vaccine-preventable illness.
 
A saying that has become popular lately is that people are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. And the fact is, vaccines are the No. 1 advancement in public health in the 20th century.
 
We are now one-fifth of the way into the 21st century. Why are we moving backwards on this?