Participation and Recruitment: PFAS Exposure Assessments

Participant Selection 

CDC/ATSDR identified communities near current or former military bases and that are known to have had PFAS in their drinking water. From these communities, a random selection of households impacted by PFAS in their drinking water will be identified. Individuals in randomly selected households will be eligible to participate if they are three years of age or older, have lived in the community for at least one year, and do not have a bleeding disorder or are not anemic. People exposed to PFAS occupationally, such as firefighters, active duty military, and veterans, will be able to participate if their household is randomly selected. 

CDC/ATSDR will use representative sampling to identify and include participants for the exposure assessments. This means that participants will be chosen at random and that people cannot simply volunteer.  The advantage of this sampling strategy is that results from participants can give information about community-level exposure. If CDC/ATSDR were to accept volunteers, results could not be used to estimate exposure across a community. 

Randomly selected households will receive a letter in the mail from CDC/ATSDR explaining the exposure assessment and registration process. They will also get a phone call from a representative who can answer questions and register them if they are interested in participating. 

Number of Participants 

In order to ensure that a sufficient number of participants are included in each exposure assessment to allow for generalizable conclusions about the impacted community, a target for the number of participants in each exposure assessment will be set. We expect this number to be approximately 400 people. However, each exposure assessment will proceed regardless of whether this target number of participants is obtained.