Test results on dump's effect to be shown

WARREN -- Federal environmental officials will announce preliminary results tonight of their study of hydrogen sulfide emissions from the Warren Recycling Landfill and their effect on neighbors' health.
The public meeting is set for 7:30 p.m. at the Johnson Community Center, 800 Gilmer Road.
In 2002, landfill neighbors reported experiencing breathing difficulties, eye irritation, headache and fatigue. The next year, the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry declared the landfill "an urgent public health hazard."
Last year, at the request of the Ohio Department of Health, ATSDR scientists spent more than a month in Warren collecting information for the study, in which 107 landfill neighbors participated.
State health officials and those of the U.S. and Ohio environmental protection agencies will join ATSDR officials at tonight's meeting. ATSDR officials declined to release study results ahead of time.
The 107 study volunteers filled out daily diaries about unpleasant odors and their health symptoms, and some of them used a breathing monitor twice daily and wore badges that measured hydrogen sulfide in the air around them.
Five participants allowed ATSDR to install monitors to measure the gas in the air outside their homes.
Hydrogen sulfide is a flammable, toxic gas with a rotten egg-like odor that emanates from putrefying matter.