The Northport Project – Community Advocate

What is the Northport Project?

An environmental health advocacy group and community awareness program created to protect, inform, and provide a voice for the residents of Northport, Washington — many who are suffering similar health issues linked to decades of exposure to Teck Smelter’s pollution of heavy metal toxins.

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Community Awareness

The Northport Project provides current and past Northport residents with findings, updates, and results from:

Community Involvement

• • • Thyroid/Endocrine Diseases: 116 (NPP: 36% – GP: 6%)
    • Arthritis: 127 (NPP: 40% – GP: .30%)
    • Cancers (kidney, pancreas, breast, stomach): 65 (NPP: 20% – GP: pending)
    • Brain Tumors/ Aneurysms: 23 (NPP: 7% – GP: 1%)
    • Heart Arrhythmias: 8 (NPP: 3% – GP: .5%)
    • Parkinson’s/Multiple Sclerosis: 13 (NPP: 4% – GP: .1%<.1%)
    • Ulcerative Colitis/Crohn’s Disease: 54 (NPP: 17% – GP: 1.3%)

*  NPP- Northport Population Percentage / GP- General Population

The findings of our community health survey caught the attention of Dr. Josh Korzenik, the Director of the Crohn’s and Colitis Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, one of the leading IBD researchers in the nation, and an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School.

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Community Participation

In 2011 Dr. Korzenik and his team partnered with Massachusetts General Hospital & Brigham Women’s Hospital to conducted their own in-depth study of the diagnosed cases of Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s Disease in current Northport residents only (past residents were excluded).

Their 2011 study concluded diagnosed cases of ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s Disease in the Northport community was 10 to 15 times higher than national standards. This was one of the largest health clusters of these illnesses Dr. Korzenik said he has ever seen.

In 2016 Dr. Korzenik partnered with Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical school to conduct a second study, a more “in-depth epidemiological case-control study,” the doctor said. “The focus is on finding a possible correlation of chronic exposure to specific heavy metals and ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s Disease.” The case study included participants who have been diagnosed with either Crohn’s or colitis as well as participants who have not been affected.

Dr. Korzenik and his team are combining the results of heavy metal data confirmed in Northport residents with another related study of children recently diagnosed with colitis or Crohn’s, to see if heavy metals are a risk factor. He anticipates the study results to be published in 2021.

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Our Mission

To attract Universities, Medical Hospitals, and researchers to conduct studies of the multiple health clusters in the community.

The results of these studies can lead to the discovery of causes and/or triggers of these multiple autoimmune diseases. In turn, this could lead to the reevaluation of the current safety levels of industrial heavy metal pollutants, as well as providing data to the medical community that can be utilized for preventive screenings, and possibly lead to ways to cure, or better treat, these illnesses.

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