There are new details in the Clyde cancer cluster.
On Monday families with children who have died began their own environmental testing with a private company.
Environmental experts hired by the families went up into the attics of homes where the kids lived and died. The focus of Monday's testing was dust.
The environmental team hired by the families carries gear inside the Clyde home of Trina Donnersbach on South Mulberry Street.
Donnersbach is the mother of Shilah who was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 18. Shilah died four years later.
Donnersbach is one of several parents who hired an attorney and environmental experts to help solve the mystery of what could be getting kids sick.
"For me, it's peace of mind because I am now raising my grandson here," says Donnersbach.
Joel Hebdon got in Haz-Mat gear and climbed up to the attic. He's based out of Salt Lake City and says he's dealt with super fund cases for more than three decades.
Hebdon is collecting dust, calling it a footprint of pollutants.
"We're looking for a historical cross section of dust," says Hebdon. "Attics are great places to find that because of the circulation through the attics. It acts as a stilling well and the dust settles."
On Tuesday Hebdon will also take samples of the sludge at the bottom of the Clyde Reservoir. And on Wednesday he'll test sludge at the Clyde Water Treatment Plant.
But today he's focusing on vacuum and swipe samples of attic dust to see what people have been breathing over the years.
"We'll be looking for pretty much anything," says Hebdon. "But heavy metals and PCBs primarily."
For years the Ohio EPA did testing and found no known cause for the high childhood cancer rates.
Just last year the US EPA found high levels of PCBs and other toxic metals in the soil at the old Whirlpool Park site in Green Springs which is located just outside of Clyde. That site will soon undergo deeper testing.
13 ABC's Christine Long asks the attorney Alan Mortensen who represents the Clyde families, "Why do this testing yourselves? Do you not trust those answers?"
Mortensen says, "Obviously, the EPA has budgetary and political constraints."
The dust tests are different from what has been done in the past. The results are expected to be ready within the next three weeks.
"It's just finding the answers, knowing did something cause this that could have been avoided? Or is this just part of life and crap happens," says Donnersbach.
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