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LIBBY - Specialists researching the long term impacts of asbestos exposure in Libby want to find residents who went to school in the Northwest Montana town yet moved away shortly after graduating.

The Center for Asbestos Related Disease in Libby are issuing the call for those former Libby residents this week as they try to find ways to help children still living there. The $4.8 million study is being done in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and is expected to last for the next two to five years.

CARD Clinical Coordinator Kimberly Rowse tells Montana's News Station the study wants to find people who graduated from Libby High School between 1950 and 1999 but then moved away. Rowse says the study hopes to measure if those former residents are suffering from any asbestos-related disease and compare them to people still living in Libby who have respiratory disorders.

Rowse says there could be more than 13,000 people in the group of graduates. She says that could provide good baseline data that could help the Environmental Protection Agency determine how much more asbestos removal needs to happen in Libby to make the community clean for children.

Former Libby graduates just need to call the CARD clinic at 406-293-9274 and follow up interviews will be arranged. Since the study will be on-going, Rowse says the clinic should be able to work around people's travel schedules to accomplish the testing.