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Fred Heinly left his barbershop a few weeks ago without a haircut but took away newfound motivation to keep people from contracting hepatitis C.

A 57-year-old Bern Township resident, Heinly said he panicked when he saw his usual barber wipe a razor with a dry cloth, failing to sterilize it before moving to the next customer.

That's because Heinly had just finished intensive chemotherapy for his hepatitis C and is all too aware that the potentially deadly virus can be spread through skin nicks and scrapes.

"I want to get the word out. I don't want anyone else to get it," he said. "I think a lot of people get it and have no clue where it comes from."

Heinly is part of the baby boom generation - those between the ages of 47 and 67- that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now urging to be tested for hepatitis C.

Baby boomers are thought to be at high risk for hepatitis C because hundreds of thousands of young people are thought to have contracted it in the 1970s and '80s through intravenous drug use in the days before HIV/AIDS awareness.

About 75 percent of the estimated 3.2 million people infected with hepatitis C in the U.S. are baby boomers, and about 3 percent of boomers have the disease, the CDC reports.

In comparison, the infection rate for the U.S. population of all ages is about 1.8 percent.

The hepatitis C infection rates in Berks County might be even higher due to the prevalence of intravenous drug use in the area, according to Dr. John Altomare, who specializes in gastroenterology and hepatology, the study of the liver, and has seen numerous hepatitis C patients during the past six years.

"The population we deal with in Reading has more general drug use history, tattoos and incarceration history," he said.

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'Silient killer' seen a booming problem