Cancer Rates Are Rising. Is Toxic Water To Blame?

NEW Study Links Rare Cancers To Water Contaminated with PFAS, While Regulations Hang In the Balance.

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Last year, 2024, the U.S. hit a bleak milestone when it comes to cancer.

It was the first year rates for new cancer cases exceeded 2 million, according to the American Cancer Society. That’s almost 5,500 cancer diagnoses a day, up from an estimated 1.9 million new cases in 2023.

This number builds on research from a 2022 study, revealing that the incidence of early onset cancers (people under 50), including breast, colon, esophagus, kidney, liver, and pancreas, has skyrocketed throughout the world.

Is PFAS-contaminated water a factor?

“Exposure to these chemicals can be devastating,” wrote Kathleen Blackburn in an guest essay last year about her father’s cancer.

He was a healthy former Air Force pilot who averaged an eight-minute mile in the New York City Marathon. At 38, a nonsmoker and nondrinker, with no history of cancer in his family, he was diagnosed with advanced colorectal cancer and was given a short time to live.

She wrote:

What no one in my family knew at the time was that for most of his life my father had been exposed to perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, the synthetic compounds known collectively as PFAS, which have been linked to increased risk of certain cancers. His fallow muscle, jaundiced skin and weight loss were very likely because of the decades-long accumulation of carcinogenic chemicals in the drinking water at the military sites where he had lived and worked since his childhood.

The environmental violence exacted by PFAS, like the effects of radiation and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, can be difficult to prove.

Scientists are beginning to fill in the gaps.

Communities exposed to drinking water contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as “forever chemicals,” experience up to a 33 percent higher incidence of certain cancers, according to new research.

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, is the first to examine cancer and PFAS contamination of drinking water in the U.S.

PFAS have been found in about 45 percent of drinking water supplies across the country.

But more people in the U.S. may unknowingly be drinking PFAS-contaminated water thanks to a lack of systematic analysis, particularly in domestic water supplies, according to the USGS, which estimates that up to 95 million people potentially rely on groundwater with detectable concentrations of PFAS for their drinking-water supplies prior to any treatment.

Past research has linked PFAS chemicals, which are slow to break down and accumulate in the body over time, to a range of health problems, including kidney, breast, colorectal, and testicular cancers.

Firefighting foams have been a major source of PFAS contamination since their development in the 1960s. Collaborating with the U.S. Navy, 3M produced foams that the Defense Department sprayed in routine fire drills and emergencies around the country.

In 2021, I testified before Congress about the harm and impact of PFAS to those living on or near current and former military bases. You can read my full statement here. You can also read our story with Kevin Ferrara, a retired U.S. Air Force firefighter, who was exposed to PFAS for years.

Painting a clearer PFAS picture…

In this new study, researchers wanted to paint a more comprehensive picture of PFAS and cancer risk by conducting an ecological study using large population-level datasets to identify patterns of exposure and associated risk.

They found that between 2016 and 2021, counties in the U.S. with PFAS-contaminated drinking water had higher incidence of certain types of cancer, which differed by sex. PFAS in drinking water contribute to about 6,800 cancer cases each year, based on the most recent data from the U.S. EPA.

“These findings allow us to draw an initial conclusion about the link between certain rare cancers and PFAS,” Shiwen (Sherlock) Li, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and first author of the study said in a statement. “This suggests that it’s worth researching each of these links in a more individualized and precise way.”

To understand how PFAS contamination relates to cancer incidence, the researchers compared two exhaustive datasets—one covering all reported cancer cases and the other including all data on PFAS in drinking water data across the country.

Data on cancer cases between 2016 and 2021 were obtained from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program, while data on PFAS levels in public drinking water (2013-2024) came from the EPA’s Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule programs.

The researchers found that males in counties with contaminated drinking water had a higher incidence of leukemia, as well as cancers of the urinary system, brain and soft tissues, compared to males living in areas with uncontaminated water. Females had a higher incidence of cancers in the thyroid, mouth and throat, and soft tissues.

These findings build upon previous research that PFAS chemicals appear to disrupt hormone function in women, increasing odds of developing hormone-related cancers in women,

“When people hear that PFAS is associated with cancer, it’s hard to know how it’s relevant. By calculating the number of attributable cancer cases, we’re able to estimate how many people may be affected,” Li said, including inferring the personal and financial toll of these cases year after year.

These population-level findings reveal associations between PFAS and rare cancers that might otherwise go unnoticed. Next, individual-level studies are needed to determine whether the link is causal and to explore what biological mechanisms are involved.

Are PFAS regulations at risk?

On the regulation side, results from the new study add to the mounting evidence that PFAS levels should be limited and suggest that proposed changes may not go far enough.

In addition to providing a roadmap for researchers, the findings underscore the importance of regulating PFAS.

“Certain PFAS that were less studied need to be monitored more, and regulators need to think about other PFAS that may not be strictly regulated yet,” Li said.

In April of last year, the EPA announced a final drinking water regulation for six types of PFAS.

To inform that final rule, EPA evaluated more than 120,000 comments submitted by the public on the rule proposal and considered input received during multiple consultations and stakeholder engagement activities.

The final regulations were expected to help prevent PFAS exposure in drinking water for approximately 100 million people, prevent thousands of deaths, and reduce tens of thousands of serious PFAS-attributable illnesses.

The agency also made unprecedented funding available, $1 billion through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to help states and territories implement PFAS testing and treatment at public water systems and to help owners of private wells address PFAS contamination.

But former and current Trump administration officials have sent mixed signals on whether the EPA will maintain the new PFAS regulatory framework or lessen its requirements.

PFAS regulation was targeted by the writers of Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation document outlining potential policies for a second Trump administration, calling for the federal government to “revisit the designation” of PFAS as a hazardous substance.

When President Trump signed an executive order withdrawing from any of the regulations that were still pending White House review—that included the EPA plan to limit PFAS.

Lee Zeldin, the new EPA administrator, emphasized during his confirmation hearing that PFAS were a “top priority” for the former congressman. During his four terms in Congress, the Long Island Republican voted in favor of legislation aimed at addressing the environmental and health risks posed by PFAS twice.

Toxicologist and former executive at the American Chemistry Council, Nancy Beck has been named a senior adviser to the E.P.A.’s Office of Chemical Safety, a role like the one she held from 2017 to 2021. In that first stint, Beck fought against stronger regulations for PFAS and other chemicals.

Groups like the American Water Works Association (AWWA) and a sister utility group—the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA)—joined the chemical industries in a 2024 lawsuit to block the EPA’s new drinking water standards for PFAS.

In a statement the groups said:

AWWA and AMWA continue to advocate for stronger regulation of PFAS under the “polluter pays principle.” Instead of requiring communities and water users to bear the costs of PFAS treatment, EPA should instead use its other statutory authorities to require manufacturers and users of PFAS to carry this burden. To date, the agency’s actions to control polluters have consistently lagged its actions to regulate drinking water.

I agree that we need to hold polluters financially accountable, but that can be done by editing the language in our legislation. The National League of Cities, a nonpartisan group comprised of city, town, and village leaders, believes legislative safeguards are necessary to uphold the “polluter pays” principle and prevent unfair penalties on local governments managing essential public services.

Tell your Congressional delegation that municipal liability protection language must be included in any PFAS legislation this Congress.

Our sources close to the EPA say that PFAS regulations will move forward, but timing and funding are big unknowns, and we haven’t heard discussion of making the rules stricter, as the new study authors call for.

“It’s clear that nobody voted for more PFAS in their drinking water, or more in their air or to have more PFAS waste disposed of in their community,” Natural Resources Defense Council Senior Director for Health Erik Olson told The Spokesman-Review. “People are learning more about the health risks from PFAS that they’re being exposed to without their consent. There will be more and more pressure on Congress and on the administration to do something about this problem.”

Without strict regulations and enforcement with PFAS, we will all continue to be exposed to PFAS chemicals, while the science continues to find more damage to human health.

The companies that made these chemicals (and profited from them) knew they were toxic decades before health officials but kept that information hidden from the public.

The two largest makers of PFAS, 3M and DuPont, actively suppressed evidence that the chemicals were hazardous, long before public health research caught up.

Are we the ones that should deal with medical consequences of corporate greed? The federal government can step in and not just enforce strict regulations but also make these companies accountable for their mess.

The first Trump Administration undertook the most aggressive regulatory reduction effort in history, but in this second go-round, a huge opportunity exists to do the right thing when it comes to PFAS.

Stay Engaged

While regulations are in flux, there’s still a lot you can do to push this issue forward.

Continue to raise awareness about PFAS by hosting town halls or community meetings. Engaging communities in discussions about PFAS contamination can help everyone understand the risks and how to reduce exposure.

Stay up-to-date with all things PFAS at PFASCentral.org and the International Association of Firefighters

Advocate for better water testing standards. Talk to your water operators and find out if they are testing for PFAS. Contact your state representatives and let them know this issue is important to you.

EPA’s Water Technical Assistance program connects communities to experts who help assess and implement solutions for addressing PFAS contamination.

Get educated about alternatives to PFAS and learn more about how to avoid them in consumer goods.

Get the best water filter that you can afford.

Seek out local nonprofits in your area that are working on these issues and join them to advocate for safer water in your community.

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Keep the conversation going in the comments below. Are you surprised by these findings about PFAS?