How Our Health Hangs In The Balance
U.S. Towns Are Like Ticking Time Bombs Waiting For Terrible News About PFAS. Here's What You Can Do About It.
Yesterday, my Op-Ed ran in The New York Times about the dangers of PFAS and what’s at stake when the administration changes in November. If you missed it, you can read it here.
But I want to offer a bit of backstory and additional information on this issue. It’s my newsletter and my rules! I appreciate all of you for taking the time to read it.
First, I’m always happy to use my platform to educate people about the toxins that lurk among us. I want you to know that every time I go on TV or when a story runs in a major media outlet with my name on it, it’s limited by time, word count, or editing in general. I’m still happy to use my voice for the people. Every person that learns about PFAS is better prepared to deal with it.
It’s no surprise to any of us that we live in a divided country. Depending on what cable news channel you watch at night or the social media accounts you follow, you may be routing for one candidate or the other. I get it. I know I have followers on both sides of the aisle.
I was raised by a Republican father who worked for industry in the great state of Kansas. And like all of you, I’ve watched as environmental tragedies have unfolded under both Republican and Democratic leadership.
Here’s the thing that we all need to understand:
We’ve had industrial byproducts discarded into the ground and into our water supply for decades. The companies who dump these toxins know how dangerous they are. The government knows it too. These issues affect everyone—rich or poor, black or white, Republican or Democrat. Large and small communities everywhere think they are safe when they are not.
I will say over and over again: Clean water, clean air, clean soil, and healthy communities are not political issues—they are human issues.
It was a Republican president—President Richard Nixon—who created the Environmental Protection Agency. For decades, the agency had bipartisan support and for good reason.
Make no mistake—the federal government must play a key role in identifying and responding to environmental disasters (and even smaller issues) because federal agencies have the research, response, and enforcement capacity that states and localities often don’t.
It’s also important that when pollution is discovered that the federal government doesn’t just come in, run some tests, and leave. Communities like Flint, Michigan and East Palestine, Ohio, (I could list hundreds more…) need long-term, ongoing support that includes funding, listening to community members’ concerns, and boots-on-the ground science.
Oftentimes, we don’t think about or understand what is happening to a community until it affects us personally. Many of these toxic substances cause irreversible health problems when ingested, and people in communities throughout the country are dealing with these repercussions.
Every community meeting that I’ve attended about water turns into a meeting about the health crisis in a community, and that’s not okay. Regardless of where you live, cancer and other chronic diseases have touched all of us. Disease does not recognize our political party affiliations. I’m not saying all disease is caused by toxins, but I think we are still at the early stages of understanding how multiple, long-term, even low-level exposure to toxins have impacted us as a population.
I believe the federal government has a duty to step up and provide the expertise and resources only it can.
Rules are only effective if they can be enforced. The many levels of state and federal agencies have done a poor job of building meaningful enforcement into the well-intentioned regulations that have been enacted. That being said, regulations provide a safety net and foster transparency between powerful corporations and the people. Information is power and while ignorance may be bliss, it is not freedom.
Corporate greed has run amok. We may have some decent laws on the books, but they are not working as intended. Just ask anyone in a community dealing with pollution and toxic issues.
That’s why in the opinion piece, I mentioned Amara Strande who in 2023 testified in front of Minnesota lawmakers even though her voice was shaky. A tumor was pressing on her throat. It was her fifth time speaking to state decision makers in support of legislation that would restrict a group of chemicals, which she believed caused her rare form of liver cancer. She died weeks before legislation known as “Amara’s Law,” banned the use of PFAS in Minnesota. She was 20 years old.
If you are new here, PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances) is a class of thousands of compounds known as “forever chemicals” because they persist in both the environment and in human bodies for decades. They don’t break down easily and can accumulate at toxic levels in the environment.
These chemicals have been used to make everything from textiles, adhesives, food packaging, firefighting foams, and non-stick cookware. The health issues associated with exposure to PFAS include fertility issues, developmental delays in children, increased risk of cancer, and risk of obesity, according to the EPA.
What’s beyond frustrating is that we’ve known for decades which industries used these chemicals, and we knew they were bioaccumulating, but both companies and our regulators kicked the can down the road.
Starting in the 1950s and through the 1970s, 3M corporate headquarters dumped its PFAS waste into pits that led to a more than 150-square-mile plume of contaminated groundwater. In 2004, testing revealed that the drinking water for more than 140,000 residents in Minnesota was tainted. Amara grew up near that plume, just a mile away from that 3M building.
Meanwhile, federal drinking water regulations for these chemicals only came out this April. They require water utilities to monitor for certain PFAS chemicals in their water through 2027, and to remove those PFAS chemicals that exceed the EPA’s set limits by 2029.
Scientists have detected PFAS chemicals in the blood of almost all Americans. They’ve been testing since 1999.
Yes, we can throw the current administration a carrot for getting these laws on the books, but you can also imagine how the communities already affected by PFAS might feel like these laws are too little, too late. We must and we can do more.
PFAS Problems Popping Up Everywhere
The first story we wrote about for this newsletter in January 2021 was about the PFAS crisis in Maine. You can read the full story below.
A Maine dairy farmer named Fred Stone learned in 2016 that his cows were producing tainted milk, causing him to eventually shut down a century-old family business.
It raised flags about the use of biosolids (sewage sludge) spread on fields, a practice widely used on farms in Maine and around the country. Stone started using it in the 1980s as part of a state program helping municipal or industrial sources dispose of their waste. He also used sludge from a local paper mill.
Just a few years later, the Tozier Dairy Farm had its products removed from shelves in June 2020 after milk samples revealed levels of PFOS at 12,700, 14,900, and 32,200 ppt.
Those numbers are astronomical!
Biosolids are one of the ways many communities get exposed to PFAS. But that’s not all. PFAS was originally discovered in groundwater at former military sites throughout Maine, according to a January 2020 Report from the Maine PFAS Task Force.
Just last week, the U.S. EPA and the U.S. Army announced a joint project to conduct sampling and testing of private drinking water wells located near Army installations for the presence of PFAS. This effort will inform Army remedial actions if results indicate that PFAS is found in drinking water, because PFAS contamination has spread and may potentially be impacting the drinking water wells of nearby residents.
The joint EPA-Army sampling and testing project, which is being implemented nationally, has identified a priority list of nine installations out of 235 locations.
The installations scheduled for sampling under the program are:
Fort Novosel (Alabama)
Fort Hunter Liggett – Parks Reserve Forces Training Area (California)
Fort Stewart (Georgia)
Fort Stewart – Hunter Army Airfield (Georgia)
Blue Grass Army Depot (Kentucky)
Fort Campbell (Kentucky & Tennessee)
Fort Liberty (North Carolina)
Fort Sill (Oklahoma)
McAlester Army Ammunition Plant (Oklahoma)
It’s an ongoing issue at hundreds of active or former bases throughout the country.
In fact, the Defense Department is a major contributor of PFAS pollution in the U.S., as spills, dumping, and the use of firefighting foam containing forever chemicals has created a backlog of contamination clean-up. More than 700 military installations are likely contaminated with PFAS. You can find an interactive map of them here.
The number of confirmed U.S. communities contaminated with PFAS compounds continues to grow, and tens of thousands of drinking water systems have never tested for these contaminants. This is why I believe so many of our towns are like ticking time bombs waiting for this terrible news.
Residents of Calhoun, Georgia, about an hour north of Atlanta, are suing their own city for PFAS contamination. The lawsuit alleges the city spread at least 28,000 tons of municipal sewage in fields near their homes with high concentrations of PFAS, which seeped into local wells for decades. The city also allowed industrial wastewater containing PFAS from carpet manufacturers flow into the local sewage treatment plant mixing with the sludge and then getting dumped on land along the Coosawattee River, where the city draws its drinking water, according to the suit.
Last year, one or more types of PFAS were detected in at least 45 percent of the nation’s tap water, according to a study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey. That’s almost half of our water. This research marked the first time anyone had tested for and compared PFAS in tap water from both private and government-regulated public water supplies throughout the country. I can assure you that the more we test for PFAS, the more we will find.
Thats’ why I believe the recent Supreme Court Chevron decision overturning a 40-year-old precedent could injure future efforts to protect water quality. It weakens the ability of regulatory agencies to do their jobs protecting public health and protecting us from problems like PFAS.
Under the Court’s ruling, federal judges would get the final say on what a statute says and how laws like the Clean Water Act (CWA) and the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) should be applied. Future pollution cases could meander through the federal court system for years while drinking water remains contaminated.
Water utility and chemical manufacturing companies, including the Chemours Company, have filed challenges with the EPA, arguing that requirements under the SDWA don’t apply to PFAS and calling the rule, “arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion.”
Our response to PFAS has already been slow, these new legal contests could delay implementation of the rule and bring efforts to a standstill.
No matter who wins the election in November, we already have an impossible job when it comes to regulating the environment. It’s not just about creating the right regulations but having a robust plan to enforce them.
If we continue to apply lackadaisical rules and enforcement to our greatest environmental challenges, what will be the cost to our collective livelihood?
What you can do about PFAS
Continue to educate yourselves and be loud. Watch for local headlines about PFAS contamination near you.
The burden to end this toxic mess should not fall to consumers. The manufacturers and the government have the most power to stop the spread of these chemicals. But you can also engage with your current elected officials and do your research on where future candidates running for office stand on the issue of PFAS and other toxic chemicals.
I want to shout out the amazing work of the National PFAS Contamination Coalition, which includes more than 30 community groups acutely impacted by PFAS contamination. Check out their incredible leadership team. This group of advocates has worked tirelessly to educate others and push for regulations for PFAS.
You can also check out the work of my friend Rob Bilott, an outspoken advocate for public health. His book Exposure details a legal battle against DuPont that consumed 20 years of his life, uncovering a corporate cover-up that put the health of hundreds of thousands of people at risk. It also inspired the movie Dark Waters, starring Mark Ruffalo.
Avoid exposure to these chemicals when you can. The Green Science Policy Institute put together a list of brands that are PFAS-free.
Find a water filter that can filter out these harmful substances. Last year, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) put out a list of the most effective water filters for reducing PFAS. In general, I always recommend matching your water filter to the known chemicals in your drinking water.
See what’s in your water with this tap water database from EWG or the City Water Project developed by our friends at SimpleLab. They also put out the Ultimate Guide to PFAS in Drinking Water.
You can check out this map of suspected industrial sites that discharge PFAS.
Let’s keep the conversation going in the comments below. What questions do you have about PFAS?
I installed a reverse osmosis filter to ensure clean drinking water, now I have learned that reverse osmosis leaches minerals from my body. I wonder if taking potassium, magnesium, and calcium supplements will be enough to counter this mineral loss or would I be better off exposing myself to toxic water? Damned if I do and damned if I don’t.