D.C. Government: PFAS bad, PFAS not bad
Military is the source of much of the contamination.
By Pat Elder
July 24, 2023
Money apparently drives policy more than genuine concerns for human health.
Citing the threat to public health, the District of Columbia has filed suit in U.S. District Court against 25 companies that manufactured and sold carcinogenic firefighting foam containing PFAS. The suit alleges that the PFAS, used in D.C. for decades mostly by the military and airports, caused widespread contamination.
At the same time, D.C. Water, an agency of the D.C. government, has been selling a soil conditioner made of sewer sludge called “Bloom” that also threatens public health because it is loaded with PFAS from the same military and industrial sources.
The lawsuit
3M and DuPont, both defendants in this case, have historically been the leading manufacturers of PFAS. Both companies currently face about 4,000 lawsuits by states and municipalities seeking compensation for the cost of cleaning up their water supplies and contaminated environment. Perhaps, sometime in the future, there will be a few dollars left over for late arrival D.C. The city alleges these makers of aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) hid the potential health and environmental risks from the public.
D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb announced on July 18 that the lawsuit was filed in District of Columbia Superior Court. The compelling complaint contains an air of outrage. The plaintiff argues, “Despite knowing that PFAS pose significant threats to the environment and human health, defendants continued to manufacture, market, distribute, and sell AFFF Products—and they did so without warning the public, and without taking any steps to modify their products to avoid these harms.”
The complaint describes how the chemicals “wreak havoc at each level of the food chain, building up in plants, fish, wildlife, and eventually humans. These chemicals then continue their migratory cycle in the environment by being transported through wastewater and biosolids.”
The complaint also cites various diseases and cancers linked to these chemicals, from preeclampsia in pregnant women, to diminished infant birth weight to decreased liver function. There’s an air of indignation throughout.
The DC government understands the perils of PFAS. Why then, is DC Water allowed to peddle a product that contains the dangerous toxins?
Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb said in a statement. “Through this lawsuit, we will hold polluters accountable for the damage their conduct has caused and will continue to cause.” Can the DC Attorney General add DC Water to its list of defendants?
Research has shown that exposure to the chemicals can cause reproductive and developmental defects, increased cholesterol levels, liver damage, and higher risk of kidney and testicular cancer, the attorney general’s office said.
The D.C. lawsuit alleges that D.C. Water has incurred “significant costs” to investigate and remediate the harms posed by PFAS contamination.
The attorney general’s office said the suit was intended to make sure the manufacturers of such chemicals “and not the District or DC Water’s ratepayers — bear the full investigation and remedial costs.”
All the city had to do is copy and paste from a host of other lawsuits and they could have/should have done this a couple of years ago. We saw the same game in Prince George’s County, Maryland when they filed a similar suit on January 14, 2022.
D.C. Water’s carcinogenic sludge
A 2021 study by the Sierra Club and the Ecology Center found dangerous levels of toxic PFAS in Bloom Soil Conditioner produced by DC Water’s Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant. The product, sold in hardware stores and garden centers in the region, contains 100% sewer sludge, euphemistically referred to as “biosolids.”
PFAS chemicals were measured in the soil products from nine garden fertilizers in eight states and D.C. Bloom was the most contaminated at 223,000 ppt for all PFAS tested. Bloom’s product contained 23,800 ppt of PFOA and 22,100 ppt PFOS, two of the most toxic varieties of PFAS.
D.C. government’s hypocrisy is evident. We can use the words from their complaint against them.
“Despite knowing that PFAS pose significant threats to the environment and human health, Defendants continued to manufacture, market, distribute, and sell AFFF Products—and they did so without warning the public, and without taking any steps to modify their products to avoid these harms.”
The chemicals “wreak havoc at each level of the food chain, building up in plants, fish, wildlife, and eventually humans. These chemicals then continue their migratory cycle in the environment by being transported through wastewater and biosolids.”
There are no national requirements to test biosolids for the presence of PFAS. PFAS are unregulated by the US government and the DC government, meaning that military and industrial sites are legally allowed to flush PFAS chemicals down wastewater drains where they settle in the solid materials during the wastewater treatment process.
DC Water says their Bloom product is “great for the environment.” They say Bloom is made from “EPA-certified Class-A Exceptional Quality Biosolids.”
How bad is it?
Radishes, celery, peas, and lettuce in a salad
Crops like lettuce and celery typically have higher levels of PFAS than produce like tomatoes or cucumbers. The EPA says it will regulate PFOA and PFOS at 4 ppt in drinking water by the end of 2023. Compare the drinking water concentrations to the following levels in vegetables.
Links below direct to NIH Associated Disorders and Diseases.
PFAS in:
Radishes (ppt)
PFOA 67,000
PFBS 62,000
PFDA 41,000
PFOS 35,000
Celery
PFBA 232,000
PFPeA 148,000
PFHxA 137,000
PFBS 107,000
Lettuce
Peas
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Grains are the least impacted by the cancer-causing sewer sludge spread on farm fields, while lettuce is most impacted.
Sewer sludge is poisonous, and DC Water is selling it in bags to the public to spread in their gardens to grow things like radishes, celery, lettuce, and peas. The toxic sludge is spread on the city’s school gardens. It is terrible public policy, and it must end now. The rain comes and the waters seep into the groundwater and run into surface waters. Both pathways lead to additional human ingestion. The compounds don’t go away.
The government of the District of Columbia must institute testing regimes for a host of impacted media, like surface waters and the sludge and effluent at Blue Plains. We don’t know how bad it is because they won’t tell us.
Tommy Wells, the Director of the D.C. Department of Energy & Environment told me last year the city is relying on the EPA while the EPA has not formulated mandatory policies regarding PFAS. Wells said he didn’t want to “go down the rabbit hole of whether the EPA is doing enough.”
It’s the same in Maryland where a bill earlier this year that called for testing of sludge and effluent was withdrawn at the behest of the Wes Moore administration. On July 1, 2023, Virginia instituted requirements for certain industrial users discharging to wastewater treatment plants to test for PFAS. Obviously, testing is the first step in dealing with this problem.
With the EPA and the city nonresponsive, we tested the water in the Potomac River in September 2021, a few hundred yards from the DC Water facility and found these results.
PFBA 2.3
PFBS 3
PFHpA 2.4
PFHxA 9.8
PFHxS 3.1
PFOA 6.1
PFOS 7.8
PFPeA 5.3
The PFOS in the river is most problematic, although some of the other compounds also bioaccumulate in fish. The state of North Carolina has calculated the bioaccumulation factor for PFOS in Largemouth Bass to be 1,539. With 7.8 ppt for PFOS we may expect to see Largemouth Bass with 12,000 ppt of the carcinogens in its filet. The state of Maryland reported 94,200 ppt in the filet of a Largemouth Bass eight miles downstream. DC residents catching and eating catfish and bass and other species from the Anacostia and Potomac rivers are the most threatened.
Fishing in the Potomac River near the discharge from DC Water’s Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant.
DC Water reports levels of PFOS at 2.8 ppt and PFOA at 3.6 ppt in treated drinking water from the Washington Aqueduct. These relatively small amounts have been substantiated by independent tests conducted in tap water supplied by D.C. Water. The Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission is also producing water that has PFAS in the low single digits.
Despite the disparity between the level of PFAS in the vegetables and the fish on the one hand, and the relatively tiny levels in the drinking water, almost all the focus nationwide has been on the drinking water.
The FDA refuses to regulate the carcinogens in food. Their website says, “PFAS exposure from food is an emerging area of science and there remains much we do not yet know about which types of foods are more likely to contain PFAS.” It should be abundantly clear that the EPA and the FDA do not work for the American people.
Where does the PFAS sent to Blue Plains likely come from?
The following military installations that are known to use PFAS discharge waste to Blue Plains:
Andrews AFB
Naval Support Activity Bethesda, MD
Fort Detrick - Forest Glen
Naval Research Lab
Naval Support Facility Carderock
Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling
The following is a list of 14 Significant Industrial Users at Blue Plains. The public ought to know the levels, if any, of PFAS in discharges sent to the Blue Plains plant from military sites and these significant industrial users, many with DOD contracts.
We don’t know if any of these significant industrial users are poisoning us, but we should know. D.C. must act to protect the public from these toxins. The EPA isn’t going to do it.
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I will be travelling to Japan in September and October with three others with Veterans for Peace to address audiences and to test surface waters for PFAS in 20 cities. We are halfway to our $10,000 goal so we won’t have to pay out of pocket for our expenses. Please help us! Please make a note that your contribution is for the Japan delegation.
Financial support from the Downs Law Group makes this work possible. The firm is working to provide legal representation to individuals with a high likelihood of exposure to PFAS and other contaminants.
The Downs Law Group employs attorneys accredited by the Department of Veterans Affairs to assist those who have served in obtaining VA Compensation and Pension Benefits they are rightly owed.
Interested in joining a multi-base class action lawsuit pertaining to illnesses stemming from various kinds of environmental contamination? Join the Veterans & Civilians Clean Water Alliance Facebook group. (2.4 K members and growing rapidly.)