Don’t believe the EPA on PFAS
March 16, 2023
By Pat Elder
EPA Administrator Michael Regan in Wilmington, North Carolina, March 14, 2023.
The Wilmington StarNews reported:
“The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency came to Wilmington Tuesday to announce a first-of-its-kind drinking water standard for PFAS and GenX, in a step that state and federal officials say will seriously limit future exposure to these toxic chemicals.”
It sounds like the EPA has a handle on the PFAS problem. EPA Administrator Michael Regan is very reassuring. Let’s take a deeper look.
The EPA has proposed its first-ever national drinking water standard to prevent several different types of PFAS from entering drinking water sources. This is a good development.
The proposed rule would set legally enforceable levels for six PFAS compounds in drinking water. If finalized, the rule would require public water systems, beginning in 2024, to monitor for the substances—known as PFOS, PFOA, PFHxS, PFBS, PFNA and GenX—in drinking water. If levels exceed the standard, water utilities would be required to notify the public and take steps to reduce PFAS in the water.
The EPA lowered its lifetime health advisory levels last June for PFOS and PFOA in drinking water from 70 parts per trillion combined to .02 and .004 parts per trillion, respectively.
The new drinking water standard would set the limit for PFOA and PFAS to 4 parts per trillion. The EPA also proposed monitoring for any mixture of PFNA, PFHxS, PFBS and GenX chemicals using a hazard index calculation to determine if the combined levels pose a potential risk.
Six small pieces of the puzzle
The EPA is only addressing enforceable standards for 6 of the 12,000 different PFAS compounds. When the EPA initially set its standards for PFAS, they figured drinking water accounts for less than 20% of total exposure to people.
It’s the food, especially the fish that provides the greatest pathway to human ingestion.
The water provided by the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority to Wilmington-area homes is now virtually free of the PFAS compounds, including GenX. The utility, like thousands across the country, has installed granular activated carbon filters to remove PFAS compounds. It’s expensive, but it goes a long way in removing most of the toxins from the water.
Man with a huge catfish. “We fry it up.”
The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality published its “Action Strategy for PFAS” last year. The plan never mentions food! After all, the FDA says we shouldn’t worry about PFAS in food. But, what about the study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology that documented fish with concentrations of 797,000 ppt of mostly PFOS in North Carolina’s Yadkin River? This concentration of the carcinogen is tens of millions of times over the PFOS advisory for drinking water.
Let’s examine the concentration of PFAS found in a single Channel Catfish from North Carolina’s Yadkin River.
.
Waterbody: Yadkin River, North Carolina Fish species: Channel catfish (EWG)
The PFOS totals 23,900 ppt in the catfish. The EPA's unenforced advisory in drinking water is .02 ppt meaning the NC fish are 1.2 million times over this threshold. Up to 86% of the PFAS in our bodies is from the food we eat, especially the fish.
Look at the 29,200 ppt of PFUnA (Perfluoroundecanoic acid) in the cat fish. PFUnA is an 11-carbon version of 8-carbon PFOA. It is extraordinarily bio accumulative.
The compound causes decreased antibody response to vaccines and affects liver function. PFUnA also has developmental effects on the unborn.
This would have been a great question for the EPA buffoon du jour in Wilmington: “Are you taking steps to protect people from the harmful effects of PFUnA in fish caught throughout the state?
EPA Administrator Regan never mentioned the military. He never mentioned wastewater treatment plants or surface water either. He never mentioned spreading PFAS-laden sludge on agricultural fields. He never mentioned incineration.
He never talked about how PFAS-contaminated sediment dries in the sun when rivers ebb and the toxins are lifted into the air as carcinogenic dust to settle in our lungs and in our homes. Nope. He left all that out.
Instead, people are celebrating a rule that likely won't take effect until next year and only covers 6 compounds that all have been replaced with toxic alternatives for industry and the military.
I tested the foam on my beach in St. Mary’s County, Maryland and it contained nearly 5,000 ppt of mostly PFOS. Some states say human health is put in danger when levels in water top 2 ppt. because the carcinogen bio accumulates in the fish.
My family has been living in Southern Maryland since the colonial period. They feasted on the plentiful seafood here.
I have tested the crab, the oyster, and the rock fish, and they are profoundly contaminated. The local health department says its OK to eat because the EPA hasn’t acted on it.
I didn't hear EPA chief Regan address this, or the carcinogenic foam that collects on my beach or the 92,000 ppt of mostly PFOS in groundwater on the Navy base 2,000 feet across the creek from me.
Sorry, nothing to celebrate here, except resistance and hope.
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.
Interested in joining a multi-base class action law suit pertaining to illnesses stemming from various kinds of environmental contamination? Join the Veterans & Civilians Clean Water Alliance Facebook group.
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