High levels of PFAS still draining from the Former Brunswick Naval Air Station
Local activist finds alarming levels heading toward the sea
By Pat Elder
June 3, 2022
The last of the Navy P-3 Orions based at the Brunswick Naval Air Station are shown here in a hangar shortly before the base closed in 2011. The hangar appears to be fitted with an overhead suppression system that used carcinogenic foams. According to the Navy, the systems accidentally discharged thousands of gallons of foamy water into waterways from multiple hangars.
On May 17, 2022, environmental activist Martha Spiess, working with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, sampled a stream draining from the former Brunswick, Maine Naval Air Station and found 1,437 parts per trillion (ppt) of Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, (PFOS) and 2,428 ppt total per-and poly fluoroalkyl substances, (PFAS). These are alarmingly high concentrations of the carcinogens. (See the results below.)
The sampling site is known as the Picnic Pond Outlet Stream Site.
(All links to NAVFAC reports have been disabled by the Navy.)
The stream empties into Mere Brook which drains into Harpswell Cove. The water and the seafood are contaminated, although the Navy and the state of Maine don’t want to publicly acknowledge it. Surely, the state and the military understand the very real threat to human health that Spiess is reporting. They just don’t want to deal with it. It’s going to cost a lot of money to clean up, if this is even possible.
1,437 ppt of PFOS in Brunswick stream
Minnesota regulates PFOS in some of its lakes at .05 ppt. Spiess found 1,437 ppt of PFOS, a concentration that is 28,740 times over the Minnesota threshold. The European Union has set a PFOS threshold at .65 ppt in inland surface waters. The stream in Brunswick is 2,210 times over that limit. Many states and nations have acted to set PFOS limits in surface water and seafood. PFOS travels long distances in water and wildly bioaccumulates in seafood.
Few in Maine are likely to pay attention to Martha’s results.
According to the European Food Safety Authority, the most important contributors to the exposure of PFOS, are ‘Fish and other seafood’ (contributing up to 86% in adults), especially ‘Fish meat’, followed by ‘Meat and meat products’ and ‘Eggs and egg products’. Regarding PFOA, ‘Milk and dairy products’ top the list.
Eggs from one farm in Fairfield averaged 37,000 ppt of PFOS, yet the Maine Department of Health and Human Services said people could still consume 5 of these eggs a week. The eggs also contained an average of 1,900 ppt of PFOA, an extraordinarily powerful chemical that can adversely impact human health in drinking water at .1 part per trillion, according to Linda Birnbaum, the former director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences. The Environmental Working Group, a trusted resource for all things PFAS, says we ought to limit the entire class of chemicals to 1 part per trillion in drinking water.
Maine won’t tolerate municipal water providers serving water containing more than 20 ppt. of a combination of six varieties of PFAS, including PFOS and PFOA.
The discredited EPA has set a Lifetime Health Advisory (LHA) for PFOS and PFOA in drinking water at 70 parts per trillion. This is based on a 70-kilogram adult (154 pounds) consuming two liters of water each day. The EPA is not in the business of regulating PFAS. It is interesting, though.
While setting the LHA, the EPA made it clear that the dominant source of human exposure to PFOS is from the diet. “The LHA (for drinking water) was calculated using a relative source contribution (RSC) of 20%, which allows for other PFOS exposure sources to make up 80% of the reference dose.”
The following publication by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services addresses pathways to exposure from PFOS, PFOA and other PFAS compounds in Maine’s environment. The Mainers leave out seafood consumption, the number-one way PFOS enters our bodies.
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PFOS, PFOA and other PFAS Questions and Answers
How might you come into contact with PFOS, PFOA and other PFAS?
“Almost everyone has some PFOS or PFOA in their bodies because these chemicals were in so many consumer products and for many years. For most of us, the amount of these chemicals in our bodies have been decreasing as the use of PFAS in consumer products has been phased out.
Low levels of PFOS, PFOA and other PFAS are also present in our environment. Higher levels are sometimes found near airfields that may have used fire-fighting foams, factories that used these chemicals, or land with a history of using certain waste materials or biosolids containing PFOS, PFOA, or other PFAS.
Crops may be grown on soil that has these PFAS, but how much of these chemicals are in the crop depends on the type of crop, what part of the crop is edible, soil properties, and levels in the soil. These chemicals may end up in the milk and meat of animals fed crops like hay containing PFAS.
These chemicals can also move from the soil into the ground water and into well water. Consuming contaminated milk, meat, plants, or water are potential ways people can be exposed to these chemicals.”
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Maine’s Department of Health says, “Almost everyone has some PFOS or PFOA in their bodies because these chemicals were in so many consumer products and for many years.”
Correction: PFOS and PFOA have been phased out of production but they’ve been replaced by new toxic varieties of PFAS. These chemicals are found in many thousands of consumer products and they are still harmful. No past tense, please! PFAS compounds are often bio-accumulative, meaning they just build up in our bodies. Chances are pretty good we have higher concentrations of PFAS in our blood today, than say, yesterday.
Consumer products with PFAS, for the most part, present the greatest danger because they’re eventually discarded and wind up in the waste stream.
Consumer products are either recycled, incinerated, or buried. If they’re incinerated, the fires often cannot burn hot enough to destroy the PFAS. A silent death sprinkles down from the smokestacks. The chemicals - still very much intact - enter our lungs, groundwater and surface water. Maine leaves surface water out of the PFAS equation. They didn’t mention incineration either.
Products high in PFAS, like couches and carpets, are buried in the landfills. Carcinogenic PFAS-laced liquid leachate drains off to groundwater and surface water, like a giant coffee percolator. Sometimes, the leachate is sent to wastewater treatment plants where it contaminates sludge and surface water.
Maine addresses PFAS threats to human health without mentioning contaminated surface waters and aquatic life. A Brook Trout had concentrations of 1,080,000 ppt of PFOS in a stream near Loring Air Force Base, where fire-fighting foams, like those in Brunswick, were carelessly dumped for years.
The military is typically the worst PFAS offender, but the fish are poisoned with PFAS in the Kennebec, Penobscot, Mousam, Saint John, Machias, Saco, and Pleasant Rivers. And that’s only what we know.
See this spreadsheet of PFAS in 24 fish throughout Maine from data provided by the EPA and the state of Maine. A softshell clam from Broad Cove in Eastport had concentrations of 7,645 for PFOS, which was also the median of the brief dataset. The fish are contaminated throughout most of the state. We just don’t have the data, like Michigan that tested 2,000 fish and found the average contained 80,000 ppt. of PFOS.
Maine limits PFOS in drinking water to 20 parts per trillion while the mussels, clams, Book Trout, Smallmouth Bass, softshell clams, White Sucker. White Perch, and Brown Bullhead have concentrations of the toxins that are hundreds of times greater than what is allowed in drinking water.
A Mainer ought to ask Department of Health folks if it’s OK for a pregnant woman to have a serving of a Smallmouth Bass from the Kennebec River if it contains 32,200 ppt of PFOS with 44,740 of total PFAS. They must be forced to defend the science that says it’s OK! Same with the eggs.
Maine limits eating fish that are high in PFAS in a few locations:
· Ponds in Fairfield
· Fish Brook in Fairfield
· Messalonskee Stream from Oakland to Waterville
· Durepo Pond and Limestone Stream from Durepo to Limestone
· Mousam River from below the Number One Pond Dam to Outlet Dam on Estes Lake, including all of Estes Lake in Sanford
· The Presumpscot River from Westbrook to Falmouth
Unity Pond in Unity:
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Martha’s Poisoned Picnic Pond
The map here, provided by the Navy, shows the location of “Surface Water 23” at the headwaters of Mere Brook.
From Figure 14-1 - Proposed Gauging and Sampling Locations - PFAS Base Wide Investigation Sampling and Analysis Plan Addendum - Former Naval Air Station Brunswick. 05/03/18 (All links to NAVFAC reports have been disabled by the Navy.)
Like Navy bases around the world, the majority of toxic PFAS releases in Brunswick occurred due to accidental discharges from the aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) fire suppression systems in hangars. Several of the reported releases were quite significant and discharge of AFFF was to storm drains or the sanitary sewer, and in some instances, directly to the former Picnic Pond storm water retention pond system. All three result in releases to the environment.
The base’s former deputy fire chief indicated that each of the buildings that contained AFFF fire suppression systems likely had “two to three accidental releases”, most of which were significant as the systems are designed as full flooding systems.
There was a cockpit fire on April 28, 1998 that sent 3,000 gallons of foamy water to the Picnic Pond.
These are forever chemicals. They take forever and a day to break down into harmless components. Folks in Brunswick will have to deal with their adverse health effects forever.
Navy says no big deal
The Executive Summary of the 2018 Navy report stated, “Results of the risk assessments performed as part of the separate investigation within the former Picnic Pond Stormwater Retention System (Resolution, 2016b) indicated that PFOS and PFOA concentrations in surface water and sediment did not pose unacceptable risks to human or ecological receptors.”
https://www.navfac.navy.mil/niris/MID_ATLANTIC/BRUNSWICK_NAS/N60087_003833.pdf (All links to NAVFAC reports have been disabled by the Navy.)
The Mussels in Harpswell Cove
In 2020, two mussels found at the mouth of Mere Brook where it empties into Harpswell Cove were tested by David S. Page of the Brunswick Area Citizens for a Safe Environment, (BASCE.). That’s about a mile and a half south of the Picnic Pond.
Here are the results of that study in parts per trillion, (ppt)
Compound Mussel 1 Mussel 2
PFBA 4,730 4,530
PFBS 140 220
PFOS 5,630 7,270
Total PFAS 10,500 12,020
PFBA (Per fluoro butanoate); PFOS (Per fluoro octane sulfonate); PFBS (Per fluoro butane sulfonic acid).
The state of Maine tested mussels from Harpswell Cove in 2014 and 2016 and found PFAS levels up to 5,320 ppt. They know what’s going on in Augusta. They just don’t have the guts to do the right thing.
PFAS Test Results - May 17, 2022 from Cyclopure
Pond 1 is located near Allagash Drive, close to the northern perimeter of the former base. Here, surface waters drain into the Androscoggin River. Note the difference in the levels of one kind of PFAS called 6:2 FTS between Pond 1 and Picnic Pond.
