PFAS chemicals threaten public health in Dublin and throughout Ireland
By Pat Elder
July 22, 2021
Surface water at the Dublin Fire Brigade Training Centre is heavily contaminated with PFAS chemicals.
Search for “PFAS” on the Independent.ie website and you’ll find seven entries. Four are stories about the Professional Footballer’s Association (PFA) and three are pieces on the deadly “forever chemicals” in America. PFAS contamination has not received much public attention in Ireland, although that will change.
PFAS are per- and poly fluoroalkyl substances and they are found in the firefighting foams that have been used for many years at locations across the country. PFAS have been linked to liver, breast, kidney, testicular and prostate cancers, as well as fetal abnormalities, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and childhood asthma. After routine practice dousing flames, the foams were allowed to leach into the ground and drain into groundwater and surface water. They’ve been known to contaminate seafood and drinking wells. Nearly 100% of us have PFAS in our bodies. The chemicals never break down. They simply bioaccumulate and cause harm. For instance, breast milk in American women often exceeds allowable limits for PFAS in drinking water, while Ireland is slow to track such things, even though high levels of PFAS contamination are evident throughout the country.
According to a report prepared for the Environmental Protection Agency, surface water at the Dublin Fire Brigade Training Centre and Shannon Airport is heavily contaminated with PFAS chemicals. The seafood in Dublin Bay and the River Shannon is likely to be contaminated.
Firefighters battle a blaze on a live fire training simulator
at Shannon Airport August 5, 2019.
Most of the PFAS in our bodies comes from the food we eat, particularly the seafood from contaminated waters. In fact, the European Food Safety Authority, EFSA, has concluded that “fish and other seafood” account for up to 86% of dietary PFAS exposure in adults." This single fact should inform Ireland’s EPA and Health Service.
The EPA report also identified Bunclody Fire Station, Co. Wexford, Wolftrap Mountain, Slieve Bloom Mountain Range, Co. Offaly, and Irving Oil Whitegate, Co. Cork, as serious trouble spots.
The Irish government is largely fixated on just two of the more than 8,000 varieties of PFAS that have been developed. They are PFOS and PFOA, which are no longer used. PFOS (Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid) and PFOA (Perfluorooctanoic acid) were widely used for 50 years. PFOA was in Teflon and various industrial applications, like wire coating. PFOS was in firefighting foams. They've just been substituted with other types of PFAS that were initially thought to be less harmful but are now being recognized as being extraordinarily dangerous.
PFOS is considered as a priority hazardous substance under the EU Water Framework Directive. The European Environmental Quality Standard limit value is 0.00065 micrograms per liter (µg/L) for inland surface waters and 0.00013 ug/L in seawater.
Let’s break that down. The surface waters leaving the Dublin Fire Brigade Training Centre contain .0937 ug/L of PFOS while the E.U. limit value is .00065 ug/L. It’s easier to understand if we turn these numbers into parts per trillion, (ppt). The inland surface waters leaving the Dublin Fire Brigade Training Centre contain 93.7 ppt of PFOS while the European standard is .65 ppt. The waters flowing into Dublin Bay are 144 times over the European limit.
This data from the EPA’s analysis of PFAS contamination shows the concentrations of various PFAS chemicals in surface waters heading toward the sea from Dublin and Shannon.
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Surface Water - in parts per trillion (ppt)
PFAS Shannon Dublin
6:2 FTS 511 990
8:2 FTS -- 220
PFPeA 108 303
PFBA 50 54
PFHpA 20 40
PFHxS -- 20
PFHxA 67 157
PFOS 10.5 93.7
PFOA 10.5 28.2
__________________________________________
Total 777 1,905.9
Here they are again. Get to know these chemicals and what they do
because they’re likely to be in your body and in many foods you eat.
6:2 FTS 6:2 Fluorotelomer Sulfonate
8:2 FTS 8:2 Fluorotelomer Sulfonic Acid
PFPeA Perfluoro-n-Pentanoic Acid
PFBA Per Fluoro Butyrate
PFHpA Per Fluoro Heptanoic Acid
PFHxS Per Fluoro Hexane Sulfonate
PFHxA Per Fluoro Hexanoic Acid
PFOS Per Fluoro Octane Sulfonic Acid
PFOA Per Fluoro Octanoic Acid
These are “forever chemicals.” The foams have soaked into the ground and may poison the soil, drinking water, surface water, and sediment for a thousand years, and some, perhaps, forever.
What do the numbers above mean? They mean people are likely getting sick in Ireland from PFAS exposure.
See if you can find an Irish health or environmental official who is willing to say there’s little to worry about, considering the numbers presented here - especially the 93.7 ppt of PFOS pouring out of surface water into Dublin Bay. See if they’re willing to go on the record for a story. It is likely to be controversial because municipal fire brigades are still using fire-fighting foams containing PFAS.
Ireland must expedite efforts to phase out PFAS in foams. Sadly, this work is usually initiated by local regulatory authorities who may not be aware of the threat to human health. There are many suitable fluorine-free foams and much of the modern world has switched to using them.
PFOS and other varieties of PFAS bioaccumulate in fish tissue when surface water levels are barely detectable. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in the U.S. says that surface water levels that exceed 2 ppt of PFAS pose a threat to human health. That’s in the same league with the E.U. standard of .65 ppt. Health officials are concerned about the propensity of these chemicals to exponentially increase in seafood.
Bioaccumulation is the increase in the concentration of a contaminant in aquatic life over time. PFAS chemicals tend to hang around forever, so even when fire brigades and industrial sites eventually stop using PFAS, the chemicals will remain in the soil, groundwater, surface water, and river bottoms. The fish and wildlife are poisoned. And so are we.
The various PFAS chemicals draining into Dublin Bay have differing effects on human health. Search Pub Chem for proper chemical names and available toxicity studies.
6:2 FTS has been detected in drinking water, air, and fish in the U.S. Several studies show that 6:2 FTS can cause kidney and liver damage in animals. There is little known about the human and environmental impacts of 8:2 FTS and PFPeA, although all varieties of PFAS are believed to be dangerous. A growing international chorus is calling for a ban on all of them all as a class of chemicals.
The more we learn about them the scarier they become.
PFBA was developed by 3M, an American chemical manufacturer that knew it was poisoning people for two generations with PFAS it manufactured. It is used in firefighting foams and a host of military and industrial applications. It is found in Ireland’s waters at levels that may bioaccumulate in sea life. A Danish study recently found that people with elevated levels of PFBA were more than twice as likely to develop a severe form of Covid-19. PFBA is believed to cause thyroid and liver damage. PFBA has been found in high levels in shellfish in the Chesapeake Bay in the U.S. near a military installation that used the chemicals in firefighting foam.
Studies on PFHpA have been inconclusive regarding human health impacts. PFHxS is now limited by several U.S. states to under 20 ppt in drinking water. PFHxS is a by-product of PFOS degradation in the environment. It has been linked to problems with fetal development and childhood diseases. PFHxA is associated with liver disease. PFOS and PFOA are extraordinarily toxic and are no longer used, although the damage is done and it’s not going away unless we remove it and that will require lots of time and money.
It’s time to begin budgeting for it.
These chemicals are unusually powerful in the tiniest amounts. The safety threshold for PFOA in drinking water should be as low as .1 ppt, according to Linda Birnbaum, the former top toxicologist in the US. She cited the figure, which is 700 times lower than the non-mandatory advisory set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for drinking water, (70 ppt).
While PFOA has already been tied to kidney and testicular cancer, among other diseases, recent research linking PFOA exposure to pancreatic cancer is the basis of the lower number cited by Birnbaum. “If you look at the data, pancreatic tumors are present at very, very low concentrations from PFOA,” Birnbaum said.
PFOS, however, may be the most worrisome of all varieties of PFAS because it is extraordinarily mobile in water and it is among the most bio-accumulative types of PFAS in sea life and humans. You’ll see it in the chart below.
Other Sites
Aside from the high levels of PFAS contamination reported by the EPA at Bunclody, Wolftrap Mountain, and the Irving Oil plant in Whitegate, there are other facilities that have poisoned the environment with these chemicals. People just don’t know about it.
For instance, Aughinish Alumina, located on Aughinish Island, is the largest alumina refinery plant in Western Europe. The plant is located on a small island just five miles across the estuary from contaminated Shannon Airport. The worry has always been over the impact of residue leachate on the surrounding wetlands. Leachate is the fluid that percolates through industrial sites and landfills. It is a witch’s brew of deadly chemicals, generated from liquids present in the waste and from rainwater. Although a variety of chemicals are systematically removed at treatment plants, PFAS are not treated before being pumped into Ireland’s waterways.
Aughinish Alumina used aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF), in the 1980s and 1990s. Because the main boilers were fueled by heavy industrial oil, AFFF was regularly used in fire-fighting exercises. Limerick City and County Fire and Emergency Services were based nearby at Foynes Harbour, with massive oil storage areas. They also used such foams for training and for fire-fighting.
Further along the estuary there was an oil-fired power station at Tarbert in north Kerry and a coal burning power station at Moneypoint in Co Clare that may also have used such foams. The Shannon Waste Water Treatment Plant, like all treatment facilities, disposes of untreated PFAS chemicals into the River Shannon.
The surface water at the Dublin Fire Brigade Training Centre contains 93.7 ppt of PFOS and a total of 1,905.9 ppt of PFAS. This is a catastrophe. Examine the chart below to gain a sense of the bioaccumulative nature of many of these chemicals. Keep in mind that many U.S. states are regulating the sum of 5 PFAS to less than 20 ppt. in drinking water.
PFAS Concentrations in Surface Water and Fish in 5 US states (parts per trillion)
State Location Water Fish Fish/Water
Vermont Walloomsac 37.6 7,180 191
Wisconsin Truax AFB 53.3 92,300 1,731
Maine Loring AFB 445.6 1,080.000 2,423
Maryland St. Mary’s 13.5 23,100 1,711
New Jersey Passaic River 13.0 47,430 3,648
New Jersey Raritan River 6.9 13,110 1,900
New Jersey Pine Lake 102.0 162,500 1,593
New Jersey Horicon Lake 10.0 15,210 1,521
New Jersey Little Pine Lake 100.0 118,600 1,186
New Jersey Mirror Lake 72.9 39,620 543
New Jersey Woodbury Creek 6.4 21,910 3.423
New Jersey Fenwick Creek 3.1 12,390 3,996
What’s in your seafood, Ireland?