The Navy’s game plan on PFAS
By Pat Elder
July 19, 2023
I attended this poster board session last night, July 18, 2023. The Navy is waging a psychological operation against the American public.
The Navy and the EPA do not consider PFAS to be “hazardous substances.” Not a single Navy base has been “cleaned up.” The brightest minds in uniform don’t know how to extract all of the PFAS from groundwater, surface water, soils, sediment, and the air - and they don’t know how to safely dispose of it.
The Navy’s wargame against the American public is presented here, as it is across the county:
It’s about the water.
It’s about the firefighting foam.
It’s about PFOS and PFOA.
It’s about waiting for the EPA.
Their strategy explained:
Most of the PFAS we consume comes from the food, especially the fish we eat. The Navy has severely contaminated surface waters and seafood near almost all of its installations.
The firefighting foam is just one documented use of PFAS on military bases. The chemicals are used in chrome plating, engine cleaning, and in a host of other applications. Its use and disposal are not regulated and that’s a large part of the reason why the Chesapeake Bay and our bodies are loaded with the chemicals.
Although PFOS and PFOA have been detected at dangerous levels in the food we consume, other PFAS compounds used by the Navy are also present in our food, water, soil, and air.
The DOD exercises tremendous influence over the EPA, while refusing to acknowledge the EPA’s unenforced interim health advisories of .004 ppt for PFOA and .02 ppt for PFOS in drinking water. 70 ppt is the Navy’s goal, a level considered to be dangerous by most states.
It is true that scientists are still learning about how exposure to PFAS effects people’s health, but enough is known for the state of California to classify these compounds as human carcinogens. Referring to “possible health effects” downplays hundreds of studies documenting clear associations between the chemicals and these specific health outcomes.
See the two panels on the right side. The Navy says PFAS were not detected in any on-base drinking water supply wells and we have no reason to doubt this. PFAS takes a long time to sink into the lower aquifer. If wells are sunk deep enough they can find clean water and they can filter water to remove the contaminants.
The Navy says the county’s drinking water meets all of EPA’s safe drinking water standards. The EPA does not regulate PFAS in drinking water. The Navy says sampling for PFAS in off-base drinking water is not necessary at this time.
Certainly, the county’s municipal drinking water is below the 2016 EPA advisory of 70 ppt, but the shallow drinking water wells in close proximity to the base are another matter altogether. The Maryland Departments of Health and Environment have shown no interest in testing the waters in the predominately African-American community of Hermanville adjacent to the base. These agencies have refused to test or regulate fish except for one small stretch of Piscataway Creek draining from J.B. Andrews and even there, the state says its OK to consume the highly carcinogenic fish.
The Navy controls the narrative. Challenging them is an uphill battle.