Circle Of Blue | WaterNews | By: Brett Walton | June 20, 2016:
Flint lead scandal a factor in stirring action for other contaminants.
Teflon — “Nothing messes with it,” reads the tagline on the latest ad campaign for the famed nonstick cookware. A fried egg, sunny side up, vaults out of the pan, leaving no scraps behind.
Teflon and related brands Gore-Tex, Scotchgard, and Stainmaster — all prized for their water-repelling, stain-protecting, and mess-preventing attributes — seem to contain magical properties. In fact, the magic comes from long chains of carbon and fluorine atoms called perfluorinated compounds that are chemically stable and remarkably repellent.
Yet the very same chemical formula that made perfluorinated compounds useful also turned them into an enduring and persistent hazard to public health and the environment. The life cycle of perflourinated compounds, the most well-known being PFOA and PFOS, is a familiar tale of mid-20th century chemical innovation and industrial profitability that evolved by the end of the century into a costly public cleanup problem and health risk.
Last month, seven years after it issued the first health guidelines for PFOA/PFOS in drinking water, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lowered the recommended level in drinking water to 0.07 parts per billion combined.
The agency’s recommendation, which is voluntary, is intended to prevent kidney cancer, immune system damage, and other health problems linked to the compounds. Water utilities from New England to the Southeast reacted quickly and announced measures to add equipment and take other steps to remove PFOA/PFOS in water supplied to homes and businesses.
After decades of use, however, problems emerged. In the late 1990s, cows drinking from streams near a landfill at DuPont’s Washington Works production facility in Parkersburg, West Virginia, fell sick and died. Kidney cancers, high cholesterol levels, and thyroid disease started appearing in town residents. In time, communities near production facilities in Alabama, New York, and Vermont found perfluorinated chemicals in their drinking water. The wonders of post-war consumerism were suddenly less wondrous. The magic compounds themselves were starting to cause a mess.
The EPA began investigating the chemicals around the time the cows died. In 2002, the agency reached voluntary agreements with companies to phase out production of PFOA and PFOS, two perfluorinated compounds of the greatest health concern.
Because they were often discarded in landfills, the compounds seeped into the ground, eventually contaminating drinking water wells. In light of the new guidance issued last month, water utilities responded quickly. They changed water sources, invested in treatment equipment, and notified customers about potential health consequences. After detecting PFOA/PFOS levels above the new recommended limit, a utility in northern Alabama warned 100,000 residents in early June not to drink the tap water at all until it could install a carbon-filtration system, due to be completed in September.
Though some environmental health groups argue that the EPA should have acted sooner and that the limits should be even lower, many water policy analysts praised the EPA for updating the guidance and providing utilities with the information needed to assess options. Some see in the rapid response by utilities the influence of the drinking water debacle in Flint, Michigan where warnings about dangerous lead levels in water went unheeded.
“Because of Flint everyone and their brother is interested in drinking water in ways that were not evident six months ago,” Jim Taft, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators, a regulators group, told Circle of Blue. “Everything gets visibility and attention now.”
To read full article – please click here.
