Blood testing results ranged from 0.3 micrograms/liter (or ppb, parts per billion) to 1,125.6 micrograms/liter or ppb, and the geometric mean of PFOA in blood among the sampled residents was 10 ppb — five times higher than the geometric mean of PFOA believed to be present in the blood of most Americans (which is 2.1 ppb, a figure likely resulting from our ubiquitous exposure to Teflon chemicals that were present in everyday consumer products: nonstick coated cookware, stain-resistant carpets and upholstery, water-resistant clothing, paper and cardboard food packaging, and fire-fighting foam). The health advisory went on to list the known health effects reported with exposure to PFOA, and requested of my husband: “If you have a patient that you think is experiencing health effects due to PFOA exposure, please call us at 1-800-439-8550.”

In general, the higher the PFOA concentrations in drinking water, the higher the PFOA concentration in blood. Some studies have even shown that PFOA levels in blood serum can be up to 100 times higher than the levels found in drinking water — meaning that if someone has 2,000 ppt (parts per trillion) in their drinking water, the anticipated level of PFOA in their blood might be as high as 200,000 ppt (or 200 ppb), an order of magnitude difference.

Why? Because PFOA is like, well, Teflon… resistant, persistent, hard-to-break-down. The half-life of PFOA is between 2-4 years, which means it takes up residence in the body and accumulates faster than the body can expel it — doing what exactly, we’re still not sure, except perhaps, as suggested by the limited epidemiological evidence compiled so far, wreaking havoc on the thyroid, the kidneys, the intestines, the liver. In other words, a baby born with PFOA in its blood has essentially become a chemical harbor until it grows up to be a toddler, or even a preschooler, before PFOA can be completely evicted from its system. Assuming, of course, that the exposure has been removed.

When my husband was first studying to become a physician, he was required to take a class on the history of medicine. I can remember him showing me a graph of total fatalities mapped over time, and pointing to a distinct drop in the curve — a place where something had caused some miraculous reduction in deaths from infectious disease. What was it? Antibiotics? Vaccines? Nope. It was sanitation. Removal of waste from drinking water resources. According to an article on longevity published in Slate.com, “Clean water may be the biggest lifesaver in history. Some historians attribute one-half of the overall reduction in mortality, two-thirds of the reduction in child mortality, and three-fourths of the reduction in infant mortality to clean water.” The discovery of penicillin appeared to yield but a relative blip on the graph my husband showed me, as did the proliferation of vaccines (not to diminish the importance of either to the improvement of public health), but nothing impacted public health with such magnitude as the removal of waste from water. “The garbage man does more to save lives than I ever will,” my husband said.

In Parkersburg, West Virginia, a place considered by many to be ground zero for PFOA-related contamination and injury, DuPont dumped thousands of tons of PFOA into the Ohio River, unlined ponds and beyond, causing widespread contamination of surface and drinking water resources in Parkersburg and surrounding communities. In Hoosick Falls, New York, mishandling of PFOA at the Saint-Gobain plastics facility around the corner from the water supply well on Water Works Road has resulted in contamination of the community water supply. Investigation of the former ChemFab facility will do doubt yield similar findings about disposal of PFOA materials, and during my latest trip to Pownal, Vermont, I was shocked to see that the proximity of the former Mack Molding plastics site to one of the community’s water supply wells was a mere 1,000 feet.

Contamination of drinking water from industrial waste is not a new issue, but these latest developments with PFOA raise the issue yet again, that in this day of modern medicine and sophisticated cancer treatment technologies, we continue to ignore the basic, most fundamental premise of medicine: that the most significant positive impact on human health is the separation of waste from water.

Of course, the implementation of Superfund laws and clean-up programs, and the cradle-to-grave hazardous waste regulations provide some measure of protection, but the exemptions are plenty and the funding is not. Too many waste disposal sites are left festering due to insufficient funds and political commitment for investigation and remediation, and too many water supplies remain in harm’s way.  I keep wondering, after each new discovery of contaminated drinking water wells, of impacted populations whose ailments will likely be traced back to what they drank — I keep wondering if we are ever going to wake up to this fundamental premise of public health.

The post Public Health Advisory: On Water and Waste appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.

I guess that’s what makes the recent drinking water catastrophes in Flint, Michigan, and Hoosick Falls, New York so upsetting — because technically, both of those systems appeared to be in compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act. Technically, water sampled from the City of Flint’s water treatment plant met drinking water standards for lead, even though that same water was corrosive enough to erode lead-bearing private and municipal infrastructure and produce (in some homes) tap water samples high enough in lead to be qualified as hazardous waste. Technically, the Village of Hoosick Falls Water Department appeared to have a flawless performance record, producing water of such quality that the Hoosick Falls Water Treatment Plant was once honored by the New York Rural Water Association as Rural Water Treatment Plant of the Year. In fact, Hoosick Falls’ water was named the best-tasting water in Rensselaer County in 2013, and did well enough in regional competitions to make it to the finals at the New York State Fair. And yet, until recently, water distributed from that perfectly compliant, award-winning plant contained alarming concentrations of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), exposing thousands of unsuspecting residents to a chemical whose toxic health effects are just beginning to be understood.

I’m neither a resident of Flint nor Hoosick Falls, but I can imagine that the betrayal cuts deep, the violation of trust like a swift punch to the gut. It’s as if you asked a trusted friend to babysit your children, but when you got home, you found a stranger with a history of violent criminal behavior watching them instead. How did this even happen? How long has this been going on? What does this mean for the future of my family’s health and well-being?

When water hurts, your understanding of the world gets turned upside-down. The very essence of your cells and those of your children have been violated, their walls trespassed against by chemicals that may or may not hold your bodies hostage, that may or may not, at some time in the coming years ahead, commit some type of unspeakable harm. The anxiety is both tangible and intangible, acute and everlasting. When water hurts, the harm is real — even if the physiologic manifestation of that harm is not diagnosed for many years.

As a former environmental regulator, I have had the unfortunate experience of informing someone that their water has become contaminated — that their private well intersected a petroleum or solvent plume and their water was no longer safe to drink. There is little to say to dull the blow, little that can be offered to calm the fears of what might happen later on. So we focused on the solution. Our course of action always included bottled water as a temporary fix, in-situ treatment systems and monitoring plans as an acceptable long-term solution, but the holy grail for solving a potable water problem in our line of work was to connect them to  public water. Public water was the life boat, the safety net, the thing that delivered you unscathed to the other side.  It was the solution to the problem, not the problem itself.

But it seems this is no longer the case. Or rather, perhaps it never was. The unsettling discovery from the past few months is that the systems designed to safeguard and monitor our public drinking water systems are un-protective, incomplete.  We are vulnerable to a national crisis of antiquated water infrastructure, and we are limited by the narrow scope of authority that our regulatory agencies have.

To that point: the most contaminated public well in the Village of Hoosick Falls is reportedly located a mere 500 yards from the Saint-Gobain facility — a facility that has handled PFOA in the manufacturing of Teflon products since at least the 1960s. Though a clear hazard to a public source of drinking water, plant operators were never required to report releases of PFOA to the EPA, because the chemical wasn’t regulated, and the Village was never required to look for it because it wasn’t on the list. Why? Under existing chemical policy, compounds are considered safe until proven otherwise, and the EPA is granted neither the time nor the resources to adequately study the toxicity of the 85,000 industrial chemicals currently in use. PFOA is just one of those compounds.

The municipal water systems of Flint and Hoosick Falls are not the first public drinking water systems to become contaminated in this country, nor will they be the last. But one would expect our public health and environmental agencies to at least be equipped with the authority to handle the emergencies that arise. As long as chemicals for which human health and environmental impacts are not yet known can be incorporated into consumer products and released into soil, air, and water — as long as these compounds can loiter in our drinking water resources, unmonitored and unaddressed, our current rules are not enough.

The post When Water Hurts appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.

The official language:  “As applied to closely held corporations, the Health and Human Services regulations imposing the contraceptive mandate violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”

Interesting word, violate.  But hold that thought and let it soften in your pocket.  I’ll get to that in a minute.

I mention my location not because I expect to be asked someday, “Where were you when the Hobby Lobby decision came out?”  But I will always remember, because Seneca Falls is the birthplace of women’s rights.

In July 1848 —166 years ago this weekend— Seneca Falls hosted the First Women’s Rights Convention, at which the “social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman” were discussed, and during which the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions was signed and adopted to formalize the fight for women’s rights.  Seneca Falls is to women’s rights as Philadelphia is to the Declaration of Independence.  As in, “We hold these truths to be to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.”

But one would not conclude this based upon the intersection of women’s history and current events — which is exactly where I stood as I led my 10-year-old daughter through the visitor’s center at the Women’s Rights National Historic Park.  We moved from exhibit to exhibit — bar graphs charting the disparity between professions occupied by men and women over time, copies of antique marriage certificates and etiquette books indoctrinating service and obedience to one’s husband.

And all the while, I was explaining to her how things used to be, how difficult it was for women back then to reach their fullest potential, back when the religious code prohibited a woman from postponing or escaping her childbearing destiny.  On the outside, I was acting as if the skies had cleared and my daughter was free to grow up under her own standards, unencumbered by someone else’s dogma.  But inside, the Supreme Court’s decision deflated me.  After all this time and all this work, our society still does not fully and consistently allow women to transcend the function of their wombs.

Why?  Because doing so might violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Violate: To do harm to a person, to break a rule, a promise. To treat with disrespect.  I wonder, did the Supreme Court majority consider the ways in which some organized religions have violated women?  I’ve seen exhibits in the women’s rights museum that might be entered into evidence.  But it seems the path between Washington and Seneca Falls has been neglected and forgotten.

*

Today, the road to Seneca Falls from the NY State Thruway is tarnished with the presence of Seneca Meadows, the largest active landfill in New York, which accepts roughly 6,000 tons per day of municipal solid waste from five surrounding states.  It looms over Route 414, a mountain erected by the convergence of capitalistic greed and unrestricted waste.  Wetlands and agricultural fields have been displaced by 400 acres of capped and terraced trash with high-wire nets to catch the flyaway plastic bags, and vanilla-scented misters to cover the putrid smell.

When I first started coming here, first started calling this place home, Seneca Meadows was nothing but a sign with an arrow pointing to a distant landfill cell, not even visible from the road. But now it towers over the rural highway, hovering, casting a shadow over the history of this place — eclipsing the road to the birthplace of women’s rights as if it has no meaning, no significance.

What started as a nuisance has expanded into something that stirs a certain fury in my core — like a clearcut forest, or an assault on human rights.  Why am I so upset?  Because a corporation’s “personhood” with protected rights has been solidified in less time than it took a woman to earn that status.  Because a corporation can claim religious objection to block her access to those hard-fought legal rights.

This is the landscape that my daughters must view?  These are the rules they must accept?

I think this Hobby Lobby decision is masquerading as a little sign with an arrow — the uninformed quick to point out the narrow scope of Hobby Lobby’s original complaint, or the limited scope of Justice Alito’s blueprint for religious exemption from the rules.

But experience has shown the malignancy of trash and injustice.  In the blink of an eye, this decision has been, and will continue to be used as precedent for discrimination, and for imposing further limitations on women’s access to contraception.  In the blink of an eye, that mountain will grow and grow and grow.

Photo credits:

Seneca Meadows landfill images courtesy of Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

Seneca Falls welcome sign image courtesy of Self-Rescuing Princess Society blog

The post The Landfill on the Road to Women’s Rights: On the Hobby Lobby Decision appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.