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.

In most of those cases, when I had inherited the files and reviewed the history of the site, I reserved a sliver of compassion, an acknowledgement that for many of these sites, the atrocities I was seeing were a result of the history — of regular people mishandling materials for which the long-term environmental consequences were not yet known. They were unintended outcomes, began as honest industrial mistakes, where the long-term damage may have been mostly unforeseen.

“There was a different standard of care back then,” I remember telling some of the people whose drinking water wells I sampled. They’d pause and think, and eventually convey their understanding by sharing some anecdote about how when they were kids, they used to get x-rays of their feet at the department store, to make sure their back-to-school shoes really fit. Or how they’d played with mercury from a broken thermometer in science class, rolling the liquid ball around in their palms. We’d shake our heads and sigh about all the things we used to do that are no longer considered safe, at all the things we didn’t know.

In environmental law, there has always been an element of forgiveness for these matters, an acknowledgment of the things previously legal and unknown. Compliance with new rules to address newly discovered hazards borne from old industrial practices is usually dosed over time, the regulated community enjoying the benefit of things “grandfathered,” of phased regulation, of clemency for past mistakes. But rule-making is still a slow, contentious process, and there is always a lot of fighting along the way.

Last week, finally, the EPA issued drinking water health advisories for PFOA and PFOS at 70 parts per trillion (ppt) — this number based upon peer-reviewed scientific studies of the compounds’ toxicologic properties. The decision was no doubt triggered by the discovery of PFOA in several public drinking water systems, perhaps most notably in the communities of Hoosick Falls, NY, Merrimack, NH, and North Bennington, VT.

Indeed, this is movement in a positive direction, but what’s upsetting to me is the timing of it all. Over 10 years ago, EPA settled its PFOA case against DuPont, assessing a record $10.25 million in penalties for violations of the Toxic Substances Control Act and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. According to the EPA’s press release, “The violations resolved in this settlement consist of multiple failures to report information to EPA about substantial risk of injury to human health or the environment that DuPont obtained about PFOA from as early as 1981 and as recently as 2004.” In other words, they knew. They knew a lot for a long time, but pretended not to know.

And now we’re halfway through 2016. DuPont knew about the health hazards of exposure to PFOA since at least 1981, perhaps even earlier, and more than a decade has passed since the EPA’s administrative response to that crime.  Meanwhile, companies like Saint-Gobain continued to manufacture Teflon products with PFOA, and the people of Hoosick Falls, of Merrimack, of North Bennington filled their baby bottles and bathtubs, water pitchers and coffee mugs with PFOA-tainted water. And nobody knew a thing.

Except that’s not exactly true, because the EPA knew something, and they should have known enough to look. Or at least required others to look.

Here’s the thing we all remember about environmental atrocities, about places like Love Canal: It wasn’t just that the drums were buried and covered up, and that the houses and school were built on top — the thing we remember most, the most damning detail of all was that the land was sold by Hooker Chemical to the Niagara Falls School Board for $1, with a liability limitation clause.

The crime was in the knowing. The crime was in the knowing and doing nothing. The crime was in the suppressing of the knowing as an excuse for doing nothing.

Photo credit: Times Union

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