“Forever chemicals” are a right-now problem
More is being learned about the detrimental health impacts of PFAS in humans
**Editor’s note: This story appears in the March-April, 2024 issue of Big River Magazine. The magazine covers Mississippi River issues from the Driftless Region between the Twin Cities and the Quad Cities **
They are in the non-stick pan you used to make your breakfast. They put the glossy sheen in the lipstick you wear on date night. They help the rain roll off your coat when you’re fishing.
They are also in the water you drink, coursing through your circulatory system and – science is increasingly showing – might be making you sick.
Robin Markle, a utilities lab technician, tests Moline drinking water for impurities.
Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances – called PFAS in short-hand and “forever chemicals” colloquially – are ubiquitous in the environment and a growing concern among environmentalists and those entrusted with ensuring our drinking water is safe. PFAS are manmade chemicals containing strong bonds between carbon and multiple fluorine atoms. Because of that strong bond, they are ideal for making products oil, stain and water repellant as well as non-sticking.
“The thing that makes them good for those uses, that strong chemical bond, is also kind of where the problem lies because it takes a tremendous amount of energy to break that bond,” said Charles Brown, the City of Moline, Illinois’ Environmental Compliance Manager who oversees the water department’s testing lab. “It’s not going to break down naturally, it’s a high energy, intensive effort to try and break that apart.”
That applies both in the environment and the human body. According to Brown, studies indicate that PFAS build up is found in more than 90% of individuals.
“If you are living, you probably have it in your system,” he added.
David Cwiertny, a professor of chemistry and director of the University of Iowa’s Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination noted that PFAS were first developed for industrial use in the 1930s and 40s. Through much of the 20th and early 21st centuries, they began appearing in consumer products in large numbers as well as used by nearly every airport and military base as a key ingredient in firefighting foam.
It wasn’t until the 1970s and 80s that some health concerns began to arise and not until even more recently that the alarming scope of the issue was fully understood, Cwiertny said.
“Our understanding of the full impacts of PFAS on human health is still evolving,” he said. “This is a good example of the lag between the patenting of chemicals and the research community figuring out if it’s OK that these things are everywhere. We are learning with these chemicals that they probably shouldn’t have been.”
In a presentation he gives, Cwiertny includes a slide entitled “Adverse Health Outcomes at Very Low Levels of Exposure” developed by the European Environment Agency that lists the following conditions there is a “high certainty” of being caused or exacerbated by increased PFAS levels in the human body. These include: thyroid disease, increased cholesterol, liver damage, kidney cancer and testicular cancer. In pre-natal children, adverse impacts include low birth weight, reduced response to vaccines and delayed mammary gland development. There are even more negative health impacts that are labeled “lower certainty” including breast cancer, early puberty onset, rising obesity levels, lower sperm levels and increased likelihood of miscarriage.
“It should be noted that the health concern of these chronic toxicants result from long-term exposure over a long period of time,” Cwiertny said. “It takes time for the adverse health effects to manifest symptoms. The real concern is that low exposure over time becoming accumulative.”
Forever chemicals end up in the environment and water supply in numerous ways, said Brown. The leftover firefighting foam at airports and airbases is sprayed down and works its way into waterways. Because PFAS are in products like fast food wrappers, makeup and clothing, when those items are discarded, the slow-to-break down PFAS leach from landfills into the groundwater supply. There are also many recorded instances of large industrial companies discharging large amounts of the chemicals directly into bodies of water, including the Mississippi River.
The state of Illinois recently entered into a $10.3 billion settlement with 3M, which the Illinois EPA said improperly handled PFAS at its Mississippi River adjacent plant in Cordova. In the suit, the state alleged the company knew about the dangers of the chemicals yet continued to improperly dispose of and dump PFAS into the water supplies around Cordova for more than half a century.
DuPont also entered into a $1.15 billion settlement, also for PFAS clean up as a result of past practices by the company.
The money is to be used by local water treatment plants – whether privately owned or municipally owned – to develop monitoring and mitigation plans, said Tony Loete, Moline’s Director of Utilities and water plant operator.
“This money will help, but it won’t come close to paying for the whole thing,” Loete said.
That means cleaning PFAS out of our drinking water will be an expense borne by all taxpayers.
“All of us who have enjoyed the benefits of these compounds through our rain gear or cosmetics or wrappers from McDonald’s are going to end up paying,” Loete said.
The good news is emerging technologies are proving effective at removing PFAS from the water supply. According to Brown, these include resin exchange where water is run through beads that grab onto the PFAS molecules and let the H2O pass through; a reverse osmosis membrane process and finally using activated carbon on a filter bed.
The bad news is these emerging technologies are expensive, and typically beyond the scope of a single water utility’s ability to afford. Moline, for example, is partnering with East Moline, Rock Island and the Iowa-side private water supplier Iowa-American to undertake a study on identifying and removing PFAS from Mississippi River-sourced drinking water supplies.
“We are in the beginning stages of working with an engineering group that will come in and look at our system, our level of PFAS and will recommend which technology is best for us and tailor it to our plant,” Brown said.
Both Loete and Brown emphasized that currently PFAS levels in Moline, while detectable, are near zero and below the EPA-dictated danger level. They both drink Moline water every single day.
“We have not been above the federal minimum level for the past six quarters,” Brown said. “But we don’t want to sit back and just say we’re good. We continue to work toward a goal of zero.”
For his part, Cwiertny said he’s in favor of increased regulation of industrial chemical development in early stages rather than trying to clean up decades-old messes, which is the case with the PFAS dilemma.
“There is a sea of chemicals already out there, so clean up is going to be a long and slow process,” he said. “They made it into the marketplace because there was nothing in place to stop it.”
Thanks for the article. So Mr. Brown claims the city of Moline has been under the maximum limit for PFAS levels in their drinking water for the last 6 quarters. What about the last 50 years DuPont has been illegally dumping PFAS into the Mississippi River? How many Americans living downstream of the Cordova plant have gotten cancer from PFAS consumption in their drinking water? A follow up article with more details and facts on what the levels have been over the years would be great.