San Francisco’s women firefighters are exposed to higher levels of certain toxic PFAS chemicals than women working in downtown San Francisco offices, shows a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of California, San Francisco, and Silent Spring Institute. The study, which appears Wednesday, Feb. 26 in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, is one of the first published results from the Women Firefighter Biomonitoring Collaborative, a long-term investigation into the chemical exposures faced by women firefighters. Read more…
WASHINGTON – Under pressure from Congress, today the Environmental Protection Agency took the next step towards setting legal limits for two fluorinated chemicals, or PFAS, in drinking water. The agency is proposing a “regulatory determination” to set a national drinking water standard for the two most notorious PFAS – PFOA, formerly used to make Teflon, and PFOS, formerly an ingredient in Scotchgard – but the final standards water utilities must meet could still take years to finalize if ever. Read more…
“It’s not going to tell you anything.” “It will only worry you.” “It’s too expensive.” “It’s not routine.” “It’s not needed. These are just a handful of the responses I have heard and experienced over the last five years as a PFAS impacted community leader on why community members should not be offered PFAS blood testing. After first learning of my family’s exposure to high levels of toxic PFAS chemicals through contaminated drinking water at the Pease Tradeport (the former Pease Air Force Base) in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, one of the first and worrisome facts I learned in my research on PFAS are that they bioaccumulate, or build up, in the body because they are eliminated from our bodies very slowly. Read more…
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