February 2021

TRAVERSE CITY — Public records show eight months elapsed between when state and local officials began corresponding about potential drinking water contamination in the Pine Grove neighborhood and when they told residents.

Timelines posted on both state and airport websites show the official investigation of PFAS pollution at Cherry Capital Airport and the adjacent U.S. Coast Guard Air Station and possible impacts on homes in the nearby neighborhood began in February 2020. But state and local officials waited until October to disclose details about the contamination risk to the residents of the approximately 20 homes suspected of daily use of well water. Read more…

For nearly eight decades, Los Alamos National Laboratory has contaminated waters and soils with myriad hazardous chemicals and radioactive waste. Now, testing by scientists around the mesa-top nuclear weapons lab reveals widespread—and in some instances, extremely high—levels of PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. 

Most of the samples they collected revealed just traces of various members of the PFAS family, including perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). But some water samples ranged from 4,130 parts per trillion to 4,290,000 parts per trillion. Read more…

Hank Schwedes was driving in heavy traffic near his Morrisville, Pa., home when the car ahead of him suddenly stopped—and to Schwedes’ surprise, so did his.

“I wasn’t stopping quickly enough, so my car reacted before I did,” said Schwedes, who hadn’t known until that moment that his new Subaru Outback was equipped with a futuristic crash prevention system. “It’s a good safety feature.”

The feature relies on information traveling instantaneously to the car’s braking system, the type of data-transfer speed that will allow nascent 5G wireless networks to transform how we work, play, and make money.

But key to delivering data at lightning speed are members of the PFAS family of synthetic compounds linked to health problems and lawsuits. And that’s an issue for some who study the so-called forever chemicals. Read more…

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency must take a series of steps to protect public health and the environment from the toxic fluorinated “forever chemicals” known as PFAS from being incinerated or dumped in landfills, wrote more than 30 environmental and public health organizations in comments submitted to the agency this week.

The groups provided comments on the EPA’s interim guidance, released by the former Trump administration in December 2020, on the destruction and disposal of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances and materials containing the chemical compounds. Read more…

One of Pennsylvania’s largest water utilities has sued 3M, DuPont and a host of other companies, alleging they knew — or should have known — that so-called “forever chemicals” they manufactured and distributed posed a hazard to the public.

The lawsuit, filed by Pennsylvania American Water, is seeking compensation for its ongoing cost to treat drinking water supplies across the state that have been tainted by toxic per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (or PFAS for short) that have been linked to a variety of birth defects, cancers and other health effects. Read more…

Firefighters are exposed to cancer-causing chemicals in the very clothing and gear that is meant to protect them, a paradox that stems from standards set under industry influence.

Cancer is already a leading killer of firefighters, yet the standards for water-resistant uniforms, known as turnout gear, call for them to contain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — a highly toxic class of chemicals linked to a wide variety of health problems even at very low doses. Read more…

After World War II, the DuPont chemical company began marketing Teflon, the miraculous-seeming nonstick agent sold on pots and pans around the world.

Then a farmer who lived near a DuPont plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia, watched 190 of his cows die with blackened teeth, swollen organs, and mysterious illnesses. The farmer and his wife got cancer. Read more…