Tag Archives: PFAS

Is your tap water safe to drink? Is bottled water the best option?

Water in glass, Clean drinking water

By Kami Klein

According to a report by the National Resources Defense Council, there is nearly a 1 in 4 chance that your tap water is either unsafe to drink or is not being monitored for contaminants according to Federal law. Do we really know what is in our water when we drink it?   Most people want to have faith in the laws and the standards that are set for our cities but what is being discovered, in many areas, are that those standards are not being met nor are they being brought to the attention of the public.  

We hear warnings from media reports which has resulted in many of us turning to bottled water “to be safe”. According to the  “Ban the bottle” website, American’s consumed over 50 billion water bottles this past year. Unfortunately, in a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council, one-third of the bottles tested in a thousand various brands contained significant contamination with levels of chemical or bacterial contaminants exceeding those allowed under a state or industry standard or guideline.

We must have water to survive.  We assume since we pay for our water that it will be safe for our consumption and for our families. We are told by doctors and nutritionists that it is imperative to have enough water in our bodies to remain healthy and we are told to stay away from beverages loaded with sugar and chemicals. We must come to understand that filtering our water for contaminants is not just a “to be on the safe side” move, but an imperative and proactive one.   

In July, CNN reported on another case of severe contamination of PFAS in a Michigan city water well. PFAS, and /or polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a family of more than 4,000 synthetic chemicals that degrade very slowly, if at all, in the environment. Some of the best-known chemicals are PFOS, PFOA, and GenX. In a Facebook post by the city of Parchment, Michigan, city officials warned residents that testing had found that the water contained 1400 ppt with the acceptable limit being 70 ppt. They strongly advised people to boil their water or use bottled water. No one was sure how long people had been exposed to this high level of contaminants or of the health problems that eventually may go with it.  That means that children were drinking the water, babies, whose formula was mixed with the water and all adults in that town were exposed to a very toxic mix of poison when using the city water supply.

In other evidence gathered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from samples of more than 60,000 water systems in all 50 states between 2013 and 2015, samples show that the tap water of 218 million Americans contains high levels of chromium 6. In fact, this carcinogen turned up in as much as two-thirds of our nation’s water supply! These high levels of chromium 6 were deemed unsafe by public health officials. Oklahoma, Arizona, and California had the highest average statewide levels of the chemical found in their drinking supply. This was the poison in the water that got Erin Brockovich upset enough to take on huge corporations in the attempt to clean it up and help families who suffered from cancer and other disease stemming from the groundwater becoming contaminated.

 Last year another report showed that nearly 3,000 areas in the U.S. have lead poisoning rates that are at least double of those in Flint, Michigan during the absolute peak of the city’s lead crisis.

Many local water treatment plants, especially those in small, poor and minority communities, can’t afford the equipment necessary to filter out contaminants. Those can include arsenic found naturally in rock, chemicals from factories and nitrates and fecal matter from farming. In addition, much of the country’s aging distribution pipes delivering the water to millions of people are susceptible to lead contamination, leaks, breaks and bacterial growth.

We are now at a time in all cities and in all states that we can no longer depend on a safe supply of drinking water. The government can try, but with aging water systems and so many cities needing to update, to be absolutely certain your water is safe to drink now demands a filtration system.  With several affordable options on the market, a way to filter your water should be as common as a microwave in your kitchen and in the end much more cost effective than bottled water that may or may not contain harmful bacteria or chemicals.

Water is life.  There is no doubt about that. With so much new information that continues to be revealed about our drinking supply, taking heed and filtering your water is the only responsible action we can take.  Your good health depends on it!

Seychelle filtration products

Toxic chemicals in drinking water for six million Americans

By Lisa Rapaport

(Reuters Health) – Drinking water supplies for more than six million Americans contain unsafe levels of industrial chemicals that have been linked to cancer and other serious health problems, a U.S. study suggests.

The chemicals – known as PFASs (for polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances) – are used in products ranging from food wrappers to clothing to nonstick cookware to fire-fighting foams. They have been linked with an increased risk of kidney and testicular cancers, hormone disruption, high cholesterol, and obesity.

“PFASs are a group of persistent man made chemicals that have been in use since 60 years ago,” said lead study author Xindi Hu, a public health and engineering researcher at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Once these chemicals get into the water, they’re hard to get out, Hu added by email. “Most current wastewater treatment processes do not effectively remove PFASs,”

The problem may be much more widespread than the current study findings suggest because researchers lacked data on drinking water from smaller public water systems and private wells that serve about one-third of the U.S. population – about 100 million people, Hu noted.

To assess how many people may be exposed to PFASs in drinking water supplies, researchers looked at concentrations of six types of these chemicals in more than 36,000 water samples collected nationwide by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 2013-2015.

They also looked at industrial sites that manufacture or use PFASs, military training sites and civilian airports where fire-fighting foam containing PFASs is used; and at wastewater treatment plants.

Discharges from these plants—which are unable to remove PFASs from wastewater by standard treatment methods—could contaminate groundwater, researchers note in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters. So could the sludge that the plants generate and which is frequently used as fertilizer.

The study found that PFASs were detectable at the minimum reporting levels required by the EPA in 194 out of 4,864 water supplies in 33 states across the U.S.

Drinking water from 13 states accounted for 75 percent of the unsafe supply, led by California, New Jersey, North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Georgia, Minnesota, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Illinois.

Sixty-six of the public water supplies examined, serving six million people, had at least one water sample that measured at or above what the EPA considers safe for human consumption.

The highest levels of PFASs were detected near industrial sites, military bases, and wastewater treatment plants—all places where these chemicals may be used or found.

One limitation of the study is that researchers lacked data on how long people lived in areas supplied by contaminated water or how much of this water people actually drank, the authors note. The risk of many health problems linked to the chemicals is associated with long-term exposure.

A second Harvard study from one of the co-authors on the paper, Philippe Grandjean, focused on a new potential health problem tied to PFASs.

Grandjean and colleagues studied nearly 600 adolescents from the Faroe Islands, an island country off the coast of Denmark, who received vaccines to protect against diphtheria and tetanus.

The subset of these teens exposed to PFASs at a young age had lower-than-expected levels of antibodies against diphtheria and tetanus despite receiving vaccinations, according to the study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

This suggests that PFASs, which are known to interfere with immune function, may be involved in reducing the effectiveness of vaccines in children, the authors conclude.

Previous research has found lower responses to vaccinations at ages 5 and 7 with exposure to the chemicals, Grandjean said by email. The current study in teens suggests that the problem persists as children get older.

“So the negative effects on immune functions appear to be lasting,” Grandjean said. “Sadly, there is very little that an exposed resident can do, once the exposure has led to an increased amount of PFASs in the body.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2aPdBat Environmental Science and Technology Letters and http://bit.ly/2bcj8cf Environmental Health Perspectives, both online August 9, 2016.