October 20, 2022
By Kate Bartholomew, Chapter Chair
By the time the PFOA water crisis in Hoosick Falls, New York, scorched across the state and national headlines in 2015, these hellish “forever chemicals” had been insidiously seeping into nearly every trophic level of the natural world, courtesy of the accidental, “fortuitous” discovery of polytetrafluorethylene (PTFE), later to be trademarked as Teflon, by DuPont research chemist Roy J. Plunkett on April 6, 1938. Given that DuPont originated as a gunpowder manufacturer, the connection shouldn’t be so surprising. It was first used as a water-proof coating on tanks in WWII.
Roy Plunkett passed away in 1984, after receiving many awards and being named the “Discover of Fluoropolymers.” And his initial discovery had evolved and branched into a family of over 1,000 related chemical compounds manufactured by 3-M and DuPont. The unique properties of these compounds — friction reduction, water and oil repellency, temperature resistance — as well as their persistence and virtually indestructible nature, lent themselves to a diverse array of uses across the commercial spectrum. From Teflon to Scotch-guard, from fire fighting foam to slick water surfactants in high volume hydraulic hydro-fracking, from the inside of microwave popcorn bags to fast food wrappers, to water and stain resistant coatings on carpets, clothing, baby products, and upholstery — these forever manmade polymers are everywhere. And, thanks to the persistent nature of these chemicals, once in the environment they aren’t going away.
Currently, the community of Cohoes, New York, is embroiled in a battle with Norlite, LLC, an aggregate manufacturing facility that has a kiln licensed to incinerate hazardous materials. Unfortunately, Norlite has been using these kilns for combustion of aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) that contains Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS). Funny thing, fire fighting foam is incredibly resistant to incineration — that’s why it is REALLY effective at fighting fires. Norlite had been accepting materials from a number of military bases, because, sadly, this AFFF, was/is a staple element on U.S. military bases worldwide to combat fire hazards, and its problematic disposal is now a cost to be borne by us all.
While I could expend reams of paper elaborating on the unnecessary pain and incalculable harm caused by these largely unregulated manufactured compounds, that job has already been laudably accomplished through Rob Billott’s book Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer's Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont, Mark Ruffalo’s film Dark Waters, and the feature length documentary The Devil We Know, all of which I highly recommend. What needs to be examined is how these chemicals are still inoculating the environment, the water supply, the food chain and the bodies of over 99% of the humans on the planet.
One small silver lining to the water crisis in Hoosick Falls was learning that granulated activated carbon filtration systems or filters effectively remove PFOA/PFAS from water. The problem with that “solution” is that one is left with a growing assemblage of used, contaminated filters in need of safe disposal. They can’t be burned/incinerated, so these filters need to be disposed of in a lined hazardous waste landfill with zero leakage potential, because any leakage would contaminate soil and groundwater.
Some public waste treatment facilities have been upgraded to remove certain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from the waste stream so that the water returned to the environment is free from these forever chemicals. The remaining sewage sludge, however, is highly contaminated, and in many states, our own included, this sludge is permitted to be applied to agricultural fields as an approved “soil amendment” to add nitrogen to benefit crops for livestock consumption. This practice has been given what the Department of Environmental Conservation terms a “Beneficial Use Determination,” or BUD. Michigan and Maine began widespread testing of farms spreading sewage sludge and found high levels of contamination in all samples, leading Maine to completely ban the practice last year.
In a holistic regulatory action, the Environmental Protection Agency, now freed from the strong grip of an anti-science delusional administration, issued its plan for a PFAS Strategic Roadmap on October 18, 2021. This is to be a four year plan to systematically address the multiple issues of PFAS production, toxicity, disposal, deactivation, and contamination. As a start, in June 2022, the EPA issued interim health advisory levels for PFOA and PFOS in drinking water (0.004 and 0.02 parts per trillion, respectively), well below the NYSDEC 2021 guidelines of 6.6 and 8.8 parts per billion, respectively. Most recently, on August 22, 2022, the EPA proposed designating PFAS and PFOS, as well as their salts and structural isomers, as hazardous substances under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), other wise known as the Superfund Act. This will vastly increase transparency and accountability by polluters and mandate that those responsible pay for contamination cleanup. There is a 60-day public comment period ending on November 7, 2022 (docket EPA-HQ-OLEM-2019-0341 on www.regulations.gov). According to the EPA’s roadmap, other forever chemicals will follow in this process.
Of course, at the end of the day, forever remains forever. The reason this category of manmade compound diversified over such a broad spectrum of commercial and industrial venues was due to its stability and indestructible nature. Until a practical means of chemically breaking down the molecular structure of the compounds is discovered and made widely available, continued use of these materials is devilish folly. Recently — in February 2022 — scientists at the EPA announced they had developed a means using a heat- and pressure-based technique known as supercritical water oxidation to destroy 99% of PFAS in a water sample in the laboratory. This technique involves heating water to over 374 degrees Celsius at 220 bars of pressure, resulting in a state that is neither liquid nor gas. In this form, reaction speed is accelerated and bonds break much more easily, including those seemingly indestructible carbon-fluorine bonds. Naturally, this is an expensive endeavor and not exactly practical when dealing with contaminated soil, groundwater, or large waste water treatment issues.
And this brings me back full circle to Hoosick Falls. Shortly after the story broke, I called the DEC to ask what was being done for the residents in the community who had been affected by these chemicals, and I was told not to worry because the chemicals had such a “short half life” in the human body — the people would be fine. Obviously, either the folks at the DEC were in the dark, or they were feeding the public an offensive line of malarkey. I’m hoping it was the former, because we now know that those horrific compounds bioaccumulate — they don’t break down and disappear — and they increase as they march up the food chain. So, to answer the two questions posed as a title, forever is safe and ends when these chemicals are no longer manufactured or used and when those responsible for the contamination and harm are fully held to account for the knowing and intentional harm inflicted on all the living systems of the planet.
Sources
“What Are PFAS?” by Rachel Ross; April 30, 2019; https://www.live science.com/65364-PFAs.html
“History and Use of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS)”; Interstate Technology Regulatory Council; April 2020
“How to Destroy ‘Forever Chemicals’” by Lars Fischer; January 31, 2022; Scientific American
“Five years after Hoosick Falls water crisis, lawmakers and citizens say other small communities are still at risk” by Emily Fego, Assistant Editor; December 18, 2020; The Legislative Gazette
“Timeline of events related to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances”; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_events_related_to_per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_substances
“Fracking with ‘Forever Chemicals’” by Dusty Horwitt, J.D., Physicians for Social Responsibility; July 2021
“Sampling, Analysis, and Assessment of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS)”; Under NYSDEC’s Part 375 Remedial Programs; June 2021
“PFAS Strategic Roadmap: EPA’s Commitments to Action 2021–2024”; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency