PFAS, which are known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are estimated to be in 45 percent of U.S. taps according to recent research from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
This comes on top of additional evidence that the chemicals are widespread, including research finding them in the blood of about 97 percent of Americans, as well as significant portions of U.S. waterways.
Toxicologist Jamie DeWitt told The Hill that she is hardly shocked by the findings, which she described as a “verification” from a government agency “that PFAS are present in multiple drinking water supplies as well as in finished drinking water.”
“Where scientists look for PFAS, they find them,” said DeWitt, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at East Carolina University. “If they can find them in polar bears and in the bottom of the ocean, then we shouldn’t be surprised that we find them across drinking water supplies.”
While there are thousands of types of PFAS, the USGS study only looked for 32 types. Seventeen kinds of PFAS were observed at least once, while PFBS, PFHxS and PFOA were observed most often — in about 15 percent of the samples, according to the study.
Scott Bartell, a professor of environmental and occupational health at the University of California, Irvine, said that people who have the chemicals in their water should be concerned about elevated risks of cancer and other illnesses.
“We have good evidence that, for example, exposure to PFOA, which is one of the chemicals that was detected in many of the water supplies in the study, that it almost certainly causes kidney cancer,” he said.
Carmen Messerlian, an assistant professor of environmental reproductive, perinatal and pediatric epidemiology at Harvard, said that it’s not one specific chemical that is the problem, it’s the PFAS family.
“We know that the class of chemicals is carcinogenic, immunotoxic, reprotoxic, endocrine-disrupting,” she said.
And despite the evidence of their prevalence, experts have also said they don’t think enough people know about the problem.
“I wish the public understood and were concerned, but lots of people are still unaware,” said Linda Birnbaum, former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health and the National Toxicology Program.
Read more in a full report from Rachel and our colleague Sharon Udasin at TheHill.com.
