Summary
A US Geological Survey study estimates PFAS chemicals may contaminate drinking water for up to 70% of the 140 million Americans using aquifers, affecting around 95 million people.
Some groundwater readings were up to 37,000 times the EPA’s new limits. Private wells and small public wells, which serve 13% of the population, lack strict EPA PFAS regulations, making them especially vulnerable.
Contamination is most severe near military bases, airports, and industrial sites, with high exposure in Michigan, Florida, and California.
The USGS also produced an interactive map that shows where there may be trouble.
That seems low.
The majority of PFAs that we’ve consumed have been from food packaging and clothing/textile treatments over the last ~30 years.
Kris Hansen, the scientist who tested for the presence of PFO contaminants in blood for 3M, found them in all of the bags of blood she tested from the American Red Cross in the late 1990s. Those bags were initially intended to be the control against testing the high levels found in 3M employees.
https://www.propublica.org/article/3m-forever-chemicals-pfas-pfos-inside-story
But let’s not stop using them! What could go wrong?
The good news is they won’t be as much of a concern as the lead, mercury, arsenic, and many other environmental toxin regulations that will be repealed so we can turn the US into the unregulated child labor factory utopia that US businesses so desperately need to move to domestic production while maintaining profits.
Don’t forget Trump’s favorite construction material, asbestos.
I wonder if the bags are made of plastic from 3M.