New research from Environmental Working Group (EWG) and Northeastern University in Boston details PFC pollution in tap water supplies for 15 million Americans in 27 states and from more than four dozen industrial and military sources from Maine to California.
EWG and the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute at Northeastern collaborated to produce an interactive map that combines federal drinking water data and information on all publicly documented cases of PFAS pollution from manufacturing plants, military air bases, civilian airports and fire training sites.
On the map, blue circles show public water systems where PFCs were detected in public drinking water systems – the larger the circle, the more people served by the system.
Red dots indicate a contamination site in Northeastern’s PFAS Contamination Site Tracker.
Drinking water contamination Despite widespread contamination and mounting evidence of health hazards, there are no federal regulations for PFOA and PFOS in drinking water.
EWG’s analysis of the results shows that the tests found PFOA and/or PFOS in 162 systems serving 15.1 million Americans.
Because the EPA only required reporting of detections at or above 20 ppt for PFOA and 40 ppt for PFOS, all of those water supplies had detections exceeding Grandjean and Clapp’s safe level of 1 ppt.
There is no ongoing national-level testing of PFCs in drinking water, and the EPA has said it could be 2019 or later before it decides whether to set a national drinking water standard for PFOA and PFOS.
The Site Tracker provides detailed information for 50 industrial or military contamination sites in 18 states and Guam, plus Australia, Canada and the Netherlands.
Groundwater at the base was found to have 580,000 ppt of PFOS.