That’s why she started an online petition asking for blood testing for residents who may have been exposed to city water that had a possible contamination of perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also known as perfluorinated carbons (PFCs), through the city’s public water supply wells.
“The contaminated wells were taken offline but before that I drank this water for 30 years,” Mello said.
“We deserve to know what our exposure is.” Over the summer, two of the city’s eight public drinking water wells were taken offline due to both having levels of PFAS or PFCs that was above a lifetime exposure limit advisory given by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Even though some studies have found significant associations between serum perfluoroalkyl levels and adverse health effects, it does not mean that perfluoroalkyls caused these effects.
Mello believes that it is possible that exposure to the PFAS may have occurred to residents as early as the 1950s, when the online petition said the firefighting foam were first used on the airport.
“We are happy that they took the wells offline but prior to 2015 we didn’t know, so the only way to know is to get the blood testing done,” Mello said.
According to a New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (NH DHHS) press release, “a positive test result for perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) from a well that serves the Pease Tradeport and the New Hampshire Air National Guard base at Pease” was found, and the well in question was taken offline—similar to the situation that occurred in Westfield.
The website reported that the NH DHHS eventually “responded to the community’s request to provide blood testing for the people at Pease exposed to contaminated well water (prior to May 2014) by offering two rounds of testing in 2015.” Also according to the website, the blood tests for Pease residents came back with a higher amount of PFCs than what was found in a 2011-2012 study that was done by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).
Mello said that the testing was also facilitated through the ATSDR, who she also reached out to regarding her concerns.
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Scientists harness sunlight to break down wastewater in 20 minutes.
Scientists harness sunlight to break down wastewater in 20 minutes.
WaterWorld, March 14, 2017.
CANBERRA, Australia – Chemists in Australia claim to have found an alternative to ultraviolet (UV) light disinfection technologies which they claim is 15 times more efficient.
The research group from Australian National University (ANU) have developed a system that uses modified titanium dioxide as a photocatalyst that works with sunlight.
Research group leader Professor Yun Liu said the photocatalyst can completely decompose organic pollutants in wastewater in 20 minutes.
The team added nitrogen and niobium ions in pairs into the titanium dioxide to improve its performance as a photocatalyst.
ANU conducted the research in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of New South Wales, Western Sydney University, and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation.
The university has filed a provisional patent covering the discovery, which involved the design strategy, chemical composition and manufacturing approach.
ANU said the new technology could be “useful for treating water for human consumption and has potential applications in making self-cleaning building materials, including glass, and splitting water to make hydrogen fuel”.

The Nogales Unified School District is participating in a voluntary water testing program offered through the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality after district-sponsored water testing last August and September turned up excessive levels of lead and copper at Desert Shadows Middle School.
“Now this program through ADEQ is funding a water-screening program to test the drinking water at schools statewide, and as I mentioned, we are participating to test the drinking water at all of our schools once again.” ADEQ began offering water testing at Arizona public schools in January in response to nationwide concerns about the safety of drinking water for children.
The program is designed to identify any school drinking water with lead levels that could pose harm to students’ health so districts can address those issues.
The program, which provides water testing kits to schools at no cost, has identified elevated levels of lead at 24 of 118 schools tested to date, or one in five, according to a spreadsheet updated weekly on the ADEQ website.
Though NUSD already conducted tests of schools water sources independently within the last six months, the district is taking advantage of the opportunity to again analyze the safety of its water with multiple samples at each school in the coming weeks, Parra said.
Abundant caution When initial results from water testing conducted by the district last year showed elevated levels of lead and copper at Desert Shadows Middle School, the district immediately covered drinking fountains at the school and began providing bottled water for students and staff.
Even so, the district is continuing to provide filtered and bottled water at Desert Shadows in what Parra called “an abundance of caution.” Working with the Arizona School Facilities Board (ASFB) and Dominion Environmental Consultants, NUSD determined that hot water heaters were the likely cause of the problem.
Parra added that the district is also working with ASFB to replace water heaters at all 10 district schools, starting with Bracker Elementary School.
“We have a very smooth system in place,” said Desert Shadows Principal Joan Molera, who added that to cut down on the expense of disposable cups, she also asked the County Superintendent of Schools’ Office to provide each student with a reusable water bottle.
“I think it’s always important when we’re dealing with children, and educators also, to be on the cautionary side,” she said.

Source of contamination in wells still unknown.
Officials in south-central Idaho still don’t know the source of contamination in wells in Lincoln and Gooding counties but are retesting them to determine whether the water quality is improving.
Abundant snowfall, heavy rains and warm weather have caused widespread flooding across the region.
Last month, several wells northwest of Shoshone began producing what officials describe as “green water.” Lincoln County Commissioner Cresley McConnell said, he “believes there are groundwater issues in northwestern Lincoln County.” The South Central Public Health District is sending its environmental health staff to Lincoln County to retest 16 wells previously tested by the Idaho State Department of Agriculture.
“We do not know the source or sources of the groundwater issues.
The wells being retested are in the advisory zone, an area of northwestern Lincoln County and northeastern Gooding County.
The tests will be processed by the Idaho Bureau of Labs and results should be available next week.
With widespread flooding, the ag department is responding to calls, complaints and requests for technical assistance in the Magic and Treasure valleys, Chanel Tewalt, ISDA communications chief, told Capital Press last week.
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Water contamination bill remains in NH House.
"Otherwise if they didn’t want to do that, they could have just killed it."
"The more of these you have in your body the more likely you are to develop chronic illnesses," she said previously.
The House committee is supposed to take up the bill again on Wednesday afternoon, Messmer said.
The bill passed the House by an overwhelming margin last week, but was sent to the House Finance Subcommittee after state Department of Environmental Services officials said it could end up costing more than $30 million if passed into law.
A memo shared with state lawmakers stated Messmer’s bill "provides no consideration of cost, contaminant prevalence or likelihood of making a significant impact on public health protection."
"The consequences would likely include significant additional costs for water system customers."
The EPA classified PFOS and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, as "contaminants of emerging concern" because of their potential harm to humans.
The health advisory level for PFOS and PFOA is 70 parts per trillion, but Messmer maintains the state should lower the level to 20 parts per trillion, like Vermont has done.
If the House committee approves the bill with an amendment, it will then go back before the entire House for another vote, Messmer said, and then cross over to the Senate.

The compost facility received paper mill sludge that was contaminated, according to the state.
Then the company spread the contamination through the area with its compost.
Resident Robert McIntosh said he was worried about the “environmental safety of the content of the paper sludge,” and he was joined by two other residents who expressed similar concerns.
The company makes compost by mixing the paper sludge with yard debris, Kip Foley said, according to minutes from the meeting.
So far, no water systems tested have had more than the federal limit in PFOA and PFOS contamination, but tests are ongoing.
The state has tested nine wells and began going door-to-door last week to ask owners to agree to tests.
It’s not clear which paper mill delivered contaminated sludge to the Agri-Cycle, or whether the sludge was contaminated after it left the paper mill.
The state is now checking sludge at six mills and six other facilities that use that sludge.
While the state regulates paper mills, it doesn’t yet routinely test for PFOA and PFOS at the mills, state officials said.
That led them to find well water with elevated PFOA in Cambridge, and eventually a property owner suggested they check to see if Agri-Cycle was the source, officials said.

At toxic cleanup sites across the country, environmental agencies have allowed groundwater contamination to go untreated and slowly diminish over time — a strategy that saves money for polluters but could cost taxpayers dearly and jeopardize drinking water supplies.
Alvarez is particularly critical of the use of MNA at radioactive waste sites around the country, where it’s estimated that certain radionuclides will take millions of years to naturally degrade to safe levels.
It appears that most state environmental agencies, which supervise many cleanups, do not keep data on MNA use over the years.
“Their only source of drinking water is groundwater.” More than $100 million already has been spent on an active cleanup of the pollution over the years.
But contaminants are continuing to spread, and the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, the agency overseeing the cleanup, claims that they won’t reach safe levels for up to 500 years if MNA is applied as proposed by the Air Force.
That directive, and the EPA’s updated guidelines, state that MNA shouldn’t be applied when, among other things, the source of pollutants isn’t yet under control, when the tainted groundwater still is spreading and when the contaminants won’t break down to safe levels within a “reasonable” period.
At some Superfund sites, critics say, MNA has been applied in circumstances that clearly violate the agency’s guidelines.
While EPA guidelines call for MNA only where pollution will degrade to safe levels within a reasonable period, it is one of the techniques being used at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southwestern Washington State along the Columbia River.
Cheryl Whalen, an official regulating the cleanup for the Washington State Department of Ecology’s Nuclear Waste Program, downplayed environmental concerns about the plume.
“Monitored Natural Attenuation says, ‘we’re not going to do anything because it costs too much money,’” she said.

Possibility of lead contamination mapped in Stark County water systems.
Hide caption (Thinkstock.com photo) The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency on Friday released water system maps from communities across the state including several in Stark County showing the parts of the system where lead could leach into the water.
By From staff and wire reports The state has posted maps showing water systems with lead or potential lead service lines from 99 percent of Ohio’s 1,878 water systems.
Many of the Stark water systems such as Canton, North Canton, Aqua Ohio—Massillon, Beach City and Brewster said they have no water service lines with lead or they’re unaware of any of part of their service lines having lead.
But the systems had not confirmed which parts of its system or homes had lead components.
North Canton identified some areas with water mains before 1940 where there is a potential of contamination from lead components.
Doug Hastings, the superintendent of the Alliance Water Distribution system, summed it up in a March 3 one-sentence letter to the Ohio EPA.
Those areas are throughout the city.
"There is a moderate probability that some of the older infrastructure (about 247 water lines with 535 believed to have no lead) may or may not contain a lead service connection on the public water side of the distribution system," Brewster’s map said.
Operators of water systems were required to submit maps by Thursday to comply with EPA regulations informing the public about potential lead content in drinking water, much of it coming from older lead pipes.

What’s in the water?
“But what is seen as progress for some has been a nightmare for us.” In their neighborhood, where about 30 homes’ water supplies come from private wells, homeowners can’t drink their own water.
Started with explosions The well water troubles began about the time of the blasts, Eichner said.
Just about a year ago, the Eichners, and others on County Line Road, received a letter from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation explaining that a controlled explosion would happen in the near future and home water testing would be conducted for anyone within 1,500 feet of the blast area.
“At the time we were still drinking the water.
The results of the tests were compared and some wells had elevated levels of turbidity and solids — the water was cloudy.” A troubling time lapse Homeowners on County Line Road began receiving results of the water testing in February, months after the second round of testing, Jeff Eichner said.
If they knew what the reports meant, why didn’t they let people know their wells were affected?
Asked about that, Dave Thompson, spokesman for PennDOT, said, “The post-blast results have a one-page summary for the individual well showing the results of many of the tests as well as typical drinking water standards for some of the results.
“From the time we built the house in 1997 until this construction work, we hadn’t had to replace the well pump,” Valery said.
Homeowners should keep careful records of any expenses they are incurring as a result of bad drinking water.