The well had been under the City’s scrutiny for years because of concerns about its proximity to a former metals plant where levels of the contaminant MTBE had been found, but it was PFOA, PFOS, and PFHpA contamination that necessitated the closure of the well.
This June, Dover shut down its second drinking water well due to rising levels of dangerous contamination.
PFOAs were used to make things like fire-retarding foams, stain-resistant carpets, and coating for non-stick cookware.
These chemicals were released into the air, ground, and water in substantial amounts, and have been finding their way into community drinking water supplies at alarming levels ever since.
When both PFOA and PFOS are found in drinking water, the combined concentrations of PFOA and PFOS should be compared with the 70 parts per trillion health advisory level.” The Dover wells were closed “out of an abundance of caution” when levels hit a little more than half the EPA’s “acceptable” guideline.
In all the discussion of drinking water contamination, we seem to be taking as a given something that should never have been accepted in the first place; namely, the utterly preposterous notion that there are acceptable levels of Teflon – or lead, or arsenic, or any of the myriad other illness-causing contaminates — in our drinking water.
How, exactly, did we get to a point where we decided it was rational to argue over what level of toxin we’re willing to have spew from our taps?
It’s utter madness to think that we should accept any contamination in our water; that we should feel comforted by contamination levels of, say, 28 parts per trillion because, well, at least it’s not 70, right?
She has been sounding the alarm about drinking water contamination on the Seacoast for years and is active and insistent in her push for tough, transparent, and total solutions to our vexing — and deadly — contamination problems.
Please vote for Mindi Messmer for U.S. House of Representatives.