Exposure to harmful PFAS remains almost impossible to escape – particularly for the people of the Cape Fear River basin
Last modified on Tue 12 Jul 2022 10.34 BSTn Wilmington, 50-year-old Tom Kennedy thinks it might be time to stop fighting the cancer that started in his breast and now grips his spine. He’s endured 85 chemotherapy treatments since an inverted nipple sent him to the doctor five years ago, and he fears the endless struggle to keep him alive is more than his daughters can bear. He wonders if it’s time to let death take him so his family can move on.
Some of the most widely studied types of PFAS have been linked to a range of human health problems, including cancers. They’re called “forever chemicals” because they don’t degrade and accumulate in the environment and human bodies. “The response is not proportional to the harm that’s been committed here,” said Emily Donovan, executive director of the Clean Cape Fear advocacy group, created in 2016 in response to the crisis.it has been working for several years to address them with residents and regulators.
The EPA has rejected the requests and has said it will analyze only seven PFAS and attempt to extrapolate their health impacts and toxicity data across the entire class of over 9,000 PFAS compounds.“We’re outraged – they basically gave us nothing,” said coalition attorney Bob Sussman. Researchers estimate Cape Fear residents spent decades drinking water with staggering PFAS levels exceeding 100,000 parts per trillion – far above the federal advisory level of 70 ppt for two kinds of PFAS. Some public health groups say no amount above 1 ppt is safe.
Though Chemours stopped discharging PFAS directly into the Cape Fear River in 2017, the aquifers around Fayetteville still teem with decades worth of contamination.
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