PFAS chemicals detected in 20% of private wells and 60% of public wells sampled in 16 eastern states
Previous analyses have detailed the chemicals’ ubiquity in municipal water systems, but less is known about the scope of the problem in the nation’s private wells, from which about 43 million people get their water.
The chemicals are linked to cancer, birth defects, liver disease, thyroid disease, decreased immunity, hormone disruption and a range of other serious health problems. They’re dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, and they also easily move through the environment, often ending up in drinking water.the chemicals to be contaminating water supplies for well over 100 million Americans, though estimates largely don’t cover private wells.
Though wells near Memphis, Tennessee are in an urbanized area, the region’s deep, old water aquifer is largely clean, while nearly every well tested that relies on shallow aquifers in the Ohio Valley or New England regions had some PFAS in it. Aquifers with higher levels of pharmaceuticals and organic material also had elevated PFAS levels.
Though the PFAS crisis has come into sharper focus in recent years and the chemicals’ health risks have been clear for decades, the EPA has so faron setting enforceable water limits. The agency is proposing to set limits on two types of PFAS compounds in drinking water by 2023, but that still leaves thousands unaccounted for, and the agency has previously missed similar deadlines.
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