Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’ Taint Rural California Drinking Water, Far From Known Sources - KFF Health NewsJuana Valle never imagined she’d ...
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network
Juana Valle never imagined she’d be scared to drink water from her tap or eat fresh eggs and walnuts when she bought her 5-acre farm in San Juan Bautista, California, three years ago. Escaping city life and growing her own food was a dream come true for the 52-year-old.
Then Valle began to suspect water from her well was making her sick.
“Even if everything is organic, it doesn’t matter, if the water underground is not clean,” Valle said.
This year, researchers found worrisome levels of chemicals called PFAS in her well water. Exposure to PFAS, a group of thousands of compounds, has been linked to health problems including cancer, decreased response to vaccines, and low birth weight, according to a federally funded report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Valle worries that eating food from her farm and drinking the water, found also to contain arsenic, are to blame for health issues she’s experienced recently.
The researchers suspect the toxic chemicals could have made their way into Valle’s water through nearby agricultural operations, which may have used PFAS-laced fertilizers made from dried sludge from wastewater treatment plants, or pesticides found to contain the compounds.
The chemicals have unexpectedly turned up in well water in rural farmland far from known contamination sites, like industrial areas, airports, and military bases. Agricultural communities already face the dangers of heavy metals and nitrates contaminating their tap water. Now researchers worry that PFAS could further harm farmworkers and communities of color disproportionately. They have called for more testing.
“It seems like it’s an even more widespread problem than we realized,” said Clare Pace, a researcher at the University of California-Berkeley who is examining possible exposure from PFAS-contaminated pesticides.
A portrait of a middle-aged woman wearing a black and white checked blazer over a black shirt. She is standing outside her home; a dog can be seen eating from a bowl in the background.
Not long after she moved to her farm in San Juan Bautista, California, Juana Valle started feeling sick. Medical tests revealed her blood had high levels of heavy metals, especially arsenic, she says. She plans to get herself tested for PFAS soon, too.(Hannah Norman/KFF Health News)
Stubborn Sludge
Concerns are mounting nationwide about PFAS contamination transferred through the common practice of spreading solid waste from sewage treatment across farm fields. Officials in Maine outlawed spreading “biosolids,” as some sewage byproducts are called, on farms and other land in 2022. A study published in August found higher levels of PFAS in the blood of people in Maine who drank water from wells next to farms where biosolids were spread.
Contamination in sewage mostly comes from industrial discharges. But household sludge also contains PFAS because the chemicals are prevalent in personal care products and other commonly used items, said Sarah Alexander, executive director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association.
“We found that farms that were spread with sludge in the ’80s are still contaminated today,” Alexander said.
The first PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, were invented in the 1940s to prevent stains and sticking in household products. Today, PFAS chemicals are used in anything from cookware to cosmetics to some types of firefighting foam — ending up in landfills and wastewater treatment plants. Known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down in the environment, PFAS are so toxic that in water they are measured in parts per trillion, equivalent to one drop in 20 Olympic-size swimming pools. The chemicals accumulate in the human body.
On Valle’s farm, her well water has PFAS concentrations eight times as high as the safety threshold the Environmental Protection Agency set this year for the PFAS chemical referred to as PFOS, or perfluorooctane sulfonate. It’s unclear whether the new drinking water standards, which are in a five-year implementation phase, will be enforced by the incoming Trump administration.
A photo of the back side of a woman with long salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a ponytail. Persimmon trees and farmland are visible in the background.
Moving to the farm to escape city life and grow her own food was a dream come true for Valle. Then she began to suspect water from her well was making her sick.(Hannah Norman/KFF Health News)
A photograph of a few chickens walking around freely in some shrubbery.
Valle’s 5-acre farm in San Juan Bautista, California, has a walnut orchard, towering persimmon trees, and roaming chickens.(Hannah Norman/KFF Health News)
Valle’s well is one of 20 sites tested in California’s San Joaquin Valley and Central Coast regions — 10 private domestic wells and 10 public water systems — in the first round of preliminary sampling by UC-Berkeley researchers and the Community Water Center, a clean-water nonprofit. They’re planning community meetings to discuss the findings with residents when the results are finalized. Valle’s results showed 96 parts per trillion of total PFAS in her water, including 32 ppt of PFOS — both considered potentially hazardous amounts.
Hailey Shingler, who was part of the team that conducted the water sampling, said the sites’ proximity to farmland suggests agricultural operations could be a contamination source, or that the chemicals have become ubiquitous in the environment.
The EPA requires public water systems serving at least 3,300 people to test for 29 types of PFAS. But private wells are unregulated and particularly vulnerable to contamination from groundwater because they tend to be shallower and construction quality varies, Shingler said.
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https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/pfas-toxic-forever-chemicals-drinking-water-rural-californiaTaxonomy
- PFAS