Rainwater in parts of US contain high levels of PFAS chemical, says study
Source: The Guardian
Rainwater in parts of US contain high levels of PFAS chemical, says study
Levels high enough to potentially impact human health and trigger regulatory action, which only targets two of 4,700 variants
Daniel Ross
Tue 17 Dec 2019 09.00 GMT
Last modified on Tue 17 Dec 2019 09.02 GMT
New data shows that rainwater in some parts of the US contains high enough levels of potentially toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) to possibly affect human health and may, if found in drinking water, in some cases be high enough to trigger regulatory action.
PFAS chemicals appear in an array of everyday items, such as food packaging, clothing and carpeting. Chemicals in this family are the subject of the film Dark Water, which chronicles the real-life efforts of a lawyer seeking to hold a polluting factory to account in West Virginia.
Estimates pin the number of different PFAS variants at more than 4,700 but federal regulations so far target only two of them: PFOS and PFOA. Some of these chemicals have been known to cause serious health issues such as cancer, and immune system and thyroid problems.
Previously it was known that there is widespread PFAS contamination of the nation’s lakes, rivers and groundwater reserves but until recently, researchers were largely in the dark as to whether this family of chemicals could also be ubiquitous in rain.
“There were folks not too long ago who felt the atmospheric transport route was not too important,” says Martin Shafer, principal researcher with the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP), based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The data belies that statement.”
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/17/rainwater-pfas-us-potentially-toxic-levels-study
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