Toxic fluorinated compounds found in drinking water of 33 states

It's not too surprising if the effects sound similar to PCB effects. Both are associated with aryl hydrocarbon receptor activation.

Here's a study of thyroid hormone effects in rat cells:

Effects of perfluoroalkyl acids on the function of the thyroid hormone and the aryl hydrocarbon receptor

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Manhai_Long/publication...

Yes, though Teflon itself is of such high molecular weight that it's not a hazard that way. Some chemical intermediates and additives associated with Teflon manufacturing and/or application are hazardous though, like perfluorooctanoic acid:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid

Maybe I should have headed that "why weren't the risks obvious at the beginning?". According to the lawsuit DuPont had discovered the risks of perfluorooctanoic acid exposure by 1961. Industrial production of perfluorooctanoic acid began in 1947. Had it been a simple acutely hazardous chemical that killed rats hours after you fed them a few milligrams, the risks wouldn't have taken a decade+ to surface. I'm not trying to excuse DuPont's duplicity after they did discover problems, rather explaining why these sorts of chronic hazards are not necessarily known the first time somebody writes up a Material Safety Data Sheet.

There are no official treatment recommendations for PFNA, PFOA, PFOS that I know of but they can be treated with activated carbon, RO membranes or some combination. GAC seems to be pretty effective and you could feel pretty safe with a Brita filter, a multi-stage undersink system or a large whole house filter.

The issue with chemicals like these and treatment is that without extensive testing there isn't much information about breakthrough rate and contact time and the relationship, so repeated testing is really the only way to know when you need to change media.

Manufacture cartridge change recommendations generally are pegged to chlorine removal only, so a filter may deplete it's PFOA removal potential in a 1/10 the recommended change interval.

Activated carbon can remove some, but not all [0].

> part from the commonly studied perfluoroocta noic acid (PFOA or C8) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), eight additiona l PFASs were evaluated: perfl uorobutanoic acid (C4), perfluoro- pentanoic acid (C5), perfluorohexanoic acid (C6), perfluoroheptanoic acid (C7), perfluorononanoic acid (C9), perfluorodecanoic acid (C10), perfluorobutane sulfonate (PFBS), and perfluorohexane sulfonate (PFHS).

> Regardless of the test ed (S-)PAC, C4 removal was negligible, while PFOS removal was essentially complete. PFAS removal increased with increasing perfluorinated carbon chain length, and for a given perfluorinated carbon chain length, sulfonates were more adsorbable than carboxylat es.

tl;dr: long-chain PFAS are removed, while short-chain PFAS are hardly removed at all

[0] http://www.waterrf.org/ExecutiveSummaryLibrary/4344_ProjectS...

This EPA page seems to imply that activated carbon would help remove it:

https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/drinking...

---------------- Can PFOA and/or PFOS be boiled out of my water?

No; PFOA and PFOS cannot be removed by heating or boiling water. However, there are steps you and your drinking water system can take to limit your exposure.In some cases, drinking water systems may be able to reduce concentrations of perfluoroalkyl substances, including PFOA and PFOS, by closing contaminated wells or changing rates of blending of water sources. Alternatively, public water systems can treat source water with activated carbon or high pressure membrane systems (e.g., reverse osmosis) to remove PFOA and PFOS from drinking water. These treatment systems are used by some public water systems today, but should be carefully designed and maintained to ensure that they are effective for treating PFOA and PFOS. In some communities, entities have provided bottled water to consumers while steps to reduce or remove PFOS or PFOA from drinking water or to establish a new water supply are completed.

Home drinking water treatment units are typically certified by independent third party organizations against ANSI (American National Standards Institute) standards to verify their contaminant removal claims. Some home filters remove impurities using activated carbon and reverse osmosis, which are the same technologies utilized by public water supply systems to remove PFOA and PFOS. However, there currently are no ANSI protocols for testing home treatment systems to verify that these devices effectively remove PFOA and PFOS or how frequently the filters should be changed in order to maintain removal efficiency. NSF International is currently developing such protocols.

no... no....... say it ain't so.

Mouthwash seems like a better option than drinking fluoride to improve teeth.

Who cares? The same people are arguing the government should stop geo-engineering with HAARP and chemtrails. They're detached from reality.

They'll use a study on sock production volumes in Honduras causing earthquakes in India.

I would too, if I theorized that there were toxic compounds in my water, and then found a study that proves that to be correct.

Excuse you, that was General Ripper. As for fixing this: it will not be difficult, mein fuhrer!

Flint Water® for everyone!

I'm not sure how anyone is better off with reduced regulations. Except possibly developers.

Not to diminish the Flint Michigan situation, as republicans did when they shuttered the investigative bodies that were looking into it. But how dafuq can the EPA be doing nothing if flint is the rare exception to the rule? If they are to lose credibility for not catching one thing, how much credibility do they get for all the stories we DONT read?

It's been proven that policy decisions & budgeting issues at the state level(and more specifically the governors office) propagated the issues potable water issues Flint has been encountering.

If only there was a conscientious regulator at the state of Michigan....

I'm not sure the logical response to the failings in Flint is to throw out the EPA and other "massive" government agencies. I haven't followed the situation closely but my understanding is that multiple levels of government failed the people of Flint (and continue to fail people in other areas with similar water quality issues) due to politics, funding, and the complex nature of the crisis.

Replacing aging infrastructure needs to be a national priority and will take many decades. Until that is complete we need a strong agency that monitors hazards and enforces compliance regulations - access to clean drinking water (and clean air) should not be a partisan issue. Instead we have a President who appears to believe that the solution to "Democrats didn't do anything to help Flint" (my fake news alarm bells are ringing....) is to gut the EPA and pass ridiculous laws like "for every new regulation we need to remove two".

The EPA and other regulators have been hamstrung by republicans since their inception and then when they don't do everything perfectly republicans love to show how the EPA, SEC or whoever aren't doing their job. Republicans sabotage these regulators and don't provide adequate funding. It's sabotage. "The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it." - P. J. O'Rourke

Let me make sure I understand your argument; The EPA was not able to prevent a State's local budgetary decisions regarding drinking water. Therefore it would be more effective if we cut funding to the EPA?

Recommendations?

If you're worried about chlorine, you don't even need a filter. Put the water in a jug in the fridge for an hour or so.

>Get a good filter for your drinking water and most of these concerns vanish. Plus you'll save a fortune on bottled water.

We do that. But it's worth noting that your comment implies that a filter will remove fluoride.

Reverse osmosis will remove fluoride. A Brita filter will not. At least the last time I checked.

Heaven forbid accurate reporting embolden undesirable elements.

If I understand correctly, I'd rather have cavities than cancer.

That is: Flouride is supposed to help prevent tooth decay. This stuff, on the other hand, "has been linked to" cancer (how strongly, I'm not sure). But if warning about a cancer-causer kills flouridation as collateral damage, well, I prefer that to the other way around (not doing anything about the cancer-causer to protect people's teeth).

We had a big debate in Portland about whether we should add fluoride to our water (we voted it down). As far as I can tell, fluoride in the water is beneficial to people who don't brush their teeth with fluoride toothpaste, but for the majority of us who do, it's not particularly helpful.

I think people should generally have a right not to ingest substances that they don't want to, especially when said substances aren't doing anything useful and might be marginally harmful to some.

There's also an argument that all that fluoride eventually ends up accumulating in the environment, and there may be long term negative effects from that. There's no benefit from watering our lawns or flushing our toilets with fluoridated water.

So, I don't really think this is so much of a science versus anti-science debate as a question of how you should weight the costs and benefits of a policy that people can't realistically opt out of if they don't approve of it.

The best way to prevent this, in my opinion, is to be clear that the research has nothing to do with fluoridated water.

From my colleague: "The highly fluorinated chemicals that we discussed are organic compounds, meaning that they contain carbon atoms. They are called highly fluorinated or per- and polyfluoro alkyl substances because they have many fluorine atoms, and the carbon atoms are entirely or often bound to fluorine (There may be highly fluorinated chemicals that aren't strictly PFASs, but that's a minor point). These highly fluorinated chemicals have unique chemical properties that give them their characteristic grease and water resistance (typically one end of the molecule is more soluble in oil, and the other end is more soluble in water, similar to other surfactants). The concerns about PFAS toxicity stem from the properties of the whole molecule and not just because they contain fluorine."

As an "anti-fluoride person", I just want to go on the record to state that it's ridiculous to be more concerned with riling up a particular group than having safe drinking water.

In fact, counter to common opinion, we have a solidly science-based view on this issue--I'm not sure how we got grouped in with anti-vaxxers and others.

There simply isn't good evidence that adding fluoride to drinking water is a justifiable public health method to reduce cavities, which is why 97% of Western Europe doesn't do it[0]. And because there's no opt-out, it may be dangerous for bottle-fed babies [1].

I'm not saying it's the world's biggest problem right now (by a long shot), but dispensing medicine in water is not good policy.

[0] - http://fluoridealert.org/content/water_europe/ [1] - http://fluoridealert.org/issues/infant-exposure/

"The contamination of drinking water in Hoosick Falls is an example of the shortcomings of the UCMR3 program. As part of the UCMR program, all large public water supplies that serve over 10,000 residents, and a small percent of smaller public water supplies, are required to conduct water testing. Most smaller public water supplies and private wells are not required to conduct water testing as part of the UCMR program. The public water supply in Hoosick Falls serves less than 10,000 residents, so it was not required to conduct testing for PFOA as part of the UCMR program, nor were residents in the area who relied on private wells."

I can add that we're also following several other communities with PFAS contamination issues, like Newburgh, NY; Bennington, VT; and Pease, NH.

I must be missing something: doesn't this say published August 2016?

My understanding is that just because you live in a blue area of the map doesn't mean you have contaminated water.

Also, note that this paper only looks at public water supply testing data, not private well water.

From the linked article: "From the authors of the study: We have mapped watersheds in the United States that have potentially high concentrations of PFASs based on U.S. EPA data. This does not mean that all drinking water supplies within the highlighted regions contain high PFAS concentrations, but that at least one sample from at least one water supply was reported to be at or above levels considered safe by the U.S. EPA between 2013 and 2015. However, no measurements have been made in many water supplies across the country. We recommend increased monitoring of these contaminants in our drinking water. For more information, please contact the EPA: Cathy Milbourn, Milbourn.cathy@Epa.gov, or Monica Lee, Lee.monica@Epa.gov."

I'll follow up with my colleague to see if she has any thoughts.

I tried to find some data on that, but it appears that there is no data available showing definite health hazards of these compounds.

Getting such data can be difficult. Animal models can often be wrong: the toxicity may be specific to humans, or the damage may require exposure over time frames than the animals' life span, or it only manifests under rare circumstances (i. e. interactions with drugs).

The best data you can get may be from people who were exposed to the compounds unusually high degrees, usually because they worked with them. But that group of people may be too small, or not diverse enough (we've long avoided exposing pregnant women to industrial chemicals), or the nature of their work exposed them to different chemicals muddling any results.

You say "Its irresponsible to make policy decisions without knowing the actual risk level", but I'd say that you can't not make a decision: taking the view that a chemical is safe until proven otherwise is as much a decision as the opposite. The EU has started to assume new compounds to be dangerous until proven otherwise – I believe the US may still be doing the opposite.

Ethanol (i. e. alcohol) is also a particularly bad unit of measurement, considering its effects on human health are not just somewhat disputed, but apparently highly unusual. There is quite a lot of evidence for beneficial effects of alcohol, possibly even at rather high dosages (although the effects on cancer, which you mention specifically, are probably closer to a standard linear dose-response relationship,)

Some materials are reported in mass, some in volume. I used to do groundwater plume maps for superfund sites, and the data units varied by compound.

It's because the liter was originally defined as 1 kilogram of water.

For the various concentrations, the volume and mass of the displaced water is ~0.

This is because water has a nice correlation of units in SI. 1g water = 1 cubic cm = 1 mL, and takes 1 calorie of heat to raise by 1 degree Celsius. (all at atmospheric pressure). See:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=one+trillionth+of+a+lit...

The L part is assumed to have density of 1 (kg/L) and therefore be 1kg mass (mostly water). 1 kg = 1 trillion ng. Because the vast majority of the sample is water the number of nanograms of the substance per nanograms of water is approximately the number of parts per trillion. As you get into higher concentrations of solute you have to consider density of the solute and water as separate parts. In the ng/L or ug/L range you can hand wave the L as 1 trillion parts (by mass) and the ng as the parts out of a trillion in the full volume of sample.

Not sure why parent comment put it in parts-per-trillion since I always see it in mg/L.

The natural concentration of the weird high molecular weight fluorine compounds is exactly zero, whereas cyanide compounds are natural and show up in small amounts in many fruit seeds, a couple nuts, some root vegetables.

Its not physically possible to eat enough apple seeds to get sick, but if you industrially concentrate cyanide by a factor of a hundred thousand or so because its so nifty at plating metals and stuff, then that purified form will kill you.

Its kinda like ethanol, your liver knows exactly what to do with it in small rare amounts, and out in the wilderness its extremely hard to die of ethanol poisoning from eating too many over ripe berries, or at least you'd have to try really hard for a long time, but given some industrial processing assistance its been possible for humans to die of ethanol poisoning for the last couple thousand years. Very few alcoholics drank themselves to death in 50000 BC, likewise no human died of cyanide poisoning until the 1800s AFAIK.

Unlike cyanides your liver has no idea what to do with the fluorine compounds given that a human liver had never seen one until 1930s, so naturally a little can really mess you up.

What, are you saying they didn't link to a scientific source at all?! I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you!

The point was that this is bullshit precisely because it pretends to link to a scientific source, but doesn't. Sure, it's still possible that every single word in the article is correct even in the absence of actual research---but is it likely?