Comment by bradfa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bradfa | Hacker News Reader

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Likely it is legislation, but probably it's required testing for certain permits or environmental reasons and then that testing gets reported.

I live in upstate NY and I've never heard of anyone testing for PFAS. In our schools they do bi-yearly drinking water tests for lead and a handful of other things, but not PFAS.

It also just might be where chemical plants or recycling centers are located. My brother used to work at a chemical recycling plant in New Jersey, there's a LOT of those kinds of plants in New Jersey. Surely the goal is 0 spills or accidental dumping but there's no way that's 100% fool proof so surely where this stuff has been created/treated/recycled there's going to be higher concentrations.

New York was actually the first state in the US to start regulating PFAS and PFOA sites in 2016.

As of last year, maximum limits for public water went into effect. I believe testing has gone on for longer than that.

EDIT: linked fixed

https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/water/drinking/docs/...

That link doesn't work for me.

Our local school district's most recent water testing seems to have just been for lead. It resulted in a 229 page document outlining how, when, and where they tested every single tap in all the schools and what the results were. I've not seen mention of PFAS testing in our schools, which is where I'd expect to see it first.

Maybe it depends on how they expect the contamination to get in? Lead usually gets in through the local pipes, so it makes sense to test it at the taps. For contaminations that get in from the water intake at the plant it does make more sense to test them there.

Here's a working link: https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/water/drinking/docs/...

Thanks! This is good news!

It seems it just started at the end of last year, and my local watery authority is already publishing results on it: https://mcwa-wordpress-media.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/upl...

Thanks. I had copied the link from google on mobile, and tried to remove all the tracking referrers but missed some.

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