Comment by athoun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by athoun | Hacker News Reader

For those living in the bay area, you should know that the groundwater in many areas is contaminated with TCE due to computer manufacturing industry which used it as a solvent. Dry cleaners are another common culprit of contamination to the groundwater. These groundwater plumes can extend for quite a large distance from the original site of contamination and seep into the first story of residences and buildings through vapor intrusion. The TCE solvent is directly linked to Parkinsons [1].

Take a look at where you live on the California waterboard website [2] and look for nearby groundwater contamination sites. TCE / PCE contamination sites anywhere near your residence or workplace would put you at risk of getting Parkinsons. I know someone who got it and indeed they lived near a dry-cleaner that was leaching TCE into the groundwater decades ago. The solvent entires your residence through vapor intrusion, especially on the first floor or basement.

[1] https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/common-dry-cleanin...

[2] https://geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/map/?CMD=runreport&mya...

This Twitter thread on the specifics of how dry cleaning retail stores contribute to the problem is an excellent quick overview:

https://twitter.com/realEstateTrent/status/14378028033139220...

Seems sensationalist

It doesn't seem sensationalist to me. I looked up three different strip malls that I am familiar with and all of them have some kind of PCE cleanup sites from previous or current dry-cleaners.

Here's one example in Santa Clara of a dry cleaner that operated in the 60's and there has been an active remediation project to cleanup the groundwater that has been on-going to this day [1]. In this case a single dry-cleaner which operated decades ago contaminated the water table and the chemicals flowed to neighborhoods even across the street. There is an extensive record of cleanup actions being taken on a nearly monthly basis going years back, including continuous well monitoring and soil vapor intrusion investigation. The map that was sent out to residents shows the extent of how far the ground water plume reaches, it's stunning to see how far one spill can go depending on the water table [2].

There are open remediation cases like this in almost every strip mall across America. This is a widespread problem and most people just aren't aware of the extent of it.

[1] https://geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/profile_report?global_...

[2] https://documents.geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/regulators/d...

The Twitter thread says a single shot glass of the stuff will contaminate a site "forever". That's not even true for weapons grade plutonium.

I don't follow. What does plutonium have to do with this chemical?

What can I do if I live near one of the red spots? Do air and water filters help?

If you’re in an apartment building, moving to a higher floor would help as it affects the basement and first floor the most.

If you’re in a house, the same mitigations for radon exposure would likely work to reduce TCE as well.

Regularly ventilating your home may also help keep the levels down.

Lastly, there are typically many years of exposure required before you notice any symptoms. So moving would be another viable option.

Open the windows or move. Your tap water is unaffected, you'd have to be on a well to be impacted. But activated carbon water filters work to remove it.

Why is still allowed to leach tce into groundwater

It's not allowed. These are old plumes and they stay around for a long time and are very expensive to clean up.

Cool, let’s make the companies that caused it pay for it

That's clearly socialism and making companies pay for damage they cause and their externalaties is oppressive regulation. We should instead reduce the EPA's power until they are a shell of an organization. How else are we going to get our burning rivers back?

That's why we have the EPA Superfund program

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Superfund

Santa Clara county has the most superfund sites.

There are a lot of superfund sites, man. And it sucks that the FeddyGov is on the hook to cleanup the mess that big corps make.

It should be renamed "minifund" given how small the fund is today and how few sites they actually clean up

The reinstatement of the excise tax in 2022 may actually be harmful to its own environment. It's an import tax on crude oil, which will encourage the domestic oil industry leading to an importing of pollution.

It's clearly not doing its job well, there are still constant ecological disasters that never get properly addressed.

Many of those companies no longer exist...

It's not supposed to leach into the groundwater, but nobody is enforcing the companies that are handling these chemicals to ensure they don't get into the groundwater supply. Many of the worst contaminations in the area were caused by big tech companies such as HP who didn't realize their underground TCE tanks were leaking whoops.

As of 2023 only two states have banned TCE (Minnesota and New York), and the federal government has yet to do anything to control it. It has and will continue to be used extensively in industrial application such as at electronic assembly lines, dry-cleaners, mechanics, air force bases, coffee decaffeination, textile industry, and the list goes on. The best you can do is live in a highly residential area which is far from the locations where any of these business could operate.

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