Don't drink the water! Harvard study says proposed EPA firefighting foam standards are too low

Governor Wolf is pressuring Environmental Protection Agency Administer Gina McCarthy to take action in Warminster, Ivyland, Warrington, Horsham, and Hatboro. US Representative Mike Fitzpatrick, Senator Casey and others are weighing in.

Firefighting foam, once poorly understood as a health risk, is now emerging as a very serious problem. Both public and private water wells have tested positive for the foam and it has been distributed in tap water to local residents for over four decades. It’s been linked to many health problems.

Research shows that the EPA is already establishing short-term limits for the chemicals in firefighting foam known as PFOA’s and PFOS’. Short term means between one and three months. These limits are too low.

Although there is yet no long-term limit set, research by Harvard’s Phillipe Grandjean, indicates that long-term limits should be set below 0.001 part per billion, a tiny fraction of current EPA proposals.

State representatives Todd Stevens (151st Legislative District) and Bernie O’Neill (29th Legislative District) have been calling for several essential moves to protect residents. The first is to provide free bottled water to all residents in the affected areas that ask for it. On Friday residents of the affected municipalities were provided with cases of free bottled water a the Horsham Municipal Complex. Channel 6 covered this.

The second request, yet to be addressed, is to provide free testing to any resident who wants to know how much of these toxins are in their bodies. Both are essential public safety moves.

These chemicals accumulate in the human body and have a half-life of over five years. This means that if you stop drinking contaminated water half of it will remain in your body for more than 5 years. As yet there is no known safe limit. The Warminster Municipal Water Authority has the third highest level of PFOS of all public drinking water systems in the country.

Numerous diseases have been associated with firefighting foam.

Warminster Township has three times the number of bladder cancers than the national average. “What is undisputable is that PFOA’s and PFOS are part of a group of chemicals that have been tied to a range of health effects”, according to Sharon Lerner writing in “The Intercept”. Other probable links have been established to kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid diseases, reproductive problems, pregnancy-induced hypertension, pre-eclampsia, obesity in children, high cholesterol, liver problems, vaccine failures in children, increases in colds, stomach infections, and are endocrine disruptors that can interfere with the body’s hormonal system.

The number of local people affected by firefighting foam could exceed 100,000 if you include those who have moved away in the last 35 years.

Nationally, 664 contaminated military sites have been identified, but considering other places where firefighting foam has been used the total number could be in the thousands according to the University of California at Berkely. The number of people potentially exposed to the six PFC chemicals now being studied could exceed 14 million. And because it’s also in the ground, in the air, in Teflon and other products it’s virtually impossible to find anyone who doesn’t have at least trace amounts in their bodies.

Politicians have said that the more people who contact or complain to them, the easier it will be for them to help us. Let’s give them a hand.