BTW: Think about all the attention, all the outrage and all the politicking we’ve devoted to the miniscule population of Trans Americans. Think about the outsized role “Trans issues” played in the Presidential campaign. And think about the impact one Trans-themed ad had on voters. Compare that to the issue of PFAS, which literally touches nearly every American … because its in our bloodstreams … and our streams and rivers and soil and food. It impacts nearly every municipal water system in the country and many of us are exposed to it every time we cook or eat “to-go” food. And the producers of this poison knew it was poison, but hid that fact for years!
But how much time was spent on this ubiquitous, cancer-causing contamination?
What questions were asked of the candidates?
What solutions did they offer?
Zippo. Zippo. Zippo.
That comparative silence speaks volumes. - jp
TITLE: Forever chemicals tainting food supply, destroying American farmers
https://www.newsnationnow.com/prime/pfas-forever-chemicals-sludge-farmers/
EXCERPTS: [H]ow did forever chemicals end up on valuable American farmland?
The answer lies in a type of fertilizer, made from treated human sewage, called biosolids, or more colloquially, “sludge,” and a system that spreads it directly on their land.
“We have this bright idea that we’re going to take all this sewer sludge, and we’re going to spread it on the land as fertilizer,” said [Erin] Brockovich.
Epidemiologist Patrick MacRoy explained how this sludge is produced.
He says the process starts with the manufacturing of PFAS. “3M and others actually manufacture these chemicals,” said MacRoy, and these manufacturing plants discharge waste to a sewer system, which goes to a wastewater treatment facility.
Simultaneously, there are the PFAS found in our homes, from the clothing that is stain resistant to cleaning products and sofas and carpets. MacRoy says when we clean an item in the washing machine, or dump a bucket down the drain, that PFAS-contaminated waste also goes to a wastewater treatment facility.
“They have to do something with all of those solids that settle out, and that’s what we call sludge,” said MacRoy. “Particularly in the 1970’s, we start taking that sludge and applying it to farmland as fertilizer. You have this contaminated sludge that then goes to a local farm where it’s spread out.”
“If you look at the PFAS that’s on the farmland, it goes into crops (that humans eat) or goes into crops that are eaten by animals, that we then eat. That PFAS, is eaten by us,” said MacRoy.
MacRoy points out that at no point in this process does the EPA require sludge to be tested for PFAS before being spread on farmland: “EPA requires the sewer districts to test for a handful of heavy metals, but they never test for PFAS. It’s just not tested, no one knows.”
MacRoy says all 50 states are impacted by sludging. Forty-eight states still spread biosolids today, the only exceptions being Maine and Connecticut. The Environmental Working Group claims as much as 20 million acres of American farmland could be contaminated by forever chemicals.
“You have almost like a cycle that you take the hazardous waste, apply the sludge on the land, you now contaminate the land that contaminates the water, that’s contaminated the food chain. We’re into a real serious problem here with this forever chemical,” said Brockovich.
“Going all the way back to 1963, 3M knew there were risks with these chemicals. They put it in their own manual, that they’re toxic, and they need precautions,” said MacRoy.
In 1970, a test on firefighting foam had to be abandoned when the substance left all the fish dead.
Then, in 1973, a DuPont study showed PFAS in food packaging impacts the livers of dogs.
And in 1975, the first indication that PFAS already flowed in the blood of Americans.
“This was just unrelated to PFAS research – just scientists looking at chemicals in human blood,” said MacRoy. “The average person already has PFAS in their blood by 1975.”
Court filings show that 3M soon replicates this in their own studies. A 1979 letter from their lawyers appears to advise the company to conceal that the chemical found in human blood was a type of PFAS.
A year later, in 1978, DuPont warned 3M about the toxic effects of PFAS in our food packaging.
And by the late 1970s to early 1980s, documents suggest 3M and DuPont were becoming aware that their own employees were getting sick.
“In 1981, 3M was concerned enough about the potential for birth defects as a result of these chemicals, that they actually reassigned all the female workers in the plant to jobs that didn’t involve exposure,” said MacRoy.
By 1984, PFAS starts to appear in water. Specifically, DuPont detects forever chemicals in Little Hocking, Ohio. They do not tell the water utility.
“The levels they found back then, would be considered very high today,” said MacRoy.
And through the late 1980s through early 1990s, workers keep getting sick — from 3M finding elevating cancer rates among their workers, their male workers more likely to die from prostate cancer, to DuPont finding higher cancer rates in their Parkersburg plant workers.
More than two decades after scientists told 3M the blood of Americans contained PFAS, in 1998, 3M finally alerted the EPA that the type of PFAS in their Scotch Guard builds up in the blood.
“USDA and EPA, how in the hell did this get by you? It didn’t. You knew something for the sake of money for lobbying power, you turned a blind eye,” said Brockovich.
In 1999, a whistleblower came forward; a scientist at 3M by the name of Dr. Richard Purdy stepped down and sent a copy of his resignation letter to the EPA.
“This letter basically says, you have asked me to try to help identify where the problems with the substance are. We’ve identified a huge list of concerns. We need to do more research, the management is shutting me down. And I feel ethically like I cannot work at 3M anymore, because they are ignoring the science they are ignoring our request to do more study,” said MacRoy.
“The chemical industries hid the full extent of the problem from the EPA until the late 1990s. But starting in the late 1990s, EPA had all the information, and they’ve done very little,” said MacRoy.
Brendan Holmes had choice words for the chemical companies that profited off of PFAS products and did not disclose what they knew for years.
“When they had the choice of do we go public with this or do we sweep this under the rug, they chose the rug,” said Holmes.
He described the gravity farmers across the country are facing with forever chemical contamination, and the lack of a safety net or recourse when contamination is found.
“Suicide among dairy farmers and farmers in general is incredibly high because a lot of these farms are third fourth and fifth generation and you are going to be the person to lose it, your great great great grandfather cleared the land, and you’re the person whose going to have a bankruptcy auction because you can’t hold onto the land.”
They dumped 26,000 gallons of milk.
Testing revealed their cows had become contaminated from someone else’s sludged farm. The tainted feed for their cows in Maine was grown in Kentucky.
Their own family’s bloodwork also tested high for forever chemicals. The Holmes found themselves putting it all on the line, again.
“We borrowed the money and we bought 50 cows that were uncontaminated. $73,000 we borrowed for a new herd,” said Brendan.
After 11 months, thousands in loans and testing, making sure every ounce of feed and water was untainted, enough time passed that all of their cows came back clean. Their milk is now at “non-detect” levels of PFAS, and sales have resumed
Brendan and Katia Holmes are still selling milk at Misty Brook Farms, praying no contamination comes back.
TITLE: Their Fertilizer Poisons Farmland. Now, They Want Protection From Lawsuits.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/climate/sludge-fertilizer-synagro-lobbying.html
EXCERPTS: For decades, a little-known company now owned by a Goldman Sachs fund has been making millions of dollars from the unlikely dregs of American life: sewage sludge.
The company, Synagro, sells farmers treated sludge from factories and homes to use as fertilizer. But that fertilizer, also known as biosolids, can contain harmful “forever chemicals” known as PFAS linked to serious health problems including cancer and birth defects.
Farmers are starting to find the chemicals contaminating their land, water, crops and livestock. Just this year, two common types of PFAS were declared hazardous substances by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Superfund law.
Now, Synagro is part of a major effort to lobby Congress to limit the ability of farmers and others to sue to clean up fields polluted by the sludge fertilizer, according to lobbying records and interviews with people familiar with the strategy. The chairman of one of the lobbying groups is Synagro’s chief executive.
In a letter to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in March, sludge-industry lobbyists argued that they shouldn’t be held liable because the chemicals were already in the sludge before they received it and made it into fertilizer.
The lobbying has found early success. A bill introduced by Senators John Boozman of Arkansas and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, both Republicans, would protect sludge companies like Synagro, as well as the wastewater plants that provide the sludge, from lawsuits. A House bill has also been introduced.
Ms. Lummis will “work with President Trump’s E.P.A. to ensure ‘passive receivers,’ like water utilities and others, are protected from bogus third-party lawsuits,” her office said in a statement, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Synagro and Goldman Sachs declined to answer detailed questions. Synagro in its most recent sustainability report acknowledged the risks of PFAS contamination in its fertilizer, calling it “one of our industry’s challenges.”
Even as PFAS has turned up in wastewater, the government has continued to promote the use of sewage sludge as fertilizer. And while Donald J. Trump’s election raises the prospect that PFAS restrictions might be rolled back, alongside other environmental rules, Synagro is pressing ahead in the effort to protect itself from expensive lawsuits.
While Synagro does not publicly report financial results, its earnings hit $100 million to $120 million last year, analysts estimated. An investment fund run by Goldman Sachs, West Street Infrastructure Partners III, acquired Synagro in 2020 in a deal reported to be worth at least $600 million.
In 2022, the company set up a nonprofit, the Coalition of Recyclers of Residual Organics by Practitioners of Sustainability at Synagro’s corporate headquarters, and installed the company’s chief executive, Bob Preston, as chairman, according to the group’s tax filings. Since its founding, the group has spent $220,000 on federal lobbying, disclosure forms show.
In a statement, the nonprofit said the bills it lobbied for would “ensure liability resides with the manufacturer of these chemicals.”
Synagro and the sewage plants say they are simply at the end of that chain of contamination. We “do not manufacture or profit from PFAS,” Michael Witt, general counsel at Newark’s Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission, said at a hearing this year. “Industry did that.”
Regarding Synagro, “it seems crazy to be able to say they’re a passive receiver and they shouldn’t be liable, that they know it’s harmful but they’re going to continue to sell it,” said Laura Dumais, an attorney with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a group that assisted the Texas ranchers with PFAS testing. “It’s like CVS selling a tainted medicine and saying, ‘We can’t be liable and we’re just going to continue to sell it.’”
Wastewater treatment plants say they are finding it increasingly difficult to find landfills to accept sludge, partly because landfill operators are themselves wary of contamination. “They don’t want their landfill to potentially become a Superfund site,” said [Ryan] McManus, [government-affairs manager at the American Public Works Association].
Mr. Trump’s return to office introduces a new complication: The E.P.A.’s designation of some PFAS as hazardous under the Superfund law could be rolled back. Project 2025 calls for removing the hazardous-substance designation, and a major industry group has challenged the E.P.A.’s move in court.
Actor Mark Ruffalo urges Biden administration to take swift action on 'forever chemicals' before Trump takes office
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5030536-mark-ruffalo-calls-for-pfas-action/
EXCERPTS: Actor and activist Mark Ruffalo is urging the Biden administration to take decisive regulatory action on “forever chemicals,” as the return of President-elect Trump to the White House looms near.
“The EPA has worked their butts off, against all odds, to get a drinking water standard on this particular chemical class,” Ruffalo said at a Monday webinar, hosted by the Environmental Working Group.
“Now the Biden administration just has to close the loop and hold the people responsible who have killed people,” he added.
Ruffalo was referring to the producers of the thousands of types of synthetic compounds known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
“The problem now is they still are protecting these companies from accountability,” he added, referring to the federal government.
The Biden administration has already taken several decisive steps in the long-term mission to regulate and clean up the decades of PFAS pollution caused by companies and military institutions across America.
In April, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) designated two types of PFAS as hazardous substances under the country’s legacy “Superfund” law — making it easier to force polluters to pay for their actions. That decision occurred just days after the EPA issued a separate rule setting limits for several PFAS in drinking water.
And just last week, the agency published a new regulation preventing PFAS from being approved through “Low Volume Exemptions” — abbreviated reviews granted to chemicals that will be created in small quantities.
But Ruffalo and his fellow activists are pressing the Biden administration to take further decisive action aimed at strengthening PFAS-related oversight before Trump takes office.
In particular, they referred to a potential proposed rule about PFAS-containing wastewater discharges — which have been under consideration in the White House’s Office of Management and Budget for review since June.
Those possible plans have been in the works since 2021, when the EPA first announced that it would propose a rule setting limits on these releases.
“The Biden administration has finally done the right thing, more than any other administration in the United States in the decades that have passed,” Ruffalo said on Monday, referring to the PFAS-related action the EPA has taken over the past four years.
But Ruffalo also pointed out what he described as “the bad news” — the fact that the potential discharge proposal is “getting hung up right now in the Biden administration.”
“It’s been sitting there for a long time, and it is the taxpayers and the communities downstream who are still repeatedly paying the price for this,” Ruffalo said.
[E]ven if the EPA does officially propose this PFAS-laden discharge rule — which at this point is still in review — it would be practically impossible to finalize before Trump takes office, due to set-in-stone deadlines of the federal regulatory process.
Such rules, which are governed by the Administrative Procedure Act, typically take at least a year to go from the proposal to finalized stages.
SEE ALSO:
Austin has little to no 'forever chemicals' in its drinking water. What did the city do right?
https://www.kut.org/energy-environment/2024-12-06/austin-tx-forever-chemicals-pfas-drinking-water-report
PFAS Water Treatment System Installed At Hatboro Plant
https://patch.com/pennsylvania/horsham/pfas-water-treatment-system-installed-hatboro
Limiting toxic PFAS chemicals in wastewater part of new Ypsilanti-area measures
https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2024/12/limiting-toxic-pfas-chemicals-in-wastewater-part-of-new-ypsilanti-area-measures.html
Advanced metal-organic framework technique filters PFAS contaminants from drinking water
https://smartwatermagazine.com/news/technical-university-munich/advanced-metal-organic-framework-technique-filters-pfas
Bernal researchers discover solution to eliminate ‘forever chemicals’ from drinking water
https://www.ul.ie/bernal/news/bernal-researchers-discover-solution-to-eliminate-forever-chemicals-from-drinking-water