In the summer of 2017, North Carolinians living along the Cape Fear river learned that there was something to fear in their river. Headlines splashed across the front page of the Wilmington Star News announcing the discovery of high levels of a little-known toxic chemical contaminating their drinking water.
Hexafluoropropylene oxide-dimer acid, usually referred to as “GenX,” has been confirmed as a carcinogen in rat tests. It is used in manufacturing in a former DuPont plant near Fayetteville and is released into the river.
It prompted protests in Wilmington, 460 news articles in the Wilmington Star News, and scores of community meetings with angry residents. As a result, the water districts along the Cape Fear River are spending tens of millions of dollars to upgrade their treatment systems to remove GenX from the drinking water. The water districts have sued Dupont spinoff Chemours Chemical seeking to recover the costs of the upgrades.
But there is not just one, but two Chemours plants in the United States polluting rivers with GenX. The second Chemours plant is on the Ohio River. The major city in the U.S. with the second most GenX in its drinking water? According to a study released earlier this year by the Environmental Working Group, that would be Louisville, Kentucky.
There have been no protests in Louisville about it, and no coverage in the Courier-Journal (though some from WFPL). Unlike the water companies in North Carolina, Louisville Water Company has no immediate plans to install upgrades to address the contamination.
GenX is part of a class of chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). PFAS are a group of man-made chemicals that do not break down in the environment, giving them their nickname of “forever chemicals”.
For decades, DuPont used the forever chemical PFOA to manufacture its popular non-stick cookware coating Teflon. PFOA’s toxic effects are now well known to the public.
Lawsuits against Dupont that brought PFOA’s health dangers to light have received widespread attention in the documentary “The Devil We Know” and the film “Dark Waters.” PFOA was proven to cause elevated levels of thyroid disease, testicular and kidney cancer, and ulcerative colitis in humans.
DuPont began phasing out its use of PFOA in 2006. GenX, introduced into Teflon in 2009, was supposed to be PFOA’s safe substitute. That may not be the case.
Enter GenX
DuPont’s internal studies of GenX going as far back as the early 60s had shown deadly results when scientists exposed rats to small quantities of the chemical, and scientists advised the company that if there was a possibility of human exposure to the chemical they should consider conducting further studies. As independent scientists study GenX, the chemical is showing potentially deadly effects similar to those of its better known precursor.
“They replaced it with what they thought was a safer alternative, the short chain chemical, and they thought that would be safer and less persistent, but what they’re finding is that that’s not really the case,” said Dr. Judy Schreiber, co-author of a National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) risk assessment of GenX and other forever chemicals, in an interview with the author. “They’re finding very similar results from exposure to GenX chemicals: effects on your kidney, blood, immune system, child development and so forth.”
GenX hasn’t been used and studied for long enough outside the industry to have conclusive results on its human health effects. Some research has indicated that it may accumulate less in the human body than PFOA, but rat and other animal studies are a cause for concern according to many.
“Almost every known human carcinogen that has been adequately tested in animals has shown a response in animals, so I think that when you see a strong response in animals it is likely the same thing will happen at least in some people,” said Linda Birnbaum, the former director of the National Toxicology Program and the National Institute for Environmental Health Science.
The federal EPA does not regulate the release of GenX or its levels in drinking water. While its health advisory level recommends no more than 70 parts per trillion of combined PFOS and PFOA in drinking water, it currently has no health advisory level for GenX.
Dr. Schreiber’s study with the NRDC suggested that while there was a considerable level of uncertainty, the level at which there would be no expected health risk from GenX would be lower than one part per trillion.
In Louisville’s drinking water
The study from the Environmental Working Group found 22 parts per trillion of GenX in Louisville’s drinking water, the highest level of any sampled site except for Brunswick County, North Carolina.
Testing commissioned by the Louisville Water Company (LWC) reveals that while that 22 parts per trillion level is significantly higher than the average, Louisville’s drinking water has levels of GenX and other PFAS chemicals that are concerning based on independent studies of PFAS health effects.
LWC started testing quarterly and later monthly for GenX in October 2018. The results, obtained through an open records request, show wide variability from less than two parts per trillion (the level of detection for the current test LWC performs) to 26 parts per trillion, 26 times higher than the levels recommended as safe by Dr. Schreibner’s NRDC study and by the Environmental Working Group.
The LWC testing records also demonstrate the persistence of the problem with older PFAS chemicals. While LWC only started testing for PFOA when asked to by the EPA in late 2012, tests still show potentially concerning levels of it in the treated water.
Louisville’s treated water has an average of about 5.6 parts per trillion PFOA and has registered levels as high as 35 parts per trillion, despite the fact that it hasn’t been used in Teflon production in a decade. It is called a forever chemical for a reason.
Internal emails show that LWC was aware that the water it provides customers at times is more contaminated with forever chemicals than is considered safe by some scientists. In the summer of 2018, the CDC’s Department of Health and Human Services released new draft recommendations stating that the EPA’s health advisory level for PFOA and PFOS was seven to 10 times too high. Within days of the report’s release, an LWC email notes, “[m]aximum PFOA levels at both CHFP [the Crescent Hill treatment plant] and BEP [BE Payne Treatment Plant in Prospect] are higher or close to the CDC health levels. Current treatment processes have little efficiency for either PFOA/S in both treatment plants.” Despite the concern, Louisville Water Company has not moved forward with any changes in its treatment processes.
PFAS is also present in drinking water in other parts of the state. A 2019 study from the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection found GenX in the drinking water of every utility they tested that sources its water from the Ohio River, including those in Paducah, Ashland, and Northern Kentucky.
By contrast, in Cincinnati …
Northern Kentucky also provides an interesting case study, because Cincinnati has installed a granular activated carbon system to filter for PFAS chemicals.
In the last four years of testing, Cincinnati water has not detected PFOA in treated water from its plant that has the granular activated carbon system. In contrast, LWC has detected PFOA in each of its 60 tests of treated water since 2016, with an average of 5.6 parts per trillion.
And the difference isn’t just in the water, it’s in people’s blood. A study found that the median girl in Northern Kentucky had over three times as much PFOA in her blood as her counterpart on the other side of the river.
What about a new filtration system?
LWC recently commissioned a study into the feasibility of installing a granular activated carbon system. According to Vice President of Communications and Marketing for LWC Kelley Dearing-Smith, the study was so that LWC would be prepared to install such a system in the future if the science shows that it is needed.
“Based on the best available science we have right now, we don’t think this is a concern for Louisville drinking water,” Dearing-Smith said. “What’s critically important is that when you turn on your faucet, you get the best, highest quality water based on what is regulated.”
Treating for forever chemicals is difficult. Evidence suggests, for instance, that granular activated carbon systems filter PFOA and PFOS fairly effectively, but possibly not GenX. According to Dearing-Smith, no two cities have the same treatment process, and LWC would have to assure that treatment for forever chemicals wouldn’t interfere with the rest of their process. In North Carolina, consumers are paying about $5 more a month for their water to pay for the cost of upgrades.
LWC doesn’t have specific cost estimates for any possible filtration system nor imminent plans to install one, but it wouldn’t be easy.
“We didn’t create this problem, we’re being forced to deal with it,” Dearing-Smith said.
(Update: We contacted Ms. Dearing Smith again before cross-posting this story, and she sent this additional statement: “PFAS is a complicated topic and one where there is lots of research still needed since there are thousands of compounds. The beauty of the science is that we can detect at extremely low levels. However, the issue is it’s very difficult to determine, with any real certainty, the health effects of compounds at incredibly low concentrations. We have to be careful not to change our treatment process to account for low levels of PFAS and run the risk of changing another important water quality parameter.”)
Teena Halbig, a founding member of the Floyds Fork Environmental Association, thinks that Louisville Water Company should invest in filtration systems for PFAS, and also supports governmental action to regulate the dumping of PFAS.
“Every company has a bottom line, and they don’t want to increase their costs,” Halbig said. “It’s really sad for the public health, and government is to protect the health and welfare of the public.”
A bill that would require the EPA to regulate PFAS passed the House of Representatives in January, but the Senate has not brought it to a vote.
Action is happening at a local level, as utilities are changing their filtration processes to treat for emerging contaminants like PFAS. New Windsor, New York shut down its wells for four months to install a granular activated carbon system after tests showed that its water had two to seven parts per trillion of PFOA. (Again, Louisville averages 5.6 parts per trillion of PFOA and has tested as high as 35 parts per trillion.)
So far, that action is not happening in Louisville. Louisville water has the second most GenX in the country of 40 sampled cities. It has more PFOA than a place that shut down its wells to install a filtration system. But LWC’s stance has been to wait and see if scientists come up with more conclusive evidence that the levels of PFAS present a danger. It is debatable whether or not that is a prudent strategy, but there has been surprisingly little debate so far.
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Written by Satchel Walton. Cross-posted from The Kentucky Green Report, a student-run news website dedicated to covering environmental news and events across the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The Green Report is based out of duPont Manual High School in Louisville, Kentucky.