I recently spoke to a community group in Huntington about Long Island’s water problems and was not surprised to see how much people cared about this topic. Most people had heard about emerging chemical contaminants like PFAS and 1,4-dioxane and the toxic legacy plumes off the Grumman site in Bethpage and MacArthur Airport, although their knowledge of the details was a little fuzzy.
Concern about drinking the water on Long Island persuaded the organizers of the meeting to provide plastic bottles of water and many in the audience brought their own with them. But as I had to explain, water from a plastic bottle comes with its own chemicals of concern which have harmful health effects for humans.
People are right to be concerned about PFAS, of course. The short acronym for per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances has become almost a household word, with recent studies demonstrating just how dangerous this family of “forever” chemicals can be. PFAS are among the most persistent and ubiquitous synthetic chemicals in the world, providing non-stick, water, grease and stain resistant properties to thousands of everyday products, from clothing and food packaging to non-stick cookware and dental floss. Contamination from PFAS in firefighting foam and other industrial uses also contributes to our exposure via air and water. Approximately 98 percent of Americans now have PFAS in their bodies.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took action last week to limit the amount of several PFAS allowed in drinking water by releasing its final “PFAS National Primary Drinking Water Regulation Rulemaking” in an attempt to reduce the public’s exposure to PFAS.
Scientists and medical researchers have been recommending that EPA regulate the entire class of PFAS chemicals, since it contains approximately 15,000 different combinations that all have at their core a single chemical attribute: an incredibly strong carbon and fluorine bond. But the EPA has stuck to its old (some would say, out-dated) method of regulating chemicals one by one. In this case, it is six, singling out two of the most common types, PFOS and PFOA, for a drinking water standard of 4 parts per trillion. To understand how small this amount is, one part per trillion is equivalent to a single drop of water in twenty Olympic-sized swimming pools. Drinking water systems are required to meet these new standards within five years.
But PFAS is toxic in tiny amounts, and the health problems it can cause can be deadly and they are happening now. Studies of individuals exposed to PFAS-contaminated water have shown increased reproductive problems, developmental effects or delays in children, immunotoxicity, thyroid disease, and an increased incidence of kidney, prostate, testicular, and pancreatic cancer. Exposure to PFAS is nothing to fool around with.
The only shred of good news here is that PFAS can be filtered from public water supplies using special processes incorporating charcoal filtration systems. Drivers who pass by the water facility at Christopher Morley Park may have seen the giant filters being installed there. Filtration is expensive, but it works.
Problems with the water in plastic bottles are not as easily solved.
First of all, you should know that there are no government regulations on bottled water. The water you buy could be filtered or unfiltered tap water. Or it could be from a spring somewhere in the mountains. You can’t be certain of its origin.
Second, the water in plastic bottles is likely to contain thousands of tiny plastic particles, also known as nanoplastics – solid plastic particles with a size less than one millionth of a meter, unintentionally produced by the degradation and fragmentation of larger plastic items.
A recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences using new dual-laser technology developed by scientists at Columbia and Rutgers Universities, found that the average 16-ounce bottle of water contained about 240,000 microscopic pieces of plastic. 90% of these were nanoplastics and 10% were microplastics- plastic pieces less than five millimeters in length or the size of a pencil eraser. Nano-and microplastics are created when plastic materials begin to break down in the environment, and we now understand that this material never goes away, but becomes a much greater hazard to humans and all living things as it becomes smaller.
Last month a lawsuit was filed against Poland Springs for claiming their water was 100% natural spring water, when in fact is was found to be laden not only with hundreds of thousands of bits of plastic, but with more than 4,000 phthalates – ubiquitous chemicals that are linked to endocrine disruption.
That wasn’t a surprise, at least to me. Readers of this column will recall that plastic is made from a combination of a fossil fuel feedstock (natural gas and oil) and complex mixtures of chemicals which give different plastics their unique qualities. Those chemicals also migrate into the water inside the plastic bottle, even at room temperature.
So if tap water contains PFAS chemicals and bottled water contains plastic bits as well as chemicals, what are people supposed to do? The answer, for now, is to filter your tap water through a carbon filter. Do your research to find the best ones.
You can also install a whole-house carbon filter that removes PFAS from all of your water, but this can be expensive and needs to be done by a qualified plumber.
Whichever process you choose, make sure you store your filtered water in glass or stainless steel containers, as these will add no chemicals or plastic to your water.
We often hear politicians complain about how regulations hurt business and kill jobs, but regulations enacted decades ago could have prevented the contamination of our water with PFAS and forced plastic manufacturers to find ways to prevent their products from becoming a global catastrophe.
Now we all have to spend our time and our money trying to purify our own water. Think about that the next time you hear a politician complain about regulations.