RALEIGH – Concentrations of GenX in finished drinking water along the Cape Fear River remain well below the state’s health goal, according to the latest test results released Thursday.
The results reflect conditions in the Cape Fear River for the sixth and seventh weeks of monitoring, which were the weeks of July 31 and Aug. 7, a press release from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality stated Thursday. Water collected from the Cape Fear was analyzed at an Environmental Protection Agency lab in the Research Triangle Park.
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“Levels of GenX continue to decline in the Cape Fear River since we were able to get the discharge stopped,” said Michael Regan, secretary for the state DEQ. “This is good news, and we remain vigilant with our sampling regimen and our investigation to protect water quality in the lower Cape Fear.”
All test results for finished drinking water in this round of sampling remained well below the 140 parts per trillion health goal developed by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. The health goal represents the concentration of GenX at which no adverse non-cancer health effects would be anticipated over an entire lifetime of exposure to the most sensitive populations.
The state DEQ began investigating June 19 the presence of GenX in the Cape Fear River. That ongoing investigation along with pressure from residents and local officials prompted Chemours, the company manufacturing the unregulated chemical, to stop discharging GenX into the Cape Fear.
State water quality officials plan to continue water sampling and analysis at these sites for the foreseeable future. Sixteen monitoring wells were recently added to the sampling plan to investigate groundwater conditions at the Chemours facility in Bladen County. The state will make the results of the groundwater tests at the Chemours facility public when they are available.
