Reprinted from North Carolina Health News

Sean O’Gorman learned firsthand this spring how rip currents can transform fun in the surf into a lethal hazard at a North Carolina beach.

Last April, the upstate New York firefighter was relaxing with family at an Emerald Isle beach when two teenage sisters in the water started yelling for help. A rip current had pulled them offshore.

Trained just weeks before in swift-water rescue techniques, the Oswego Fire Department member swam through choppy waves to the girls, hooked their boogie boards to his feet, and towed them to safety.

“It was a nice thing to be in the right place at the right time,” O’Gorman said.

Not everyone is so lucky.

About 100 people drown in rip currents each year nationally, according to the U.S. Lifesaving Association. In contrast, just an estimated five people worldwide died from shark attacks last year.

Only California and Florida reported more rip current drownings than did North Carolina between 1999 and 2013, according to National Weather Service data. Rip currents were blamed for 12 deaths at beaches here in 2017.

Frightened and struggling swimmers require rescuing from rip currents frequently along this state’s coast, sometimes by untrained individuals putting their lives at risk. Dozens of rescues were tallied at North Carolina beaches in just the first week of July.

Researchers, lifeguards, coastal town governments, even rental property managers, have tried to educate beachgoers about this peril for years.

“Many of the tourist offices will have brochures available, so do the rental companies. But if you are on your way to beach you are not going to pick up a brochure and read it,” said Spencer Rogers, a rip tide and coastal erosion specialist with the North Carolina Sea Grant program.

So communities frequently post warning signs along public accesses to a beach. Nonetheless, many people remain unaware.

Natural Hazards

Rip currents form nearly every day along North Carolina’s 170-plus miles of barrier islands, Rogers said.

“On most days no one would notice,” he said, because only a fraction are powerful enough to push swimmers away from the shore.

Incoming waves often build the currents by depositing water between sandbars and the shoreline. In time, portions of those sandbars collapse and water rushes through the resulting gaps, away from the beach.

These ephemeral current channels can be as narrow as 10 or 20 feet or much wider. They can be strongest when waves hitting the shoreline are higher and more frequent than average, say after a storm passes by offshore.

“A big part of the trouble is that they don’t always look like trouble,” Rogers said. Water within these currents can appear calmer than water to either side.

“The waves can look milder and smaller because they are not breaking on the sandbar,” Rogers said. “That gives the exact wrong message to beach users. That’s where they want to put down beach blankets.”

Knowledge is Safety

Many North Carolina organizations have worked for years to educate people about this danger at our beaches.

“You name it and we’ll print a rip current warning on it,” Rogers said, including lifeguard stands, auto bumpers, frisbees, rental house refrigerators and garbage cans.

The Hatteras Island Rescue Squad, for one, holds weekly information sessions on risks from rip currents and other shoreline hazards every Monday into August. The National Weather Service produces rip current forecasts for shoreline in North Carolina and other state.

Not everyone is at equal risk of harm. “The drowning and death statistics show a much higher risks for younger males, 16 to 30,” Rogers said. “Inexperience is not always involved. It’s surprising the number of stronger swimmers who get in trouble.”People who understand these currents advise beachgoers to swim only when lifeguards are present. They also urge people to swim with flotation devices, like the boogie boards used by the teenage sisters O’Gorman rescued.

Rip currents can be dangerous to people out of the water too. “About 25 percent of North Carolina deaths in last few years have been better swimmers attempting rescues. Someone sees a child or a friend or even a stranger and they attempt to rescue them,” Rogers said.

Tossing a flotation device toward someone in distress after someone has called 911 is a safer alternative, he said.

O’Gorman, the firefighter who muscled in the teenagers at Emerald Isle, agreed that not everyone should attempt what he did.

Because he had very recently had the right training, he knew he had the skill and the physical stamina to help.

Before he tried, he approached the teenagers’ distraught family. They told him they had called 911, which was just right. Given how frightened the girls were, however, he went in.

“You have to assess your own ability,” he said.

And that assessment needs to be right.

Learn More

• Rip Current Questions and Answers
• How to Avoid Getting Caught in a Rip Current

This story is provided courtesy of N.C. Health News, a website covering health and environmental news in North Carolina. Coastal Review Online is partnering with N.C. Health News to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from North Carolina Health News

North Carolina legislators once again have moved to reduce this state’s pork industry exposure to nuisance lawsuits.

House members on Thursday approved the NC Farm Act of 2018, which includes provisions that would tightly restrict when neighboring property owners can file nuisance lawsuits against farms producing odors or other noxious conditions.

The bill passed in the Senate late Thursday without debate, despite claims by opponents on both sides of the aisle in recent days that it improperly weakened the property rights of state residents.

“I read this provision to actually be protective of private property rights not to harm private rights,” Rep. Kelly Hastings, R-Cherryville, said Thursday, expressing support before the 65-42 affirmative House vote.

Led by Rep. Jimmy Dixon, R-Warsaw, and Sen. Brent Jackson, R-Autryville, supporters said more limits on the nuisance suits are imperative after hog farm neighbors in Bladen County in April won the first of 26 nuisance cases pending against Murphy-Brown LLC, the hog-farming division of Smithfield Foods.

Those cases allege that Smithfield, now owned by WH Group of China, has not invested in waste management upgrades on more than 1,000 farms that raise its hogs in eastern North Carolina. That’s despite neighbors’ decades-long complaints about odors and other impacts from their open-lagoon and field-spraying systems.

No one was more passionate in opposition Thursday than Rep. John Blust, R-Greensboro. A lawyer who is retiring from the General Assembly this year, Blust spoke at length, urging fellow legislators to take more time to assess whether the measure was necessary and fair.

“We’re taking a side in a dispute, saying we, we in the legislature … know better than the court. We know better than the facts. We know better than the law,” Blust said. “We’re going to protect one litigant, and we’re going to say to the other: ‘You don’t matter. You don’t count.’”

“It’s because the one side has the ear of the powers that run this institution,” he added.

House speaker Tim Moore, R-Kings Mountain, fired back, noting that all legislative rules were followed in the hearing of the bill, which was heard in Senate and House committees before votes in each chamber.

Vigorously supported by Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, the nuisance limits in the bill build on a law passed last year that strictly capped payments in such lawsuits. The new measure would prohibit a plaintiff from obtaining punitive damages in court unless a farm was implicated in criminal convictions or government enforcement actions.

In addition, only people living within half a mile of a farm can file such lawsuits. And they must act within a year of a farming operation starting or undergoing a “fundamental” change.

Existing state right-to-farm law says changes in ownership, size or what’s produced on a farm do not qualify as fundamental changes.

Thursday’s vote came as a second hog-farm nuisance trial is underway just a few blocks away from the General Assembly in Raleigh. Among witnesses questioned in U.S. District Court under oath there this week was Gregg Schmidt, Smithfield’s hog product division president.

In a May letter from Schmidt to North Carolina growers that Smithfield hires to raise its hogs, the executive described the successful lawsuit as a massive threat, according to a federal court filing.

This story is provided courtesy of North Carolina Health News, a website covering health and environmental news in North Carolina. Coastal Review Online is partnering with North Carolina Health News to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

From North Carolina Health News

People in the lower Cape Fear River basin are still living with lots of uncertainty over how much GenX and its sister chemicals two companies released into public and private drinking water supplies.

Now more questions are rising.

Dutch scientists this week briefed North Carolina scientists that GenX and a related older chemical, PFOA (or C8), has been detected in vegetables, grass and leaves near a Chemours plant in The Netherlands.

So might fruit, vegetables or livestock raised near Fayetteville Works, now operated by Chemours, pose hazards to people? What about fish harvested from nearby lakes or streams?

“We don’t know yet,” said North Carolina State University toxicologist and fish biologist W. Greg Cope, a member of the state Department of Environmental Quality’s Science Advisory Board and a leader in the North Carolina Cooperative Extension program. “And that’s the hard part when people ask questions. We’re ready to help when there is information to share.”

Data from Abroad

On Monday, the faces of four Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment scientists filled a video screen in the ground floor hearing room of the state-owned Archdale Building in downtown Raleigh.

The people on the U.S. end were researchers, members of a science advisory board created to help DEQ and the Department of Health and Human Services assess risks from emerging contaminants, at what levels they pose hazards and when regulation is needed.

The Dutch scientists explained that limited testing found evidence of GenX contamination in some plant life near a Dutch-based Chemours factory by the Port of Rotterdam.

“Carrots, beets, lettuce, several other varieties of crops were tested,” said one Dutch presenter. “About 60 percent came back without any detected PFOA or GenX. … (G)ardens very close to factory showed PFOA and GenX.”

Air emissions appear to be the source because municipal water serving people living near the Dutch facility is clear of contamination.

The data are spotty, the scientists made clear. Year-round sampling has not been tackled. Nor have tests of eggs or cow’s milk produced near the Dutch facility, which, unlike the North Carolina plant, does not produce GenX but uses it in manufacturing.

Fish obtained from lakes near the Dutch Chemours plant will be tested, with results expected later this year.

North Carolina officials will also test fish in this state for PFAS contamination, DHHS spokesman Jim Jones said Thursday. DEQ will collect fish from Marsh Wood Lake in Cumberland County later this month or in early March and send the tissue to a certified lab.

“(O)nce the samples have been reviewed and the data verified, the results will be made available to the public. This data will be used as guidance on recommendations relative to fish consumption,” according to a written statement from Jones.

There is evidence that GenX can contaminate food here. The state Department of Environmental Quality late last year confirmed private lab test results that detected substantial levels of GenX in honey produced by bees raised in Bladen County.

Testing detected one GenX level of 2,000 parts per trillion in the honey. That far exceeds the current state health goal of no more than 140 parts per trillion of GenX in drinking water, although as Michael Scott, director of the DEQ Division of Waste Management, pointed out, people don’t eat nearly as much honey as they drink water.

“We don’t have any reason to discount the results,” Scott said.

The honey had been produced for personal use and not commercially sold, but the beekeeper threw it away rather than use it, “out of precautionary principle,” Scott said.

The precautionary principle, embraced in many public health disciplines, recommends acting against a potential health threat, even when a full scientific understanding of a threat is not yet available.

Bladen County isn’t one of the largest agricultural counties in North Carolina. But residents there do farm. The county Farm Bureau’s figures place Bladen as third in hog and pig production, and ninth in turkeys raised.

The state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs said it is closely monitoring DEQ and DHHS efforts to assess risks from PFAS. But it lacks information that would prompt farmers near the plant to change their practices.

“We have been engaged with DEQ and DHHS on this, but in the absence of legal limits, we are continuing to look to them to advise us on their public health goals and potential impacts,” agriculture agency spokeswoman Andrea Ashby said.

Complex and Ever-Changing

GenX and several other perfluorinated compounds have been detected in the river and pubic drinking water intakes scores of miles from the Fayetteville plant and in more than 200 nearby drinking water wells at various concentrations.

Health risks from exposure to PFAS, per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances that are not regulated by Environmental Protection Agency are still under study. In general, exposing lab animals to high levels of the compounds produced changes in liver, thyroid and pancreas functioning. Changes in hormone levels have been detected, too.

As Science Advisory Board members absorb the data they are receiving in preparation for helping DHHS set exposure limits, there’s plenty of other GenX news to keep up with, including:

• Chemours has been ordered to provide bottled water to at least 114 private well owners (out of 349 tested as of December) living near its chemical manufacturing compound. Samples in their drinking water turned up GenX above the provisional state health goal of 140 parts per trillion.
• Bloomberg reported that Chemours has received a grand jury subpoena related to GenX discharges near Fayetteville into the Cape Fear River. This state’s DEQ disclosed last summer that it had also received a subpoena from the U.S. Attorney’s office of the Eastern District of North Carolina.
• As first reported in the Wilmington StarNews, four Republican state senators are asking the EPA to audit DEQ’s administration of permitting and public water supply programs. They have also asked for guidance on whether a North Carolina agency can set standards for emerging chemicals that are not regulated by federal standards, which is the case with PFAS chemicals.
• The EPA recently directed Chemours to test for GenX in public and private drinking water supplies near its Washington Works operation in West Virginia. DuPont’s failure a decade ago to disclose internal evidence that C8 pollution released from that plant posed health risks resulted in $10.25 million in EPA fines and a $670.7 million court settlement with nearby residents.

This story is provided courtesy of North Carolina Health News, an online news service covering health and environmental issues in North Carolina. Coastal Review Online is partnering with North Carolina Health News to provide readers with more stories of interest on the coast. 

Reprinted from North Carolina Health News

RALEIGH – In a bipartisan response to outrage over contaminated drinking water, members of the North Carolina House of Representatives voted unanimously Wednesday to give state environmental regulators more money to prevent pollution.

A proposed $1.3 million fund would not be a huge boost to the state’s $77 million share of the Department of Environmental Quality’s budget. It would, however, be a small reversal of a seven-year trend in the General Assembly to trim state environmental protection programs.

Will it become law? Not soon, if at all, apparently.

The Senate adjourned Wednesday before the high-profile House Bill 189 even cleared the House appropriations committee, frustrating House backers.

Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, issued a statement sent to reporters Wednesday evening signaling that he opposes the bill.

But hopes were higher earlier Wednesday afternoon when Rep. Ted Davis, R-New Hanover, led a successful effort to convince all House members present to invest more money in DEQ.

The money would buy an instrument that can detect unregulated chemicals in state waters. Additionally, the money would provide staff to both operate it and attack a sizable backlog of DEQ waste disposal permit applications.

While making the sell, Davis and others stressed that the funding was likely the first step of a more elaborate government response needed to detect the compound GenX and other chemicals of concern in the Cape Fear River basin and around the state.

“We are moving forward on something that we were able to get the stakeholders to agree on as much as possible,” said Davis, whose House Select Committee on North Carolina River Quality endorsed taking action after four meetings digging into GenX contamination beginning in September.

Latest Twist in the GenX Saga

Detection of GenX pollution in and near the Cape Fear River has expanded over seven months, starting with disclosure last summer that the hard-to-break-down chemical was tainting municipal drinking water supplies in Wilmington and neighboring Brunswick and Pender counties.

Since then the compound and related perfluorinated compounds have been detected in increasing numbers of household wells near where the chemicals have been released, a Chemours-owned chemical plant compound in Bladen County. Evidence is increasing, too, that some of the pollution may have been released into the air.

Decades ago, DuPont built and ran the chemical plant that now produces GenX. Chemours, a DuPont spinoff, took over in 2015. Chemours asserts that its waste poses no health risks.

The Environmental Protection Agency is investigating whether the company violated a consent agreement sharply restricting GenX’s release into water. After Chemours failed to disclose a leak, DEQ in November announced it would revoke the company’s permit allowing wastewater discharge into the Cape Fear.

Evidence of unwelcome chemical contamination, created by likely carcinogen 1,4 dioxane and other compounds, has been found elsewhere in North Carolina, too. House members supporting the DEQ funding said that more aggressive, long-term protections against water pollution are needed.

DEQ Secretary Michael Regan, appeared briefly before the House appropriations committee Wednesday to support the bill. He argued that preventing chemical pollution is good for business as well as the protection of natural resources.

“This is a much-needed first step in longer term conversation we need to have with this body pertaining to protecting our environment and our economy,” he said.

The House bill would allow DEQ to purchase a high-resolution mass spectrometer, which can detect very small amounts of chemicals in water. DEQ has depended on an EPA lab in Research Triangle Park, as well as testing paid for Chemours to measure GenX levels in water samples. But the EPA has its own projects and cannot continue to provide that service, Assistant Secretary Sheila Holman said Wednesday.

The bill would give Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration only a portion of the requested $2.5 million for funding to prevent water pollution. The General Assembly did not grant that request last summer. During Wednesday’s appropriations committee, Democratic House members failed to win approval of an amendment that would have funneled money to the state Department of Health and Human Services as well.

Rare Bipartisan Support

After the amendment failed, supporter Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, told fellow lawmakers she was disappointed. But she also stressed that she was grateful to Davis and other Republican leaders of the House river quality committee for digging into the GenX contamination problem so diligently and backing House Bill 189.

“I never sat in a committee that had such substantial discussions as we have had,” said Harrison, a leading advocate of expanding environmental regulation.

House Bill 189 includes other initiatives requiring no funding, some of which will occur whether the bill passes because DEQ has launched them, Holman said.

The bill would require the following:

• Department of Health and Human Services staff to consult with DEQ’s Science Advisory Board when developing health goals for contaminant exposure levels.
• DEQ staff to assess how well the agency runs a federally required permitting program that decides how much pollution industrial waste companies can discharge into streams, rivers and lakes.
• DEQ staff to review existing reporting and notice requirements related to discharging pollutants released into the environment.

Another measure would instruct the School of Government at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill to assess when water utilities have any legal liability for distributing contaminated drinking water.

Michael Brown, chairman of the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority in Wilmington, said he supports the bill and appreciates the bipartisan action Wednesday in the House. But he said he sees no uncertainty about the liability issue.

“The liability here is clear. It is with the dischargers and what they are putting in the river,” said Brown, whose utility has filed just one of many lawsuits pending against Chemours and DuPont over the pollution.

Not Just A Lovefest

In written comments opposing the bill, Berger noted that Senate Republicans already appropriated money to improve water quality in the Cape Fear River in 2017 by funding research and utility projects intended to remove GenX from drinking water. The Senate is waiting on data that was expected in October to decide any next steps, he said.

“What the House passed today, unfortunately, does nothing to prevent GenX from going into the water supply,” Berger said in the statement sent to reporters.

“It leaves North Carolina taxpayers holding the bag for expenditures that should be paid for by the company responsible for the pollution, fails to give DEQ authority to do anything they can’t already do, and authorizes the purchase of expensive equipment that the state can already access for free,” he said.

Gov. Cooper saw it differently. He issued a statement Wednesday sharply criticizing the General Assembly, clumping together his frustration over its failure to pass environmental and educational bills he supports.

“Today, legislative Republicans walked out on students, teachers and families concerned about overcrowded classrooms and safe drinking water,” Cooper said in the written statement. “When legislators return home today, North Carolinians in their communities should demand they take action.”

Taylor Knopf, who covers rural and mental health news for North Carolina Health News, contributed to this report.

This story is provided courtesy of North Carolina Health News, an online news service covering health and environmental issues in North Carolina. Coastal Review Online is partnering with North Carolina Health News to provide readers with more stories of interest on the coast. 

Reprinted from North Carolina Health News

DuPont downplayed its own animal research regarding potential risks from the chemical GenX that the company released into the Cape Fear River for decades, a new lawsuit alleges.

And the company prolonged exposure to GenX and other compounds by not disclosing their release into the river, which feeds public drinking water systems downstream, the lawsuit filed in federal court says.

Filed by the Brunswick County government, which owns one of those water systems, the complaint delivers the most searing accusations yet regarding DuPont’s understanding of potential health risks from GenX.

“For nearly forty years, Defendants have been secretly releasing their persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic perfluorinated chemicals into the Cape Fear River at unsafe levels and contaminating the drinking water source for hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians — just as they did in the Ohio River — all the while misleading state and Federal regulators and the Public,” according to the complaint.

GenX is one of a group of compounds called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFASs, a share of which may pose harm to people.

On Wednesday, DuPont spokesman Dan Turner said company officials would respond to the new North Carolina lawsuit in court, not in the media. But he stressed that there is no evidence that chemical releases from the industrial site that DuPont built and ran for decades in Bladen County have harmed people.

“It is important to note North Carolina regulators have publicly stated that they believe the drinking water is safe,” Turner said. “Although we understand that public concern about PFCs has increased in recent years, we have no reason to believe that the discharges at issue have harmed anyone.”

Accusations regarding research in the suit are based on reviews of published research and studies DuPont submitted to EPA, said environmental attorney Scott Summy with the national law firm Baron & Budd, which is representing Brunswick County.

The lawsuit alleges the following:

• Publicly reported results of DuPont and Chemours studies on Gen X toxicity “contain misrepresentations and factual misstatements that tend to understate GenX’s potential for toxicity.”
• DuPont data show toxic effects in animals from short-term, subchronic and long-term exposure.
• GenX exposure to rats and mice prompted incidence of cancers at levels exceeding those detected in controls in the brain, liver, adrenal glands, pancreas and testicles.
• GenX posed reproductive and developmental risks to lab animals, as well as toxicity in the liver, kidneys, the hematological system, adrenal glands and stomach.
• DuPont animal studies demonstrated an association between GenX and effects found from other PFASs, including changes in the liver, kidney, pancreas, testicles and the immune system.

The lawsuit, which seeks punitive damages, is filed against DuPont, its spinoff Chemours, and the newly formed DowDuPont Inc., a recent DuPont and Dow Chemical merger. DuPont built Fayetteville Works in Bladen County, the source of this chemical contamination, in the 1970s and ran it until 2015, when its spin-off company Chemours took over.

This latest lawsuit also emphasizes that researchers have detected several PFAS compounds downstream of Fayetteville Works.

“While everyone focuses on whether any one single chemical may be above a standard, no one talks about the cumulative effects of all of them together,” Summy, the Brunswick County attorney wrote in an email on Wednesday.

The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, which operates a water system in Wilmington, has also filed a lawsuit in federal court against DuPont and Chemours over the GenX contamination. This week the utility made clear it badly wants information on all PFAS released at the site.

The utility authority this week filed an “urgent public records” request to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality seeking all information the agency has regarding the chemical releases, even information Chemours or DuPont says is confidential.

“The identities of perfluorinated and polyfluorinated substances that pollute a river that is a public water supply source are not confidential business information and should not be withheld,” its records request letter says.

Utility officials argue they need this information to design an upgrade to its water treatment plant to capture perfluorinated and polyfluorinated substances before they reach the drinking water distribution system. Officials also wants to identify and find ways to remove any PFAS that might remain in its distribution system.

“At present, CFPUA must rely on consultants to reverse engineer the identity of the substances (i.e., find substances without knowing what they are) based only on current intake water quality,” the utility’s request states.

The organization even offered to dispatch qualified helpers to assist  DEQ offices to retrieve and copy the records if that would facilitate the process.

This story is provided courtesy of North Carolina Health News, a website covering health and environmental news in North Carolina. Coastal Review Online is partnering with North Carolina Health News to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from North Carolina Health News

Although extremely serious on its own, contamination by the industrial chemical GenX in the Cape Fear River is significant beyond potential risks to the public drinking water downstream.

Public scrutiny of how the industrial chemical got there in the first place is raising awareness of scientific concerns about potential hazards from unregulated GenX and similar compounds. It is also bringing new attention to how well multiple government agencies and industry, in this case Dupont and its spinoff Chemours, protect people from potential risks.

GenX is one of many human-made compounds called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFASs. While not household names, PFASs make up a category of super-tough substances used in many common products that consumers love, including non-stick cooking pans, stain resistant carpets, waterproof clothing and food packing.

But that toughness has a downside: the chemicals stick around rather than degrade quickly once released into the environment.

U.S. companies voluntarily stopped using an older generation of PFASs, including the compound PFOA (also known as C8). Research has shown associations between exposure to some older generation PFASs and several health problems, including increases in cholesterol levels, thyroid and liver disease, pregnancy related high blood pressure (known as pre-eclampsia) and other ailments, said East Carolina University toxicologist Jamie DeWitt, who has studied GenX.

Chemours for years has heralded GenX as an improved substitute for PFOA and similar substances due to differences in its chemical structures which it was anticipated would make it less persistent in the environment, thus reducing any potential health risks. But some scientists are finding reasons to be concerned.

Chemours Co., a DuPont spinoff, repeatedly has said levels of GenX released since possibly the 1980s from its Fayetteville Works plant, upstream from Wilmington and other communities, are at levels that pose no health hazards.

In that context, persistent and big questions regarding GenX pollution in Cape Fear remain extremely important, including:

• For how long did DuPont and Chemours, the spinoff, release GenX and similar compounds?
• Have people been harmed by drinking water tainted by chemicals that they did not know tainted their water?
• Did DuPont or Chemours violate state or federal laws when releasing GenX upstream of drinking water intakes in Wilmington and nearby communities?
• Did government agencies, from the local to the federal, do all they should have to prevent the pollution?

That final question is developing political overtones in the state capitol. Republican senators recently announced a legislative hearing to question Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration regarding “inconsistencies” in its response to the discharge of GenX and how money he’s requesting “would be used to meaningfully improve water quality and public safety in the lower Cape Fear region.”

Cooper, as part of a plan to better research and monitor GenX and many other unregulated pollutants of concern in this state’s rivers, has asked the legislature for $2.58 million in funding. When he made the requests, Cooper noted that legislative budget cuts in recent years resulted in the loss of 70 positions within the state Department of Environmental Quality. Those cuts included eliminating staff available for permitting, compliance and enforcement programs.

The emerging political conflict is not sitting well with some people on the receiving end of that water in Wilmington, where GenX has been detected in drinking water, including former Mayor Harper Peterson, a Democrat active in the group Clean Cape Fear. That alliance of local groups hosted a community non-partisan forum on GenX last month.

“Let’s come with an agenda that focuses on action and address the issue: the risk of unsafe drinking water. Leave your party affiliation at the door,” Peterson said.

To keep up as this story unfolds, it’s useful to know its history, particularly what’s listed in the timeline below.

1980s: According to notes taken at a meeting with Chemours staff, the Fayetteville Works facility has produced and discharged substances identified now as GenX since the 1980s.

2002: DuPont starts producing PFOA, also known as C8, in North Carolina, at its Fayetteville Works property adjacent to the Cape Fear River on the border of Cumberland and Bladen counties. This information is according to a Securities and Exchange Commission document filed by an activist DuPont shareholder.

2004: EPA charges DuPont with violating the Toxic Substances Control Act due to multiple failures from 1981 onwards to report evidence of human health risks from PFOA in Ohio and West Virginia. Cited was evidence that a female employee had transferred the chemical to her developing fetus and confirmation of contamination of public water supplies in West Virginia and Ohio.

2005: DuPont agreed to pay $10.25 million, EPA’s largest civil administrative penalty at that time, to settle PFOA charges. It also agreed to commit another $6.25 million, partly to pay for research assessing if other DuPont products break down to form PFOA, which could result in widespread contamination.

2009: DuPont, which commits to not making, buying or using PFOA by 2015, is deploying GenX to create high-performance fluoropolymers, according to company marketing materials. EPA, in a consent agreement, requires the company to prevent GenX from escaping from any manufacturing processes with “99 percent efficiency.”

2015: A research paper is published showing that EPA scientists and collaborators, using chemical detective work, detected GenX and other newer generation PFAS compounds in the Cape Fear River.

2016: Research by Harvard scientists disclose that EPA-mandated sampling detected PFASs in public drinking-water supplies for 6 million people between 2012 and 2015. Most of those samples were collected near manufacturing facilities and other sites where they are used. North Carolina ranks third nationwide for the number of detections.

2016: A research publication by N.C. State University water chemist Detlef Knappe and others report finding GenX in untreated drinking water drawn from the Cape Fear River. The paper also notes the compound’s resistance to standard water cleaning treatments. Knappe had notified state and water utility officials of the finding before publication.

January 2017: A publication by ECU toxicologist Jamie DeWitt shows that in lab mice GenX appears to leave a body sooner and may be less potent than PFOA. That said, the chemical did generate some of the same physiological changes observed in lab studies after exposure to older generation PFAS compounds, although at lower concentrations.

June 2017: The Wilmington StarNews reports that GenX, which is unregulated, was detected but local utilities and the state, alerted to the problem by Knappe, did not publicize the findings. Residents in Wilmington and nearby towns criticize local, state and federal officials for not acting sooner.

June 2017: Chemours staff, in a closed-door meeting, tell state and local utility officials that GenX’s release, which took multiple attempts to stop, originated from a process at Fayetteville Works exempt from the EPA consent order. They also reveal that releases likely started in the 1980s. Company representatives maintain that levels released are too low to pose a hazard.

July 2017: Multiple investigations are launched:

• EPA starts investigating whether Chemours complied with the 2009 Toxic Substances Control Act consent order. Failure to do so usually results in civil and criminal penalties. The federal agency also starts assessing if changes to the consent agreement are needed.
• Federal prosecutors subpoena documents, research and monitoring data from DEQ as part of a grand jury probe.
• Attorney General Josh Stein launches a civil investigation into Chemours marketing practices regarding its representation about GenX’s safety.
• Cooper directs the State Bureau of Investigation to assess whether a criminal probe might be needed to determine if Chemours violated North Carolina law forbidding intentional violations of the U.S. Clean Water Act, or violations of the EPA consent order.

July 2017: The state Department of Health and Human Services lowered by 99.8 percent a provisional “health goal” limit for GenX amounts in drinking water, reducing it from 70,000 parts per trillion to 140 ppt. The number is a provisional estimate built with limited data of the contamination level below which exposure is unlikely to do harm to people, including developing fetuses and bottle-fed babies over a lifetime of exposure.

August 2017: Cape Fear Public Utility Authority attorneys announce plans to sue Chemours and DuPont in federal court to enforce federal Clean Water Act requirements due to the pollution.

August 2017: In a press release, Republican senators announce a plan to stage a legislative hearing regarding “inconsistencies” in the Cooper administration’s handling of GenX pollution.

August 2017: In response, DEQ Secretary Michael Regan and Health and Human Services Secretary Mandy Cohen said they are ready and willing to cooperate fully. They note that in May or June 2016 the administration of former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory received information about EPA and N.C. State University research on GenX in the Cape Fear.

The letter also posed its own criticism. “We should also warn that the General Assembly is poised to eliminate a provision in G.S. 150B-19.3 that restricts regulators’ ability to address threats to public health, safety and welfare.” The text links to a conference report for House Bill 162 which was not published, but circulated to legislators, state officials and reporters.

August 2017: A group of N.C. State and ECU researchers are applying for National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences funding to test for PFASs levels in blood and urine of people living in the Cape Fear River basin.

This story is provided courtesy of North Carolina Health News, a website covering health and environmental news in North Carolina. Coastal Review Online is partnering with North Carolina Health News to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast. You can read other stories about health care here.

Reprinted from North Carolina Health News

RALEIGH — Each week, Anastasia Figurskey hides 15 plastic cups filled with water in bushes near spots around Wake County where people will walk by: Gas stations, front yards of home and recycling drop-off centers all fit the bill.

After a few days the Wake County employee fishes brown paper marked with tiny black dots from each cup. After the paper dries, inside a windowless insect-hatching room at North Carolina State University, she peers at every egg under a microscope.

Hard to see with the unaided eye, mosquito eggs pop into view when magnified. The shape of the eggs tells Firgurskey their likely species, which she notes with entries to a paper log.

“You get better at it,” the young woman says, clearly relieved.

So it will go, dot by dot in 15 North Carolina counties from now into the fall, until the state starts to assemble a better map of the location and population size of mosquitoes capable of transmitting Zika virus.

It’s time.

Species of Interest

North Carolina today is not a place where biting mosquito are infecting people with Zika, the virus linked to heartbreaking birth defects in Brazil.

People here are at greatest risk if they travel to locales where the virus is spreading or have sex with a man who has been to such a place. As of mid-July, only 19 people had been diagnosed with Zika in North Carolina, all due to travel-related exposures.

But in case the number of infections rises, public health officials want to know what parts of the state host the largest number of potential Zika vectors to help them target their prevention efforts.

To get up to date, the state Department of Health and Human Resources, in step with federal recommendations, is spending $50,000 for the survey that university scientists Michael Reiskind at North Carolina State, Stephanie Richards at East Carolina and Brian Byrd at Western Carolina are leading. Public health staff in 15 counties, along with helpers on some military bases, go out into the field to set traps.

The locations and numbers of species capable of spreading Zika in North Carolina is fuzzy today due partly to the 2011 shuttering of state programs that had monitored disease-vector insects, Richards said.

“Little has been done to document species distribution across the state, other than the few functioning programs in eastern N.C. that regularly conduct mosquito surveillance,” she said.

Of keen interest today is the presence of Aedes aegypti, the primary transmitter of Zika in tropical areas. It has been detected in Chatham, Hoke, Scotland and Swain counties after 1995 but not in those counties since 2006, says research published in June. Brunswick County officials have seen the vector in their jurisdiction previously too. That doesn’t mean it’s not present today, however.

“We haven’t seen Aedes aegypti in many years in North Carolina. But is the reason we are not seeing them is that no one is looking?” asks Reiskind, the N.C. State specialist who researchers ways that ecology influences human disease risks.

The other mosquito species getting tracked is Aedes albopictus, known as the Asian tiger mosquito, well established in these parts. While a less efficient carrier of Zika than A. aegypti, recent research by Richards indicates local populations of Asian tigers could contract and transmit Zika virus in North Carolina.

Getting Positioned

Mosquitoes infected with Zika transmit the virus when they bite people. More specifically, infected female mosquitoes share the virus in their saliva when slurping up the blood meals they require to nourish their developing eggs.

The web of transmission only expands from there. Men can infect both women and men with Zika during sex. Pregnant women, tragically, can infect their developing features.  People infected with Zika keep the cycle going when mosquitoes bite them. After that it doesn’t take long for the winged predators to spread it to more people.

Fortunately for those looking for species that can transmit Zika, such mosquitoes are relatively easy to find. They like to lay eggs in containers holding small amounts of water in areas close to people, their prey. That’s why Figurskey and other trap setters choose very specific spots to hide their black plastic stadium cups fitted with sturdy paper normally used to germinate plant seeds.

Lab Studies Emerging

Richards, in addition to helping with survey, is assessing just how good or poor a vector local Asian tiger mosquitoes might be. Her preliminary study infected some A. albopictus mosquitoes collected in Greenville with a Zika virus isolate that was found circulating in Puerto Rico in 2015.

All mosquitoes developed Zika infections and in each case the virus escaped the insect’s’ midgut to reach their saliva, the launching pad for human infection during a blood meal. Only some of the mosquitoes could transmit the virus after a 14-day incubation, not by biting a person —  that would be too dangerous — but by dripping saliva into tubes holding sugar water and fetal cow blood in the laboratory.

“Much more research is needed to evaluate the vector competence of Aedes albopictus,” says Richards, who is seeking federal research funding to do that very thing. “It is certainly a potential vector as it blood feeds on humans, can transmit the virus and is ubiquitous in North Carolina.”

Winters in most of North Carolina is too harsh to sustain year-round populations of A. aegypti, the most successful carrier of Zika, Richards says. But since they, as well as A. albopictus, lay eggs in artificial containers, supplies of their eggs or larvae could be easily replenished here, arriving in shipments of tires or other products that store the small amounts of water needed to sustain mosquito eggs or larvae.

Jim Gardner, the vector control manager in Pitt County, is collecting eggs just like Figurskey is doing for the survey in Wake County. He’s grateful the state is investing once again surveillance of disease-carrying mosquitoes.

The information will be needed if incidence of Zika or some other mosquito-borne disease rises here. “No knowledge is ever wasted,” Gardner says.

To Learn More

• Centers for Disease Control
• Zika Q&A
• Mosquitoes in North Carolina

This story is provided courtesy of N.C. Health News, a website covering health and environmental news in North Carolina. Coastal Review Online is partnering with N.C. Health News to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast. You can read other stories about health care here.

Reprinted from N.C. Health News

RALEIGH — In a hushed conference room in the heart of Research Triangle Park, a veterinary scientist urged college students to picture what might go wrong when the wild and the tame collide.

To focus their thinking, Suzanne Kennedy-Stoskopf , a N.C. State University professor, shared a sobering scenario that could occur in North Carolina. It went like this:

Hungry wild pigs burst through a fence confining livestock on a small farm, as they do frequently on the coast, in the mountains and in between. Once through, the intruders push domestic pigs aside to gorge on pasture grass or feed – anything edible they find, including young animals.

Seeing the damage the next day, a farmer recognizes that feral swine breached his land. That isn’t a giant surprise because populations of the animals have exploded in the Southeast.

But he never considers what the intruders might have carried in.

That remains true weeks later when a sow on his farm delivers a litter of stillbirth piglets, disappointing a 10-year-old boy assisting his uncle during a Thanksgiving visit. The farmer assumes bad luck was in play.

As Christmas approaches, the nephew gets sick at his home on the outskirts of a city. At first, his family suspects flu. But after a punishing headache and pain in his neck flare, doctors fear lethal meningitis is in play and scramble to find a cause.

No one, at least not right away, suspects the bacteria Brucella suis, which jumps from wild pigs and can kill piglets and cause a potentially serious illness called brucellosis in people.

“Nobody is thinking about that, so it takes a long time for the people involved to recognize what the problem was,” Kennedy-Stoskopf said.

To try to shift such thinking, the College of Veterinary Medicine professor collaborates with others in her field, along with physicians, veterinarians and researchers specialized in environmental, plant and wildlife topics. Members of the N.C. One Health Collaborative, they work to increase awareness of ways that the health of people, animals and the environment overlap.

They recently held the latest of a series of discussion sessions, open to the public that they host between January and April at the N.C. Biotechnology Center in RTP.

Nonfiction

People must take steps to preserve health across species, One Health enthusiasts argue, because we will always have close contact with animals. That’s likely more than ever as our global population continues to swell.

In addition, our species has always depended on animals for food. For millennia, we have sought their companionship as well.

Some critters, from tiny ticks carrying Lyme disease to the still-unknown animal host of Ebola, are existing threats. Most emerging infectious diseases worldwide today pass between humans and animals, and most of those originate in wildlife. As climate changes push animals out of longtime habitats, they may bring old diseases to new territories.

And as the menacing Zika virus is teaching the world right now, once it gets a foothold, a pathogen can expand its territory fast.

Wildlife isn’t the only sector of concern. Routine use of antibiotics at U.S. livestock facilities, for instance, that produces antibiotic-resistant germs is another example of an emerging illness link. The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention has tied one in five cases of illnesses caused by treatment-resistant germs to direct exposure on such farms or to food made there.

Feral swine are prolific breeders. Sows have approximately 1.5 litters a year with each litter averaging five to six piglets. Females can become sexually mature at 6 to 8 months of age.

The pig-to-human-sickness scenario shared with students in RTP was modeled on a real-life case in South Carolina — the mystery was solved and the boy got well. But it could occur here.

Kennedy-Stoskopf was co-author of a 2012 scientific report showing that feral pigs tested at an environmental education center in Johnston County had been exposed to Brucella suis. The news caught the attention of multiple interest groups in a state where 2,300 farms raise nearly 9.6 million hogs valued at $1.8
billion.

No one wants a Brucella species disrupting North Carolina’s hog industry.

At the discussion session, a mix of undergraduate and graduate students learned fast that preventing health problems linked to wildlife is not always simple. For example, it’s tough to control feral pigs, descendants of a mix of wild boar imported to this region for hunting, onetime farm animals and wild pigs brought here to stock hunting grounds.

Ironically, traits people bred into their domestic ancestors long ago help wild pigs thrive in the wild today. Adaptable and robust, they reach sexual maturity young, can reproduce multiple times a year and have large litters. All of that helped them expand their territory from 17 to 39 U.S. states in recent decades.

The animals also carry many more pathogens than Brucella suis. Their groupings of multiple females and juveniles, called sounders, also damage crops, kill young livestock, damage native plants and muck up streams. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates damages at $1.5 billion a year.

Too Many to Count

“Is there a way to stop them from reproducing?” César Baëta, a master’s degree student in physiology at N.C. State asked optimistically at the One Health meeting. The answer, most emphatically on large populations scale, is no.

Feral pigs are considered invasive species in every state where they’ve been detected. An estimated population of six million produces damages totaling $1.5 billion in damage each year, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission doesn’t know how many feral pigs live within this state’s borders, said David Sawyer, section manager of its research and surveys division. But the commission knows their numbers have grown and considers them nuisances.

In recent years, state officials have given hunters wide rein to take the animals.

A licensed hunter can stalk them day or night, anytime of the year, with no bag limit. Electronic calls that lure the animals are allowed.

In 2015, the USDA committed $20 million a year to reduce or eliminate populations of feral swine in multiple states. That agency is spending about $380,000 a year in North Carolina.

Field staff here use thermal scopes or whatever else helps to find, trap where possible and shoot dead as many feral pigs as they can find. Carcasses get checked for disease-causing microorganisms, especially those that cause diseases that worry pork producers: swine brucellosis, porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, swine influenza and pseudorabies.

A lot of the effort so far has focused in Currituck County in the northeast and Avery and Mitchell counties out west. But Keith Wehner, director of the USDA wildlife service in North Carolina, knows they and the wildlife commission, who they collaborate with, will find wild pigs in many places in between.

Wehner said he hopes his staff one day will receive an exemption from state policy forbidding the shooting of animals from the air. That would allow trained staff to board agile helicopters to spy and destroy animals from above.

“We’re using every tool we can find,” Wehner said. “Our job is control, not sport. When a landowner agrees to let us on property, we kill every single pig.”

But can such a quick-to-reproduce animal be eliminated from the wild?

“Getting to that is the long-term goal,” Wehner said.

Learn More

• North Carolina One Health Collaborative
• N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission
• U.S. Department of Agriculture

This story is provided courtesy of N.C. Health News, a website covering health and environmental news in North Carolina. Coastal Review Online is partnering with N.C. Health News to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast. You can read other stories about health care here.