Reprinted from North Carolina Health News

North Carolina’s riverkeepers are starting to return to business as usual now, more than a year after the COVID-19 pandemic slowed their efforts to fly over hog and poultry farms looking for violations of the state’s environmental regulations.

Before the pandemic, some of the riverkeepers flew over the farms at least once a week. When they found a suspected violation, they took pictures that included a timestamp and GPS coordinates. Then they’d send that information to the state Department of Environmental Quality, which is supposed to investigate the complaint and cite the farm if a violation is found.

By law, the DEQ cannot use a third party’s information to determine whether a farm should be issued a notice of violation, which would force the farm owner to remedy the infraction and abide by the state’s laws and regulations. A fine often comes with the notice. The department has to conduct its own investigation and draw its own conclusions.

The problem, the riverkeepers say, is that a state law approved in 2014 shields the DEQ from revealing any part of its investigation until and unless it issues a notice of violation. Without a notice, the DEQ cannot reveal its investigative findings even if it wanted to.

Some of the riverkeepers say they continually file the same complaints against the same farms, only to find that nothing has been done. 

Some question whether the DEQ is doing a thorough job.

“Unless there’s a violation, we don’t know what they’re doing, which could include the fact that they didn’t investigate at all, or they went to the location of  violation and just had them repair the violation or correct the violation,” said Larry Baldwin, a former Riverkeeper and now coordinator of Pure Farms, Pure Waters NC campaign for Waterkeeper Alliance based in Raleigh. “We don’t know how many of these things are being followed through.”

Uncovered poultry litter

One of the most common complaints filed by the riverkeepers involves poultry farms that scrape litter from their barns and then leave it in huge uncovered piles for longer than 15 days, which is a violation of DEQ regulations.

Dry poultry litter contains enormous amounts of phosphorus, nitrogen and ammonia. Leaving the piles uncovered increases the risk that wind or rain will carry the substances into rivers and creeks, and pollute the air for people living nearby. The piles, which also contain dead birds, are likely to also contain potentially harmful bacteria, including Salmonella and E. coli, antibiotics and heavy metals, according to a study published in 2019 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

Excessive amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus can cause algal blooms and fish kills in rivers and streams. Excessive levels of E. coli or other fecal bacteria is the primary reason for seasonal warnings that are issued every year around swimming at the state’s beaches and recreational areas. 

The presence of E. coli in water is an indicator of recent fecal waste contamination. E. coli bacteria enter the state’s waters from various sources, including leaking septic systems, improperly functioning wastewater treatment plants, stormwater runoff and animal feeding operations.

“Although not all E. coli bacteria are harmful, numerous studies have demonstrated that E. coli concentrations are the best predictor of swimming-associated gastrointestinal illness,” according to a report from Waterkeepers Carolina. “Additionally, illnesses such as eye infections, skin irritations, and respiratory disease are common in people who come into contact with fecal-contaminated water.”

The report says every river basin in the state failed E. coli criteria set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at least once last year. At least 20 failures occurred every week across the state, the report adds.

Want to know if your water recreation area has been contaminated with E. coli? See weekly reports from Sound Rivers Swim Guide.

The DEQ has its own swimming advisory website that lists ocean beaches.

The DEQ this year created a dashboard that allows the public to track algal blooms in the state.

DEQ data raises questions

On March 18, the Cape Fear River riverkeeper, Kemp Burdette, and his staff filed complaints against 10 poultry farms that Burdette said had left litter piles uncovered for at least 15 days. Six of those were repeat complaints identified from earlier flyovers. 

That means the poultry litter at those six farms had been left uncovered for at least 30 days from the time Burdette’s office filed the initial complaint with the DEQ. Burdette believes the piles were probably left uncovered even longer, because he was having trouble scheduling flights every two weeks during the pandemic.

“We frequently see piles that are left out for much greater than 30 days, which always kind of begs the question, if we notify the DEQ and the pile stays out for more than 15 days after that, what’s being done?” Burdette said. “If they know about it and presumably they’re going to check on it and the pile is still there, then why is it still there?

“We can’t figure any of that out and, you know, you can’t call the DEQ and say, ‘Hey we sent you this referral, but we noticed that litter is still there 15 days later. Is there a problem? Is it not litter?”

Because of the 2014 law, the DEQ cannot respond if no violation is recorded.

Data the department shared may provide a clue. From Jan. 1 to March 31, the DEQ issued seven notices of violation to animal feeding operations. In that same timeframe, Burdette’s office filed 20 complaints with the DEQ. That’s the amount for just one riverkeeper out of the 15 who monitor North Carolina’s waterways. The public, often people living near the farms, also are known to file complaints.

DEQ data from May 1, 2018, to March 31, 2020, also seems to be revealing. The DEQ recorded 85 complaints in that timeframe. Of those, eight resulted in a notice of violation, or 9.4%. Another DEQ document shows 138 complaints were filed between Nov. 1, 2018, and April 30, 2019. Of those, 62 of 138 led to notices of violation — or about 45%.

Jill Howell, the riverkeeper for the Tar-Pamlico River Basin, said part of the problem is that the DEQ is under-resourced and underfunded.

“It might take them a little bit to get out there, so conditions could have changed since what we saw to what they see,” Howell said. “We’re not there with them. We don’t know when they go out so we don’t know if they’re, you know, looking in the right place or how thorough they’re being once they are out there. So we don’t know any of those specifics. If they do go out and they don’t find an issue like what we saw, we can never know that because they will not have issued a notice of violation. They’re not allowed to say anything.”

In a later email, Burdette said that severe budget cuts the DEQ has faced in the last dozen years or so has hampered its effectiveness and that the department’s regional office in Wilmington appears to be trying to improve its response to the riverkeeper’s complaints. The law itself, Burdette said, is the primary problem.

In an email to North Carolina Health News, DEQ spokesman Josh Kastrinsky cited the law and added: “We will look into whether there is a discrepancy in the reporting of complaints received, but will not be able to resolve that prior to your deadline.”

A lack of transparency

Environmental activists lament the lack of transparency caused by the 2014 law. Many say it was created by design.

State Rep. Jimmy Dixon, a Duplin County Republican who once raised more than 700,000 turkeys on his farm, was among those who pushed for the confidentiality law involving DEQ investigations of animal feeding operations. Dixon, who serves as chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, was quoted in a 2019 article in the Guardian:

“We fully expect and desire to have any violations known and exposed,” Dixon told the news outlet. “But just to throw it wide open for every Tom, Dick and Harry to make unsubstantiated claims, like some of the people do – we believe that there is an inherent expectation that I should be determined to be innocent until proven to be guilty.”

That explanation doesn’t fly well with the riverkeepers.

They say they should be working with the DEQ to help investigate the polluters. Instead, they are left in the dark.

“Everything is confidential, and if there’s no violation determined, we never even know the outcome of our report,” said Emily Sutton, the Haw River riverkeeper.

Baldwin, the coordinator for Waterkeeper Alliance NC, put it another way.

“It’s a system which would give no transparency, and transparency is probably the best word to use for a lot of things that go on in the state,” he said. “It’s basically a law that I see is there to protect the violator and give the violator the opportunity to correct the violations.”

A far bigger issue

The law is not the biggest issue with poultry farms. A far bigger issue, some of the riverkeepers said, is that almost all of the state’s poultry farms remain largely unregulated.

In a 2017 report, the DEQ wrote that dry-litter poultry farms are not required to have permits, unlike large swine and cattle operations that are required to have state general permits and federal pollution permits. As a result, the report said, the department didn’t even know how many poultry farms were in the state, where they were located, or how they disposed of their waste. The main regulatory branch for the poultry farms is the state Department of Agriculture.

The location of swine and cattle animal feeding operations (AFOs) are known because a state or NPDES permit is required. However, the locations of dry litter poultry operations and the disposal of their waste are not known to environmental regulators, making it difficult to form a complete picture of possible non-point source contributions within a specific watershed. Knowing what nutrient sources exist in the watershed can help water quality managers better understand available water quality data and to formulate appropriate decisions and regulatory recommendations.”

Source: 2017 report by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality

“There’s no regulations around poultry facilities that are being enforced,” Sutton said, noting that there isn’t even a way to determine where the poultry litter piles go after they are hauled away.

“All of this is supposed to be included in the nutrient waste utilization plan that is supposed to be kept on site at the poultry facility, but because that nutrient waste utilization plan is not required to be submitted or reviewed or turned in — it just has to exist on the property — you’re not sure that it’s even being created in the first place,” Sutton said. “That means that nobody, even the agencies, have information about how much litter is being produced and where it’s being land applied.”

Huge increase in poultry farms

The state now has a much better idea of the locations of the poultry farms, thanks to the efforts of Waterkeeper Alliance and the national Environmental Working Group, which used satellite imagery and other means in 2018 to locate them.

Their findings uncovered an explosion of industrial poultry farms in the state, especially in Sampson, Duplin and Robeson counties, which also happens to be the heart of hog country. Like the hog farms, some of those poultry farms have been built in floodplains, where they’re more vulnerable to hurricanes and other major storms.

According to a report from the Environmental Working Group and Waterkeeper Alliance, the groups found that there are now twice as many poultry farms in the state as there are hog farms — 4,700 poultry farms to 2,100 hog farms.

“The groups’ research found that in 2018, manure from 515.3 million chickens and turkeys joined the waste from 9.7 million hogs already fouling waters and threatening North Carolinians’ health,” the report said.

Another report from the groups, dated July 30, 2020, found that the estimated number of chickens and turkeys in Duplin, Sampson and Robeson counties swelled from 83 million to 113 million between 2012 and 2019, an increase of 36%. 

“The three-county increase was driven by the astounding expansion in Robeson County, where the number of chickens and turkeys increased by 80 percent, to 24 million,” the report said.

The riverkeepers said they aren’t seeing more fish kills or algal blooms because of the increase in poultry farms. 

On the other hand, they said, the situation isn’t getting any better.

“I wouldn’t say I see it getting worse every year,” said Sutton, the Haw River riverkeeper. “It’s just not getting better and DEQ hasn’t been responding to the complaints to alleviate the problem.”

This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Reprinted from North Carolina Health News

John Wolfe doesn’t know what else he can do to protect himself against the coronavirus.

The Wilmington boat captain follows all of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. He wears a mask and requires tourists on his boat to do the same. He practices social distancing and washes his hands frequently.

But Wolfe, like thousands of others who live downstream of the Chemours chemical plant on the Cape Fear River, worries that he may be more susceptible to the coronavirus.

He has reason to be concerned.

Late last month, the CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry released a report saying studies suggest that exposure to high levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — commonly referred to as PFAS or “forever chemicals” — could suppress the immune system and increase the risk of getting COVID-19 and the severity of infection.

Studies have also shown that exposure to PFAS could reduce the effectiveness of childhood vaccines and adult flu vaccines.

The agency’s report was followed by an opinion piece from some of the nation’s leading PFAS researchers, including Jamie DeWitt of East Carolina University. The article was published July 6 in Environmental Health News.

“Most concerning during this global pandemic … is that exposure to PFAS suppresses the ability of the immune system to make antibodies — the part of the immune system critically important in fighting COVID-19 and other infectious agents,” the article states. “Our studies have found that laboratory animals exposed to PFAS have decreased antibodies, verifying what we have seen in PFAS-exposed people and making us confident that PFAS are toxic to the immune system.”

Blood tests show high PFAS levels

PFAS, a class of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, have been in use since the 1940s to make products nonstick, waterproof or stain-resistant. They’re used in rain jackets, carpets, upholstery, cookware, fast-food packaging, dental floss and much more.

DuPont — and Chemours since 2015 — produced PFAS either as a product or a byproduct at a chemical plant near the banks of the Cape Fear River in Bladen County. The Wilmington Star-News disclosed in June 2017 that high levels of GenX and other PFAS had been found in the drinking water for New Hanover, Pender and Brunswick counties.

Wolfe knows that his blood contains high levels of a few of the estimated 5,000 PFAS that exist. He has the results of blood tests conducted by North Carolina State University  and released them to the public in November 2018 to prove it.

Researchers at N.C. State took tap water samples and drew blood from Wolfe and 344 other people living in the Lower Cape Fear River Basin. They found that the levels of certain types of PFAS were much higher in Wilmington than in the United States as a whole. Wolfe’s test results came back higher than the median for all of the study’s participants.

On Tuesday, Wolfe said he had just read the opinion piece linking PFAS to the coronavirus.

“My first thought when I read that article was like, ‘Of course, of course it does. Why wouldn’t it? It already does everything else that’s terrible for you. Let’s just throw this on the pile,’” he said.

According to the CDC, a large number of studies suggest that PFAS could cause an increased risk of testicular or kidney cancer, increased cholesterol levels, decreased vaccine response in children, changes in liver enzymes, increased risk of high blood pressure or preeclampsia in pregnant women and small decreases in infant birth weights.

Wolfe’s blood test found elevated levels of a particularly concerning type of PFAS called Nafion by-product 2, which has been used in the manufacturing process by both Chemours and DuPont. It has been found in tap water downstream of the chemical plant and in private wells surrounding it.

Wolfe said his blood tests revealed that he has a concentration of Nafion by-product 2 of 5.5 parts per trillion, double the median of everyone who participated in the testing.

A new study published in ScienceDirect found that the livers of mice given high doses of Nafion by-product 2 more than doubled in size compared with a control group.

Filtration systems coming

It’s estimated that 200,000 people get their drinking water from the Cape Fear River below the Chemours Fayetteville Works plant. The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, which provides water to New Hanover County residents, is preparing to spend $46 million on a granular activated carbon filtration system that is expected to remove most of the PFAS in the finished water it delivers to customers. The system is scheduled to go online in early 2022.

Nearby, Brunswick County plans to spend $137 million on a reverse osmosis filtration system, completion of which appears to have been delayed until May 2023. Both utilities have filed lawsuits against Chemours and DuPont seeking reimbursement for the costs of installing the purification systems.

There are no federal or state standards for PFAS in drinking water. In 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set a health advisory for two of the oldest PFAS — known as PFOA and PFOS — at 70 parts per trillion, either by themselves or in combination. North Carolina set a provisional health advisory of 140 parts per trillion in drinking water for GenX. None of those advisories is legally enforceable, and no other PFAS have health advisories.

Private wells also contain PFAS

People living below the Chemours plant who get their drinking water from the Cape Fear River aren’t the only ones in North Carolina dealing with exposure to PFAS in their drinking water.

More than 3,000 homes surrounding the plant have been found to have PFAS in their well water. That contamination, which extends at least 10 miles from the plant, was deposited through the air by DuPont and Chemours and seeped into the groundwater.

Last month, N.C. State released findings of testing on wells and tap water of 85 homes in the stricken area. Of those, 70 were found to contain GenX — 33 at levels above the state’s health guideline. Researchers found that wells containing high levels of GenX also contained high levels of other PFAS.

The researchers drew blood samples from residents, but those results aren’t yet available because the university’s labs had remained closed during the pandemic.

PFAS hotspots in the state

There are other hotspots of PFAS contamination in North Carolina. The NC PFAS Testing Network just released a complete data set of testing it conducted at 320 municipal water utilities in the state.

Of those, nearly half had levels of PFAS above the reporting detection level, according to a July 1 article by NC Policy Watch. The network is part of the NC Policy Collaboratory, a consortium of seven universities funded through grants and the General Assembly.

The network found Pittsboro’s water supply to have the highest concentration of all types of PFAS measured — a whopping 844.8 parts per trillion. The contamination is believed to be coming largely from industries that discharge into the Haw River upstream of Pittsboro and from an airport in Greensboro.

Researchers at Duke University are conducting studies of blood from Pittsboro residents, and the town has established a task force to help determine the best way to remedy the situation.

Network findings

Data from the PFAS Testing Network show that 10 municipal water plants in the state had total PFAS concentrations above 100 parts per trillion.

• Pender County: 425.5
• Bladen Bluffs: 423.5
• Wilmington: 406
• Harnett County: 217.5
• Bladen West: 144.5
• Fayetteville: 115
• Cary: 110.6
• Bladen East: 107.4
• Aurora: 104.3
• Harris Nuclear Plant: 102

For a complete set of the data, click here: https://ncpfastnetwork.com/data-and-tools/

The state Department of Environmental Quality says residents should avoid drinking water that has any individual PFAS measuring above 10 parts per trillion.

Of the 405 samples taken by the collaboratory at the municipal treatment plants, 42 had a single PFAS measuring above 10 parts per trillion, according to NC Policy Watch. None of the samples found GenX, PFOA or PFOS at levels above the federal and state health guidelines.

Regulating PFAS as a class

The EPA says it continues to address the problems caused by PFAS contamination across the country, including efforts to set maximum contaminant levels for the substances.

But DeWitt, the ECU researcher who has been studying PFAS for 15 years, and other scientists say PFAS need to be federally regulated as a single class. They make that argument in a study published on June 30 in Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

“To date, managing the risk of PFAS has focused primarily on one chemical at a time, or a small group of PFAS,” the study says. “This approach has not been effective at controlling widespread exposure to this large group of chemicals with known and potential hazards.

“The more we study PFAS, the more we learn about the harm they can do to our health and the environment. However, it is not possible to thoroughly assess every individual PFAS, or combination of PFAS, for their full range of effects in a reasonable time frame. Without effective risk management action around the entire class of PFAS, these chemicals will continue to accumulate and cause harm to human health and ecosystems for generations to come.”

New PFAS research center

Some, including Gov. Roy Cooper, argue that the EPA isn’t moving fast enough to limit the danger posed by PFAS.

Wolfe, the Wilmington boat captain, feels the same way. He is angry at DuPont and Chemours and thinks they should be required to clean up the contamination they caused.

“I’m concerned for my health. I’m concerned for my family’s health. Why should this be my problem, you know? What failed in the system to allow this to happen the way that it did?” he said.

Wolfe is also frustrated about the coronavirus and the idea that PFAS could make him more susceptible to the disease.

DeWitt and other scientists can’t definitively answer the question of whether people with high exposure to PFAS are more susceptible to COVID-19. No studies on people have been done to confirm what the researchers believe is true.

But DeWitt hinted that that could soon change.

In March, N.C. State announced that it has received a $7.4 million federal grant to establish the Center for Environmental and Human Health Effects of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS).

The center will bring together researchers from N.C. State and East Carolina University to study PFAS toxicity and bioaccumulation. It is expected to become operational in the fall. When it does, DeWitt said she’ll be ready to go to work.

“One of the questions that I will be asking, is just that — why do PFAS suppress the ability of the immune system to make antibodies?” she said.

Mike Watters, administrator for the advocacy group Gray’s Creek Residents United Against PFAS in our Wells and Rivers, sent a letter dated June 23 to N.C. State professor Jane Hoppin supporting research into the possible link between PFAS exposure and the coronavirus.

Watters’ group has more than 2,400 members, most living just north of the Chemours plant. Hoppin has been the lead researcher in N.C. State’s GenX Exposure Study. Watters said he wrote his letter to support Hoppin’s quest for additional grant funding.

Reprinted from North Carolina Health News

Not all types of in-home filters are completely effective at removing “forever chemicals” from drinking water, and a few could do more harm than good if not properly maintained, according to a new study released Wednesday by North Carolina researchers.

Water filters in refrigerators, pitcher-style filters, under the sink reverse osmosis systems and whole-house filtration systems can function differently and have vastly different price tags, according to the study, headed by the researchers from Duke University and North Carolina State University.

Researchers tested 76 drinking water filtration systems to determine their ability to remove toxic perfluoroalkyl substances, commonly known as PFAS, in homes in Chatham, Orange, Durham and Wake counties in central North Carolina. They also tested in homes in New Hanover and Brunswick counties in the southeastern part of the state.

The conclusion is that “their effectiveness varied widely,” said Heather Stapleton, an associate professor of Environmental Health at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and a lead researcher in the study. But researchers say having a filter is better than not having one.

Reverse osmosis works best

Stapleton said the study, published Wednesday in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, found that reverse osmosis filters work best. They reduced GenX and other PFAS by 94% or more, according to a news release provided to reporters from across the state who attended a panel discussion at Duke University titled “Safeguarding the Water We Drink: Understanding the Science Behind Emerging Threats to N.C.’s Drinking Water.”

Activated carbon filters, such as those found in refrigerators and pitcher-style filtration systems, on average, removed 73% of PFAS contaminants, but the results varied widely.

“In some cases, the chemicals were completely removed; in other cases, they were not reduced at all,” according to the release. “Researchers saw no clear trends between removal efficiency and filter brand, age or source water chemical levels. Changing out filters regularly is probably a very good idea, nonetheless.”

In contrast to reverse osmosis filters, Stapleton said in the release, “the effectiveness of activated-carbon filters used in many pitcher, countertop, refrigerator and faucet-mounted styles was inconsistent and unpredictable. The whole house systems were also widely variable and in some cases actually increased PFAS levels in the water.”

N.C. first to study filters’ effectiveness

The study was the first to examine the efficiency of filtration devices in removing a slate of PFAS in homes. Its authors said the discrepancies in effectiveness and cost may make it harder for people concerned about the contaminants in their drinking water to know which system best suits their needs and budgets.

“The under-sink reverse osmosis filter is the most efficient system for removing both the PFAS contaminants prevalent in central N.C. and PFEAs, including GenX, found in Wilmington,” Detlef Knappe, an N.C. State professor, said in the release. “Unfortunately, they also cost much more than other point-of-use filters.

“This raises concerns about environmental justice, since PFAS pollution affects more households that struggle financially than those that do not.”

Knappe, a co-author of the study, called home filters “a stop-gap” measure.

“The real goal should be control of PFAS contaminants at their source,” he said.

5,000 types of PFAS

There are an estimated 5,000 different types of PFAS, which have come under scrutiny in recent years because of their potential harm to health and widespread presence in the environment, especially in drinking water. Long-term exposure to PFAS is associated with various cancers, low birth weight, thyroid disease, impaired immune function and other health problems.

North Carolina is said to have the third-worst problems with PFAS of any state in the country. The Washington-based Environmental Working Group released a study last month that found Brunswick County had the highest level of total PFAS from samples of tap water taken at 44 locations in 31 states.

Data released last month by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality found much higher levels of PFAS being discharged into rivers and streams from some sewer treatment plants in the Cape Fear River basin. Samples taken in September at Sanford’s sewer plant detected total PFAS measuring 4,026 parts per trillion. In Burlington, total PFAS measured 2,296 parts per trillion in August.

Although the DEQ did not sample for PFAS in drinking water, it is evident that the contamination is present in tap water in many communities in the river basin. Data out of Fayetteville show a contamination spike of 244 parts per trillion of total PFAS in its drinking water in September.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency has set a health advisory on only two types of PFAS — known as PFOA and PFOS. Under those guidelines, a person who consistently consumes 70 parts per trillion of either chemical, or a combination of them both, stands an increased risk of cancer and other adverse health effects.

Knappe said after the meeting that he would like to see North Carolina lower its health advisory for PFOA and PFOS to be more in line with what other states are doing, particularly New Jersey and Michigan. Health officials in those states have proposed advisories of only 13 parts per trillion or less. The Environmental Working Group proposes an even lower advisory level: 1 part per trillion for all PFAS.

Other water pollution problems highlighted

Joining Stapleton and Knappe on the panel Wednesday were Duke University environmental professors Avner Vengosh and Lee Ferguson.

Vengosh spoke about high levels of heavy metals and other contaminants being found at the bottom of Sutton Lake, which was once used by Duke Energy to cool a coal-burning power plant. Toxic levels of contaminants have been found in the lake’s fish, Vengosh said.

Vengosh also spoke about a study released in November that he co-authored that found potentially harmful levels of hexavalent chromium in more than half of 1,400 wells tested in the central part of the state. Hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen, occurs naturally in groundwater. It is also found in coal ash.

Ferguson spoke about the North Carolina PFAST Network’s sampling of all of the municipal drinking water supplies in the state. Although the second round of testing continues, Ferguson said high levels of PFAS have been detected in seven water systems — for Brunswick, New Hanover, Pender and Orange counties, Wrightsville Beach, Maysville, and International Paper Co.

The network is part of the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory. It was created in 2018 with a $5 million grant from the legislature to assess PFAS contamination statewide. Ferguson serves as a network director.

He said after the meeting that the contaminants found in Orange County’s drinking water were barely above the EPA’s health advisory, and the county has taken action to keep the contaminants low. He said Wrightsville Beach has corrected its problem and Maysville is getting water from neighboring Jones County.

Reprinted from  North Carolina Health News

North Carolina is not among seven states that will be awarded federal grant funding to conduct health studies on people in specific communities who have been drinking water contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS.

The reason: North Carolina, which is said to have the third-worst PFAS contamination in the country, did not apply for a grant.

“It had nothing to do with someone dropping a ball at all in this case,” said Heather Stapleton, a researcher at Duke University whose work includes PFAS contamination.

Stapleton said she and a colleague had considered applying for one of the grants but realized they couldn’t meet enough of the criteria to submit a competitive application.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, or ATSDR, announced Monday that researchers in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California, New Jersey, New York and Colorado will each receive $1 million to study the relationship between drinking water contaminated with PFAS and human health effects.

Little is known about the health effects caused by PFAS exposure, said Patrick Breysse, director of ATSDR and CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health.

“The multi-site study will advance the scientific evidence on the human health effects of PFAS and provide some answers to communities exposed to the contaminated drinking water,” Breysse said in a news release.

The exclusion of North Carolina from the grant money riles Emily Donovan, co-founder of Clean Cape Fear, a grassroots environmental group based in Wilmington.

“Our children were born drinking poisonous levels of PFAS tainted water,” Donovan said in a statement. “A quarter of a million residents downstream of DuPont/Chemours exposed us to dangerous levels of toxic PFAS for decades and our data will not be added to this nationwide study. It’s heartbreaking.

“Our participation in this study would have added valuable information to the nation’s understanding of human PFAS exposure.”

Who is responsible?

Clean Cape Fear says the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, or DHHS, was “ultimately responsible” for ensuring that the state applied for the grant. Donovan said the department should have been overseeing a roundtable group of health officials, research institutions and others to submit multiple grant applications. Other states did that, she said.

In response, Kelly Haight, a spokeswoman for DHHS, said the department searches for any opportunities to better understand PFAS exposures in North Carolina, including reviewing all potential grant applications.

“Although this particular grant was not appropriate to NCDHHS as a research study, NCDHHS did recently apply for another competitive CDC grant to better understand human exposure to PFAS across the state,” Haight said in an email. “Our application was scored highly by the reviewers, but unfortunately we did not receive funding.’’

Haight said DHHS also “works with academic researchers across the state to encourage and support them in applying for and conducting PFAS-related research.”

Chemours and GenX

An estimated 250,000 people who get their drinking water from the Cape Fear River downstream of the Chemours chemical plant in Bladen County have been exposed to high levels of GenX and other PFAS contaminants. DuPont, and later Chemours, had been discharging GenX into the Cape Fear River as a byproduct since 1980. New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties draw their drinking water from the lower reaches of the Cape Fear.

Levels of GenX, used to make Teflon and a multitude of other nonstick and rain-resistant products, are now well below the state’s health guideline, but residents wonder what the cumulative effects of the contamination are having on their health. An estimated 5,000 different PFAS are known to exist.

High levels of PFAS have also been found in the Haw River, which flows into Jordan Lake, where hundreds of thousands of people get their drinking water.

Four new PFAS found

Last year, results from a study conducted by N.C. State University’s Center for Human Health and the Environment revealed four newly identified PFAS in the blood of the vast majority of the Wilmington residents sampled. The study participants got their water from the Cape Fear Public Utilities Authority.

The study also found that participants had twice the national average of perfluorooctane sulfonate — or PFOS — in their blood and three times as much perfluorooctanoic acid — or PFOA. Those two legacy compounds have been phased out because of concerns about the environment and human health.

The two compounds are often referred to as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down easily in the environment. GenX and other PFAS with shorter carbon chains replaced them. The study found no detectable levels of GenX in participants’ blood.

According to Clean Cape Fear, there are no health-effects data for the newly identified PFAS found in people who participated in the study — Nafion byproduct 2, PFO4DA, PFO5DoDA, and Hydro-EVE.

“It’s reasonable to assume residents in New Hanover, Pender, and Brunswick Counties who regularly consumed tap water sourced from the Cape Fear River during the height of our contamination story have varying levels of these newly identified PFAS in their blood,” the statement says. “Yet, residents are unable to manage the potential health risks associated with these exposures because no health data is available to help medical practitioners preemptively screen and/or address potential health problems for their patients.”

Dr. Kyle Horton, a member of Clean Cape Fear’s leadership team, said the grant funding would have provided an “invaluable shot to advance our understanding of the links between PFAS exposure and important health endpoints like kidney function, thyroid disease, liver disease, lipid metabolism, diabetes, and immune and vaccine response.”

State should act

The organization is now calling on North Carolina leadership to address the emerging threat of PFAS water contamination on human health at the state level.

“NC needs to fund their own parallel or similar study asap,” Clean Cape Fear said in the statement. “Our NCGA lawmakers need to stop playing partisan politics and draft a budget that includes grant money to fund our own statewide PFAS Human Exposure study. People down here are suffering and dying. We deserve a fighting chance to address our own health needs and that starts with knowing what this crap does to our bodies.”

Last year, the General Assembly allocated slightly more than $5 million to the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory to study PFAS contamination in the state. The collaboratory has made grants to researchers at seven state universities.

Among many other things, those researchers are now sampling all public drinking water supplies in the state for PFAS.

Additionally, N.C. State announced in May that North Carolina, Michigan and Colorado will receive a $1.96 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to work collaboratively on research to determine whether limiting PFAS in public drinking water is enough to protect human health.

The contamination is also showing up in locally grown food.

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.

This story was reprinted from North Carolina Health News

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Near the end of a congressional hearing Sept. 10, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz grilled executives of the 3M, DuPont and Chemours chemical companies about their willingness to compensate people harmed by fluorinated compounds.

The hearing, before a U.S. House subcommittee on environmental oversight and reform, was the third in a series amid pending legislation that aims to better regulate the chemicals, known collectively as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS, nicknamed “forever chemicals” because of their persistence in the environment.

At the core of the hearings is whether the companies should share in the costs of the cleanup of PFAS contamination across the country, as well as the costs of adverse health effects caused by them.

According to the advocacy organization, the Environmental Working Group, PFAS contamination has been found in tap water for 19 million Americans in 43 states. North Carolina is said to have the third-worst PFAS pollution problems in the country. Affected areas include the Cape Fear, Deep and Haw rivers, Jordan Lake and areas surrounding Chemours’ Fayetteville Works plant in Bladen County.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has detected PFAS in 20 public water systems in 11 of the state’s counties, according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Researchers from a consortium of North Carolina universities are now testing every municipal water system in the state for PFAS.

The contamination has been detected across the country in food, water, soil and air and at military bases and airports, where firefighting foam containing PFAS has been widely used for decades for training exercises.

Not taking no for an answer

The more than three-hour hearing provided insight into the companies’ willingness to take responsibility for the contamination.  The following exchange between Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida, and Daryl Roberts, DuPont’s chief operations and engineering officer, was particularly illuminating:

Wasserman Schultz: “Are any of your companies that were responsible for using any of these chemicals that firefighters and military service members were exposed to planning any type of compensation to harmed victims?”

Roberts: “At this point, the DuPont Company is focused on cleaning up and remediating the sites we operate. That’s our focus, as well as reducing the amount of firefighting foam that we use on our sites, but that’s the limit of where we are focused at this time.”

Wasserman Schultz: “So no.”

Roberts: “We are focused on what … (interrupted by Wasserman Schultz)

Wasserman Schultz: “Yes or no.”

Roberts: “We will continue to focus on what’s within our control.”

Wasserman Schultz: “That’s not a yes or no answer. Yes or no, are you planning at any point on compensating people who have been harmed by your company’s chemicals?”

Roberts: “Congresswoman, are you speaking specifically about armed forces around the world?”

Wasserman Schultz: I’m speaking to this issue specifically.”

Roberts: “We are focused on working through … (interrupted again)

Wasserman Schultz: “OK, the other two people if you could answer please … Let the record reflect that the gentleman (Roberts) essentially said no, there are no plans.”

The other executives

Paul Kirsch, president of fluoroproducts for Chemours, replied “no” to Wasserman Schultz’s question as well. He also said his company has had no involvement with the two PFAS legacy compounds, PFOA and PFOS, which are found in firefighting foam and had routinely been used in everyday products such as Teflon, food packaging and water-resistant clothing.

Chemours spun off from DuPont in 2015. Chemours is a leading producer of GenX, a chemical cousin of PFOA, which DuPont had made at the Fayetteville Works plant from 2002 until voluntarily agreeing with the EPA to phase out its use around 2009 for environmental and health reasons.

GenX and thousands of other fluorinated compounds took the place of GenX and PFOA.

Chemours was found in 2017 to have contaminated drinking water with GenX for an estimated 250,000 people in New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties who draw their water from the Cape Fear River downriver of the plant. The state considers levels of GenX and other PFAS found in the river today to be safe to drink, but scientists continue to study the health effects of the unregulated chemicals.

Responding to Wasserman Schultz’s question, Denise Rutherford, 3M’s senior vice president of corporate affairs, said 3M has no plans to compensate people because there is no scientific evidence proving that PFOA or PFOS have caused anyone adverse health effects, a statement she repeated throughout the hearing.

Decades of denial

Before that exchange, lawyer Rob Bilott and former Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson outlined information contained in internal documents obtained through litigation of DuPont and 3M. The documents indicate the companies knew the dangers of PFOA and PFOS decades ago and covered them up.

Swanson and Bilott, a lawyer with Taft Stettinius & Hollister in Cincinnati, said they seriously doubt the companies would have taken responsibility for cleaning up contaminated sites near their plants in Minnesota and West Virginia if it had not been for years of litigation that resulted in multi-million dollar settlements.

Bilott has spent 20 years fighting DuPont over PFOA contamination surrounding its plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. In 2017, Chemours and DuPont agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by Bilott for $671 million.

As part of that lawsuit, Bilott formed a science panel that concluded PFOA is likely to cause kidney and testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, preeclampsia, thyroid disease and high cholesterol.

Bilott told the congressional committee that DuPont knew for decades about the health hazards of PFOA and “acted with conscious disregard.”

3M denies human harm

Minnesota sued 3M over drinking water contamination and environmental damage  in 2010. The state won an $850 million settlement last year. The money will be earmarked for cleanup, Swanson said.

Despite that settlement, and the internal 3M documents, Rutherford, a company vice president, maintained that there is no concrete scientific evidence showing that PFOA and PFOS cause adverse human health effects. She said 3M scientists have studied company workers with much higher exposure to the compounds and found no related health problems.

“The weight of scientific evidence has not established that PFOS, PFOA or other PFAS cause adverse human health effects,” Rutherford told the committee. “Public health agencies and independent science review panels, while acknowledging certain possible associations, agree with that basic fact.”

Kirsch, the Chemours executive, blamed DuPont for the contamination it created and for not assuming much more of the liability and legal costs when Chemours was spun off of DuPont four years ago.

“DuPont unilaterally designed the transaction, including a deliberate, disproportionate assignment of two-thirds of DuPont’s environmental liability and 90 percent of DuPont’s active litigation to Chemours — liability and litigation resulting from DuPont’s operating practices at dozens of manufacturing sites throughout DuPont’s very long history,” Kirsch said.

Kirsch said Chemours has entered into a consent order with North Carolina and the environmental group Cape Fear River Watch to clean up the contamination. He pointed out the company is spending $200 million on cleanup efforts and cutting emissions of GenX by 99 percent at its Fayetteville Works plant. He said costs are expected to soar “way north” of the $200 million figure as the company works to contain contamination at all of its plants.

“Collaboration and transparency are critical to addressing this issue,” Kirsch said.

Near the end of the hearing, committee Chairman Harley Rouda, a Democrat from California, questioned what he called a 123% financial increase in Chemours’ lobbying budget. Kirsch replied that he did not have knowledge of that budget.

Chemours sues DuPont

Chemours filed a lawsuit against DuPont in May of this year, saying DuPont grossly underestimated its environmental liabilities.

Roberts, the DuPont executive, countered by telling the committee that Chemours’ leadership is essentially former Dupont executives who knew, or should have known, the  liabilities when the company was formed.

Roberts said Dupont did not try to reduce its liabilities, a statement Rouda later in the hearing called “patently false.”

Rouda praised Roberts when the executive said DuPont supports a proposal to designate PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances under the Superfund law, which could help speed cleanup efforts. Those two legacy compounds have eight carbon chains, making them chemically tenacious, meaning they don’t break down in the environment easily. They’ve also been found to  accumulate in the blood of humans and animals.

GenX, like most of an estimated 5,000 other types of PFAS, have shorter carbon chains. Although little is known about their human health effects, the shorter chains replaced the legacy compounds because they were thought to be more likely to break down and therefore safer. Scientists are now studying whether that is the case and whether PFAS should be regulated as a class or as subclasses.

Superfund law

Kirsch and Rutherford said any decision on whether to designate PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances should be left up to the EPA.

Wasserman Schultz said the Department of Defense has been slow to react to PFAS contamination at military bases because the compounds are not regulated. She said this has risked the health of thousands of service members and their families.

At the end of the hearing, she made a reference to Emily Donovan, an environmental activist from North Carolina’s Brunswick County who at a July committee hearing said all PFAS compounds should be designated hazardous substances and added to the Superfund law.

“I agree with Ms. Donovan,” Wasserman Schultz said before polling the company executives as to whether they think so, too.

DuPont’s Roberts agreed to the designation, but only for PFOA and PFOS and not all PFAS. He said earlier in the hearing that DuPont would support the designation for about 22 other types of long-chain PFAS. Kirsch, from Chemours, didn’t provide a direct answer. 3M executive Rutherford said no.

“For those of you who have disagreed or refused to answer, you are playing a part in this national emergency,” Wasserman Schultz said. “You have sickened our first responders and our members of the military, and I don’t know how you sleep at night.”

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.

This story was co-published in partnership with North Carolina Health News

Members of a new state panel boarded a church bus Tuesday morning in Wilmington, intent on exploring the environmental atrocities of the past and determined to keep history from repeating itself.

Veronica Carter stood at the front of the bus, serving as a guide on a roughly 25-mile, three-hour tour for the 16-member North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board.

The board’s primary objective is to protect and provide a voice for people living in underserved and underrepresented communities across the state — communities that are, by and large, poor and black.

Perhaps nowhere else in the state are the reminders of past environmental disasters in these communities more vivid or as shameful as they are near Wilmington.

Shortly after the bus rolled out, Carter, a retired Army major and a board member, called attention to Wilmington’s 1898 Memorial Park, which commemorates blacks who died or were run out of town in November of that year when a white mob overthrew Wilmington’s biracial government.

“African Americans in this city have never recovered,” Carter bellowed in her Army voice before the bus turned onto a paved road lined by trailers and small houses, some still bearing blue tarps and other scars left nearly six months ago by the winds and record-setting rain of Hurricane Florence.

This is the Flemington community, Carter told the group, referring to the poor, largely black community off U.S. 421 in New Hanover County that had unknowingly been drinking well water laced with arsenic, boron, cobalt and other contaminants for decades.

The toxins came from an unlined pit where Duke Energy had stored coal ash, the residue of a coal-fired power plant that operated here from 1954 until 2013, when Duke opened a $600 million natural gas plant nearby.

Duke was fined a record $25.1 million for the contamination, a figure that was later reduced to $7 million in a settlement with the state. Duke also paid more than $3 million to have public water lines run to the Flemington community in 2016.  None of the money, Carter told the group, went to pay medical bills for residents who may have been harmed by the contamination.

“These small communities never have a chance,” said Carter, an environmental activist and board member with the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

Duke is now excavating the coal ash and putting it in nearby lined pits that will be capped when the work is complete. A deadline for completion has been set for later this year.

Sutton Lake

Sutton Lake sits a stone’s throw from the Flemington community. The 1,100-acre reservoir was formed by Duke’s predecessor, Carolina Power & Light, in 1972 to cool its power plant.

An earthen dam at the lake breached during Hurricane Florence, flooding coal ash pits and spilling some of their toxic contents into the Cape Fear River. State regulators say the spill did not harm the river.

Environmentalists say Sutton Lake is contaminated, too, an opinion backed by science but one that remains up for debate.

A study in 2017 by Duke University found high levels of selenium in fish in Sutton and two other North Carolina lakes that had been receiving coal ash from power plants.

According to the study, early life exposure to selenium can cause deformities, impaired growth and reproduction, and in extreme cases death in fish and aquatic invertebrates. Because selenium accumulates in the food chain, it also can be toxic to birds that eat aquatic animals containing high levels.

Of the three lakes studied, Sutton had the highest concentration of selenium, with 85 percent of all fish muscle samples containing levels above what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.

Board members departed the bus at Sutton Lake’s public access area, where Carter said a dock is usually thronged by people fishing, not for recreation but for subsistence. For many, Carter told the group, fish from the lake is their primary  source of protein.

Some board members asked why there are no signs at the dock or the public boat ramp warning people that the fish may be contaminated.

It’s an old story, responded Dana Sargent, deputy director of Cape Fear River Watch. No one — not the state or local governments — knows who would be responsible for placing the signs.

Contamination in Navassa

Board members asked question after question as the bus headed to its next destination, the town of Navassa, where the majority of its 1,895 residents are black and poor. Many are the descendants of the Gullah Geechee people, who arrived here to work in the town’s rice plantations.

The bus stopped outside Reaves Chapel, a dilapidated clapboard church built after the Civil War that once served as a house of worship for the Gullah Geechee.

Efforts are underway to restore the church, which sits in a woods that are about to give way to two new subdivisions containing 6,000 homes — three times as many homes as Navassa now has people. Board members remarked that the subdivisions could lead to more problems for the Navassa natives, including gentrification, higher property values and a dilution of voting strength.

It’s the cumulative effects of environmental contamination that Carter and other board members worry about most. Navassa is a poster town for those impacts. The town has four inactive brownfield sites, land that cannot be developed because of industrial contamination lying under the surface. Carter told the group that there are more brownfield and federal Superfund sites in Navassa than any other municipality in the state.

The bus rolled past some of the brownfield sites before arriving at the former Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. plant, which used to preserve wood with creosote in unlined pits from 1936 to 1974. The creosote, a probable carcinogen, has seeped as deep as 100 feet into the ground, Carter told the group.

The EPA deemed the property a Superfund site and added it to its National Priorities List in 2010. Efforts are now underway to turn some of the land into public space, which could include a park with trails and an amphitheater, a river walk and a rice field for demonstration purposes of the town’s heritage. The remainder of the land remains unuseable.

Carter, who lives in the neighboring town of Leland, said she has heard from many people living in Navassa whose relatives had died at an early age from cancer. Although there is no way to quantify whether contaminants caused the diseases, Carter said, “you know we think in our heart of hearts that was the problem.”

Board Urged to Act

The bus arrived back at Cape Fear Community College about 1 p.m. The tour served as a prelude to the board’s third meeting since it was formed last May.

After concluding the mundane matters of a new board, including the names of subcommittees, the panel heard from two of the DEQ’s top-ranking officials, Sheila Holman, assistant secretary for the environment, and John Nicholson, DEQ’s chief deputy secretary.

Holman unveiled a new mapping tool, which she and other DEQ officials said will enable local planners to better determine the suitability of proposed industrial sites and inform residents of the potential environmental effects those industries could cause. The tool is expected to become available for public use April 1.

The board also approved statements about their concerns over coal ash and industrial-scale animal farms. The statements will be provided to DEQ officials.

But perhaps the most telling part of the board’s mission came during the public comments period at its conclusion. About a dozen speakers stood up, most praising the board for its work and expressing deep concerns about GenX or coal ash.

Frank Holleman, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Chapel Hill office, urged the board to voice objection to Duke Energy’s plans to excavate coal ash pits from only eight of its 14 coal-fueled power plants. Many of those plants have converted to natural gas.

Holleman noted that South Carolina and Virginia have required energy companies in those states to remove the coal ash and place it in lined and covered landfills. North Carolina needs to do the same, he said.

“This is an opportunity for the state and the governor of this state to do something about it,” Holleman said, urging the board to speak up. “There is no better body to take action than this body.”

The Rev. Gregory Hairston told the board that people are becoming ill from the 12 million tons of coal ash stored in Stokes County, where he lives.

“I try to encourage you because we feel we are not getting a fair shake,” Hairston said. “It’s time that we had a voice, and we feel that we don’t have a voice in our state … We demand and we request that you be a forceful voice for us.”

Board Hears Complaints, Too

The board also heard complaints from residents.

“You’re understaffed, you’re under budget, I get it,” said Ashley Daniels, a member of Cape Fear River Watch and the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network. “But if you are saying you want to include the community, you have to do better.”

Daniels complained that there is too little notice of board meetings, and too little time to prepare for them. Carter agreed. She asked that the next meeting, set for this summer, be held later in the day so more people could attend.

John Wagner of Chatham County complained that the board “is moving too slow.”

“I know you all have lives, but you are the board,” Wagner said. “Our house is on fire.”

Leslie Cohen said that, as a candidate for a state House seat last year, she spoke to thousands of people whose No. 1 concern is contamination of their drinking water. Many people cannot afford to buy bottled water or filtration systems, she said.

“We need you,” Cohen told the board. “Every citizen of North Carolina needs you.”