This month, when the Environmental Protection Agency announced the first-ever federal rules on how much of a half-dozen deadly PFAS chemicals to allow in your tap water, 40 public wells in Orange County instantly became unsafe for human consumption, at least on paper.
The fact that those wells will continue to supply water to hundreds of thousands of local residents – even while they’re under a strict schedule that calls for them to be PFAS-free by 2029 – is part of a broader story about the hard choices and high costs associated with human exposure to PFAS compounds, also known as “forever” chemicals.
And in Orange County, where exposure to those chemicals is higher than it is in most of the country, the story also is about how local water officials have been scrambling for years to stave off a potential health disaster they had no hand in creating.
Since 2020, when the state of California responded to research showing forever chemicals are more deadly than previously believed by issuing its own PFAS limits (and by calling for affected wells to be closed during clean-up, a stark difference from the new EPA rules) the county’s biggest water agency has closed 62 of the county’s 220 wells, installed filtration systems in them, and, to date, reopened 38.
But that’s just a start.
Water officials believe the effort to rid the local water supply of forever chemicals will cost at least $1.8 billion over the next 30 years, with spending needed for everything from industrial-strength filtration systems and disposal services to legal fees. And while much of that money will come from the chemical companies that made PFAS compounds and hid their dangers from the public, as well as from federal and state grants, consumers also will pay, with some local water bills eventually going up by $5 to $10 a month.
“It’s been a big challenge, and it’ll continue to be a challenge,” said Jason Dadakis, executive director of water quality and technical resources at Orange County Water District, the agency that controls the county’s aquifer and supplies 19 retail water districts used by about 2.5 million residents in north and central Orange County.
Dadakis, an affable man with degrees in geology and hydrology, described the new federal limits as “an expected but important” step in what he expects will be a decades-long effort to scrub PFAS from the local water supply.
“The EPA put out a draft, late last year, about what they expected the new levels would be, so we had some warning. And, pretty quickly, based on that and on our testing, we knew we’d have to have those 40 additional wells into our treatment construction program,” Dadakis said.
When asked if the new federal rules are affecting the district, Dadakis said simply: “Yes, very much.”
How much? How dangerous?
You almost certainly have some PFAS in your blood right now.
That wasn’t always believed to be true. As recently as the early 2000s, when PFAS testing wasn’t as sensitive as it is today, federal agencies estimated that only about 7 million Americans had elevated levels of PFAS in their systems, most at amounts believed to be too low to pose significant risks.
All of that has changed. Today, modern testing suggests PFAS chemicals are in at least 98% of all Americans. And recent health research shows even infinitesimal traces of PFAS might raise your odds of contracting a range of diseases.
Federal testing also shows that PFAS is in about 45% the nation’s water supply, though that might understate the overall level of exposure because water is just one of many ways for PFAS to get into your body.
The chemicals that fall under the broad label of PFAS – which is an abbreviation for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances – have been in production since the 1940s. During that time, they’ve come to be used in dozens of consumer products, from stain-resistant carpeting to dental floss to teddy bears, as well as in industrial compounds, safety equipment and scientific devices. Testing has found PFAS in the air, the soil; even in raindrops. You eat PFAS, you wear it, you fall asleep in it and, if you wear makeup, you might paint it on your lips or eyelids.
Also, as the nickname “forever” suggests, PFAS chemicals are robust. Testing shows PFAS compounds don’t break down for tens of thousands of years, making them among the longest-lasting inventions ever created by humans.
All of which is a bummer because it turns out PFAS chemicals also are deadly.
Though the danger posed by PFAS probably isn’t growing, per se, our knowledge of that danger is. And, because of that, scientists who track the health woes of exposure to forever chemicals increasingly are vocal about its potential harm.
The half-dozen PFAS chemicals that have been most closely studied (in all, the world of PFAS and PFAS-related chemicals includes an estimated 12,000 different compounds) have been linked to diseases as diverse as high cholesterol and pregnancy-related hypertension to testicular cancer, breast cancer and, for girls, early onset puberty.
Scientists are reluctant to affix hard illness and mortality numbers to specific chemicals or specific levels of exposure, but the known health problems connected to PFAS are believed to be far beyond trivial.
In its announcement this month on new limits in tap water, the EPA announcement said the rules would reduce “tens of thousands of PFAS-attributable illnesses or deaths.” The EPA also estimated that staving off PFAS-related heart problems, cancers and birth complications, among other things, would save about $1.5 billion a year, though the agency pegged that estimate as a low-ball number because it doesn’t include money saved as a result of health improvements in liver, cardiovascular and carcinogenic health, among others.
But all of that, too, might be just a start. Many of the diseases known to be linked to PFAS have been increasing for several decades at inexplicably high rates. Testicular cancer, for example, is growing in the population by about six-tenths of one percent per year, a rate that public health experts say is mysteriously high.
And while non-PFAS issues might be contributing to any one of those long-term health trends – rising cholesterol problems, for example, also are connected to diet or lack of exercise – experts say health researchers are focusing on the broader question of what is or isn’t PFAS related. Overall, they add, the puzzle of how PFAS influences public health is only starting to be solved.
“A lot of people are asking questions about it,” said Scott Bartell, a public health professor at UC Irvine who studies the health effects of PFAS. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a clear way to answer that yet.
“Would there have been a particular health trend without PFAS exposure?” he added. “We have no way to know that. There is no control group; there is no group of people that hasn’t been exposed.”
It’s here
Orange County isn’t a PFAS hot zone, but it’s pretty warm.
Nationally, the communities with the highest levels of PFAS pollution tend to be smaller towns that hosted the manufacturing plants that started churning out forever chemicals in the 1940s. The 2019 movie “Dark Waters,” which helped popularize the term “forever chemical,” features a legal battle involving farmers in rural Parkersburg, West Virginia, against the chemical manufacturer DuPont, which had run a nearby factory for decades.
There hasn’t been a similar single source for PFAS in Orange County, according to both Bartell and Dadakis. Instead, they say, the likely culprit is simply decades of industrial activity near the Santa Ana River, in north Orange County and, upstream, in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
Still, while levels of PFAS found in water (and in people) in Orange County aren’t nearly as high as they are in places like Parkersburg, they’re elevated when compared to the vast majority of urban areas in the United States. And they have been for some time.
The same early-2000s study that suggested only 7 million Americans had high levels of PFAS in their systems did mention Orange County, according to Bartell. And a current federal study, led locally by Bartell, is focused on people who lived in several Orange County communities (Anaheim, Garden Grove, Orange, Yorba Linda, Santa Ana, Tustin/North Tustin or Irvine) from 2000 through 2019.
“One of the arguments we made when I applied for Orange County to be one of the test sites is that we have one of the largest affected water systems in the country,” Bartell said.
“Other, smaller sites are affected by a single source, and confined to a smaller group of people.
“That’s not the case here,” he added. “There isn’t any one specific cause for our (PFAS) problem here, and it’s not affecting any specific group of people.
“But it’s not insignificant.”
Bartell said data from the local study is only starting to come in, and the early results are both positive and negative.
“It’s somewhat encouraging,” Bartell said. “The levels we’re seeing here are only slightly elevated from what you’d see around the country. The average differences are small, only 2 to 8 percent or so.”
But, Bartell added, the national numbers might be more dangerous than once believed. And even slight increases, such as those measured in some former residents of north and central Orange County, might be unhealthy.
Bartell – who is being supported, in part, by the Orange County Water District – said the county’s steps to get PFAS out of the water supply is an important public health move. Closing wells, as was required by the state in 2020, did require many water agencies to rely on more expensive imported water, but Bartell noted it has significantly reduced PFAS exposure.
The new federal rules, announced by the EPA, allow wells to stay open while being retrofitted with equipment needed to scrub PFAS out of the water, a process that works much like the water filtration systems used in many homes.
Bartell said he wouldn’t be happy to be drinking regularly from any PFAS-tainted wells.
“I have told people, if you have PFAS in your water supply, I would not wait for water providers to clean it. The granular, carbon filters used in Brita and other filtration systems are fairly effective.”
Dadakis, of the Orange County Water District, said his agency will use one of two types of filtration systems to clean PFAS out of local wells and, indeed, they work similarly to filters he recommends for home use. One process will be a physical filter, with PFAS molecules trapped in carbon-based scrubbing devices. The other works like the water softening systems used in many homes.
In many cases, the filters used in both processes last two to three years. After that, they’re replaced; used filters are taken by an outside company to a plant in Utah that specializes in destroying filters used in water systems. There, at temperatures north of 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, the PFAS-tainted filters are burned and destroyed.
“It’s an energy-intensive process,” Dadakis said.
It’s also perpetual. Dadakis said the new EPA rules, which call for reducing PFAS to a level as low as four parts per trillion (roughly the equivalent of four drops in 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools) also is particular strict.
“Those rules will add to our cost,” Dadakis said.
“That’s just part of the new reality.”
Source: Orange County Register
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