A new study has revealed that North Carolina and Iowa have the areas with the most toxic tap water in the country after various companies dumped chemicals into their water sources over decades.
While almost half the tap water in the US was found to be laced with hormone-disrupting ‘forever chemicals’, Brunswick County, NC and the Quad Cities in Iowa, had significantly higher levels of PFA in your drink supply.
In the most comprehensive study of its kind, US Geological Survey researchers tested water sources at more than 700 locations across the country for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
They found that the city with the next worst PFA levels in tap water, Miami, Florida, was well behind the top two, at 56.7 ppt. Brunswick County recorded levels of 185.9 ppt and the Quad Cities 109.8 ppt.
In recent years, there have been an increasing number of federal guidelines for drinking water, but there are no current national standards for drinking water. However, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limits PFAS to 0.004 parts per trillion (ppt) for drinking water, a small amount due to its links to cancer, infertility, obesity, and autism.
Brunswick County, NC and Quad Cities, Iowa have significantly higher levels of PFA in their beverage supply
The Environmental Working Group, an activist organization focused on environmental contaminants, mapped communities and military sites confirmed to have PFAS contamination.
North Carolina in general is known to have significant problems with PFAS contamination, as the state has a large number of military bases, airports, and industrial sites. PFAS are commonly found in foam and firefighting equipment, which has led to the contamination of military bases and airports.
The problem is particularly acute along the Cape Fear River, in part because of DuPont’s Fayetteville plant and its spin-off, Chemours.
According to the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the chemical company DuPont dumped PFA for more than four decades into the river, which supplies drinking water to about 350,000 North Carolinians.
Many of the area’s residents have claimed over the years that they contracted cancer from the contamination. In 2019, scientists recommended expanding an investigation of suspected thyroid cancer clusters in the area, as reported by North Carolina News Line.
In 2017, the Cape Fear Public Utilities Authority filed a lawsuit against the company for the dumping of toxic materials into the river, and in 2020 the State Attorney General’s Office filed another.
DailyMail.com has contacted DuPont and Chemours for comment on this story.
In a statement to DailyMail.com on Friday, a Chemours spokesperson said: ‘There are many sources of PFAS in the lower Cape Fear River basin in North Carolina. Chemours only uses a small subset of non-polymer PFAS in our manufacturing processes.
Chemours has taken numerous steps to comprehensively address emissions from HFPO-DA and other fluorinated organic processes at our Fayetteville, NC manufacturing site pursuant to a Consent Order agreement, entered into in February 2019, with the Department of of North Carolina Environmental Quality (NCDEQ) and the monitoring of the Cape Fear River.
Chemours also recently completed construction of an underground barrier wall adjacent to the Cape Fear River that spans more than a mile and averages six stories deep, as well as a state-of-the-art groundwater extraction and treatment system, further reducing the amount of PFAS compounds reaching the river.
‘Fluorinated products manufactured at Chemours’ Fayetteville Works site are critical to improving the US electric vehicle and semiconductor supply chain, and producing green energy to curb global warming. Our fluorinated products are key components in the production of solutions we rely on every day, such as smartphones, as well as solar panels, medical devices and many other products.”
In Iowa’s Quad Cities, the 3M plant in nearby Cordova, Illinois, has been partly blamed for high levels of toxins in tap water. The company is one of the largest producers of PFAS in the country and has been accused of dumping chemicals into the Mississippi River, the Quad City Hours.
The Quad Cities area in Iowa covers Davenport and Bettendorf in the southeastern part of the state.
The manufacturing facility produces stickers for Post-it notes, golf clubs, and LCD screens.
DailyMail.com has contacted 3M for comment on this story.
The new study has raised concerns across the country, with New York Rep. Pat Ryan calling the situation “unacceptable.”
“Everyone should be free to turn on the tap without fear of drinking poisoned water,” he tweeted. “We need to take immediate action to remove these toxins from our water.”
Experts called the findings “frightening” given the scale of the problem and the link between the toxins and serious diseases such as cancer, infertility, birth defects and hormonal problems.
These microscopic man-made chemicals can take thousands of years to break down in the environment or in the human body, hence the name “forever chemicals.”
Tap water is particularly toxic in areas supplied by the Cape Fear River in North Carolina, in part because of DuPont’s Fayetteville plant and its spin-off, Chemours.
In Iowa’s Quad Cities, the 3M plant in nearby Cordova, Illinois, has been blamed in part for high levels of toxins in tap water from the release of chemicals into the Mississippi River.
The report found that 45 percent of drinking water sources contained at least one PFAS, with higher concentrations in the Great Plains, Great Lakes, East Coast, and central/southern California.
The researchers set out to determine PFAS levels in source waters at 716 unique sites across the country, including urban and rural areas.
Over the course of five years spent collecting samples for PFAS levels, the team concluded that taps in densely populated urban centers were generally more laden with forever chemicals than taps in rural parts of the country.
This is due to the fact that everyday household products, from frying pans to food containers, contain PFAS which leach into the water supply, and urban areas tend to be situated closer to manufacturing plants.
The main purpose of PFAS compounds is to repel water and oil, which is what makes nonstick cookware so much easier to clean and why certain jackets and tents can withstand rain.
PFAS can leach into the water supply simply by washing dishes. The compounds can also leach into our food if the packaging is made to be grease resistant (think fast-food cheeseburgers) or if the nonstick coating on pots and pans begins to deteriorate.
PFAS are also common in pesticides used to feed crops, resulting in chemical-rich runoff that can enter your drinking water supply.
