By Karen Melton, Southeastern Pennsyvania Group, Sylvanian Volunteer
Stories about PFAS continue to abound in the news. Recall that PFAS are chemicals (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances) often referred to as ‘forever chemicals’ because they do not break down. Widely used for decades in applications ranging from fire suppression foam to non-stick cookware, they are in our water, air and soil and have been linked to cancers, liver and thyroid disease and other health issues. About 45% of tap water in the U.S. contains one or more PFAS, according to a 2023 study by the U.S. Geological Survey.
If you would like to read about how PFAS chemicals came to be in the news and broadly understood as a health issue, I recommend a book published last year by journalist Mariah Blake, They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals. It is a highly readable story about how a small town in New York came to understand they were being poisoned by their water and the actions they took. She also details how for many decades manufacturers of PFAS, Dupont in particular, and the U.S. government were well aware there were many significant health impacts associated with PFAS but did nothing. It will remind you of the coverups around smoking, climate change and plastic pollution, and of how ineffectual our government is when business interests are at stake.
Inside Climate News reports that legislation has been introduced in California to ban the use, sale and manufacture of insecticides that include PFAS, although the ban would not take effect until 2035. According to the article “Thanks to the chemicals’ widespread commercial appeal, nearly every American has PFAS in their blood, where it stays for years and leads to serious health problems—impaired vaccine response, higher cholesterol levels, increased risk of kidney and testicular cancer and lower birth weight, among other ills.”
Meanwhile, millions of tons of insecticides that include PFAS chemicals are still being applied to California crops. Testing of conventionally grown crops by the Environmental Working Group found PFAS pesticide residues on 40% of the foods tested. One of the properties that PFAS chemicals are valued for is their resistance to water, so washing produce laced with PFAS may not fully remove it.
PFAS enters our water treatment systems from many different sources. The solids, or sludge, is filtered out, treated and turned into biosolids in many parts of the country, then sold to farmers as fertilizer. As a result, in addition to pesticides containing PFAS, millions of acres of farmland, and the foods grown there, are being sprayed with PFAS-contaminated fertilizer.
A local media outlet called the Baltimore Fishbowl reports that Harford County’s Abingdon Water Treatment Plant -- a county just north of Baltimore -- has installed a certified water testing lab to expedite the thousands of tests it conducts every year to verify local drinking water is safe. The lab technology is capable of detecting PFAS at a level of 4 parts per trillion or less, and they plan to offer the testing to local schools and other facilities. The lab cost about $700,000, but results will now be available in days rather than weeks, and cost less than using an outside lab. What kind of testing takes place in Pennsylvania municipalities? It would be interesting to find out.
We are all exposed to PFAS -- it is in our bodies along with plastics. But what is it doing to us? While a number of health impacts have already been linked to PFAS, many medical studies continue to be conducted searching for more answers. Two studies recently reported findings. The Journal of the Endocrine Society published results of a study of children over a period of years that suggest PFAS exposure at a young age is associated with reduced bone density. One theory on what could cause this association is that PFAS might interfere with processing of Vitamin D. A study recently reported out of Sweden followed the children of women who had very high exposure to PFAS in their drinking water during pregnancy and found an association with asthma in those children.
Can we look for help on any of this from the EPA? Apparently not. In March the EPA approved two new pesticides with PFAS.
This blog was included as part of the May 2026 Sylvanian newsletter. Please click here to check out more articles from this edition!