In the early 2000’s organizations like the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) and other state-run institutions had to deal with a newly classified contaminant known as Perfluoroalkyl Substances, or PFAS. These chemicals have been found polluting water and soil across the United States, to the dismay of environmental groups, regulators as well as the national media. From Hoosick Falls, New York to Orange County, California, PFAS persist in the environment, but what is being done? Who is dealing with these chemicals that are in our environment and how did these hazardous materials get there in the first place? By taking a look at the current situation of PFAS in Suffolk County, New York, we can hope to understand the problems presented by these chemicals and the solutions being explored.
The evaluation by E.P.A. established PFAS as a potential health risk, this action was spurred by the research of Philippe Grandjean, who conducted work in the late seventies, however, little was made of his findings until the early 2000’s.[1] All the while consumer products concerning everything from carpets, to food wrappers, Teflon and nonstick cookware, even firefighting foam was fabricated with these chemicals.[2] As more research accumulated over the last decade, the family of chemicals that makes up PFAS numbers more than 4,700 different. With a wide selection of chemicals and a storied history of eighty years of global production these chemicals are bioaccumulating in everyone.[3] PFAS have been linked to renal failure, are viewed as potentially carcinogenic, and these substances act and an endocrine disruptor. Since these findings two of these chemicals have halted domestic production due to federal regulation, Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), and although there has been an effort to decrease the persistence of these chemicals they still remain a reoccurring issue for local governments and municipalities that are dealing with the result of industrial contamination by PFAS.
Suffolk County, New York has a population of 1,493,350 people as of the 2010 census[4], that is the fourth largest in the state and the twenty-fourth largest in the entire country [5], but that was not always the case; in the 1940’s Suffolk County had a population below 200,000 [6], similarly in the 1940’s PFAS was just getting started, together these two entities would grow together over the next eighty years. As Long Island grew into a prototypical suburban countryside, along with it came change. Following the end of the Second World War, places like Long Island were the centers of suburban sprawl.[7] The typical American of the postwar era, saw first hand the revolutionary change that overhauled transportation in the country, which firmly planted petroleum as the main fuel to power society. Places like Suffolk County now saw interstate highways systems, or other innovations like aviation, or even home heating fueled by petrol, the mid twentieth century seemed like a dream of unlimited possibilities fueled by petroleum. As petrol was increasingly demanded by American markets, municipalities had to find was to control this highly volatile liquid substance, so in 1940 companies like 3M began synthesizing these chemicals for use in petrol retardant firefighting foams, which continued production until 2001.[8] As the American household has shifted its needs, we see the need for PFAS in a society increasingly involved with petroleum.
If petroleum is the what a led to PFAS contamination, why is it that many sites that are contaminated are not places like gas stations, but rather fire station, airports, and wastewater facilities? This has to do with the nature of the activities at these facilities, PFAS are found in products that deal with petroleum-based fires, known as class B firefighting foam, and they can also be found in consumer products like cookware or food wrappers. Long Island alone has three different state-run superfund sites, areas that are established by the EPA, designated as such because of their high presence of the PFASs in soil and ground water; these sites include Gabreski Air National Guard Base, Firematics training facility in Yaphank, and South Hampton fire station just off of 27 east, and even Brookhaven National Laboratory. In addition, Long Island is dealing with this issue at several other sites, and it is not just contained to the airports, which have been the site of many class B fires; these chemicals can also be found at the firefighting facilities scattered across the Island, which used class B foam for either training purposes or other community needs. In addition to Long Island’s PFAS superfund sites, there are also several other areas in Long Island dealing with the pollution of PFASs; in Suffolk County, the Suffolk County Water Authority’s water systems troubled with polluted in distribution zones 14 and 15.
For over ten years PFAS has ceased national production, and yet we are still dealing with the remnants of their past. With little known about this expansive family of chemicals that PFAS is host too, we can only hope to continue to educate ourselves on the issue. Suffolk County, New York, provides an example of what is occurring all across America at this very moment, a culmination of past experiences and incomplete understanding has led us to where we are today. But with the effort by state run agencies like NYS-DEC and other local departments we can hope to remediate our soils and ground water, and learn from an experience that is far from over.
[1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/pfas-health-risks-grandjean/
[2] https://www.epa.gov/pfas/basic-information-pfas
[3] https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/pfc/index.cfm
[4] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/suffolkcountynewyork/HCN010212
[5] https://www.thoughtco.com/largest-counties-by-population-1435134
[7] Sellers, Christopher C. Crabgrass Crucible: Suburban Nature and the Rise of Environmentalism in Twentieth-Century America. University of North Carolina Press, 2012.
[8] https://pfas-1.itrcweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/pfas_fact_sheet_history_and_use__11_13_17.pdf