Daily News | Pa. waited more than 2 years to test wells after finding nearby contamination. Now this neighborhood wants answers.
BENNER TOWNSHIP — A class of synthetic chemicals identified in 2019 near Penn State University’s airport has fouled tap water in an adjacent neighborhood, and families there are now demanding to know why it took environmental officials so long to test their wells, which they use for bathing, cooking, and drinking.
Stocker floated the idea of testing residential wells as early as April 2021, when a DEP manager replied that sampling efforts were in the works but that home tests would be premature “without a sampling plan in place,” according to emails he shared with Spotlight PA. “DEP has not discovered any indications to date that the PFAS contamination is anything more than the result of historic practices conducted in accordance with applicable requirements at the time,” the department said.
PFAS chemicals appear in hundreds of consumer and industrial products, from nonstick pans to firefighting foams, and face growing scrutiny for potential health effects including cancers, liver damage, and fertility issues.
In the human body, it takes about four years for levels of certain common PFAS to drop by 50%, according to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. That assumes no additional exposure.To protect their community from PFAS, residents want a municipal water source for Walnut Grove Estates, a small, rural neighborhood located a 10-minute drive from Penn State’s University Park campus, as well as a few nearby affected homes.
“It’s not just the liver and not just the kidney and not just the cardiovascular system,” Birnbaum said. “It’s also bone, pancreas, brain. You name it — there is growing evidence.” The EPA this month issued new advisories for four PFAS chemicals, cautioning that negative health effects may be possible even at PFOA and PFOS concentrations near zero. An advisory level is a point beneath which researchers would not expect damaging health effects.
At a June neighborhood discussion hosted by Stocker, county Commissioner Steve Dershem pledged to advocate transparency — including from Penn State — as the DEP finalizes a comprehensive investigative report it expects to release in the fall. Now in private practice, Howland said some liability claims will become easier if the EPA designates PFAS as hazardous under Superfund. The DEP directed Walnut Grove Estates homeowners to disclose any contamination above 70 parts per trillion as part of their public property records.From 2019 to 2021, the DEP set out to get a better sense of PFAS contamination across Pennsylvania, taking samples from more than 300 water supplies statewide.
State of the Art and Matreya did not respond to requests for comment. Their wells were sampled in August 2019 and November 2019, respectively. PFAS in such foams help suppress fire, but they have become a frequent source of contamination. In fact, airports and military defense facilities are the most common sources of PFAS pollution, said Ducatman, the PFAS researcher and a professor emeritus in public health at West Virginia University.
From 2006 to 2018, FAA-required tests of firefighting equipment happened mainly in a deicing area, Penn State wrote in a separate statement. The deicing pad was washed down, with runoff collected in tanks for disposal at a wastewater facility in Bellefonte. A new rescue and firefighting vehicle will feature “a testing system that contains all firefighting foam internal to the vehicle,” Penn State wrote. Commercial airports must address PFAS contamination because of the FAA’s requirement to use the foam, the university said.
“Where the airport sits is a high spot,” said Yoxtheimer, who also is a Penn State faculty member. Water has “a radial flow out from this high spot. You have the potential for flow to radiate away from this groundwater mound.” The agency asserted it was always aware of the Walnut Grove Estates area “and planned to investigate if the initial investigation results led us in that direction.”
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