[CPEO-MEF] PFAS: "PFAS Water & Food Contamination and DOD’s Role"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

PFAS Water & Food Contamination and DOD’s Role

By Pat Elder
LA Progressive
August 29, 2020

The military is engaged in a campaign to convince the public that the PFAS contamination it has caused on military bases around the world is being cleaned up and that it is safeguarding public health by complying with the EPA’s lifetime health advisory of 70 parts per trillion in drinking water. For the most part, both claims are false. The DOD knows the primary route of exposure to PFAS is through diet, especially seafood from contaminated water bodies, although this truth is treated like classified information. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) estimates that “fish and other seafood” account for up to 86% of dietary PFAS exposure in adults.”

More attention must be given to formulating policy based on the science we know. Exposure to PFAS from household products can be rather quickly eliminated by altering the chemical production of these consumables. Eliminating exposure caused by severely contaminated groundwater, rivers, the ocean, and poisoned marine food chains will take a very long time, somewhat comparable to the nuclear half-life of spent radioactive fuel.  Half the battle is in discontinuing their use. Table 1, below, presents a few estimates of source contributions to overall PFAS exposures for adults. Drinking water accounts for approximately 15% of PFAS exposure in adults while the diet accounts for 66%.

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For the entire article, see
https://www.laprogressive.com/pfas-water-and-food/

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Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org





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