A report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) has heightened the importance of the PFAS crisis and has elevated the significance of food over drinking water as the leading pathway to human ingestion. The 298-page report mentions the word “food” 224 times. It mentions fish 115 times while there are references to drinking water 195 times. It’s an improvement in the national dialogue.
I look around in my community and I see the primary pathway to ingestion is through the consumption of seafood from the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries due to military activities. Most homes here are served by wells that tap into the deep Piney Point aquifer. I'm on a well and I had my drinking water tested and it was free of 55 PFAS compounds. The large municipal water providers, like the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, are serving up water in the single digits for the analytes tested. Sure, the levels are hundreds and often thousands of times above the EPA’s new health advisory of .02 ppt for PFOS and .004 ppt for PFOA, but they’re nowhere near the concentrations of the toxins in seafood.
There’s an assumption throughout the NASEM report that there is more awareness in our communities and in the medical profession about PFAS than actually exists. From my very narrow perspective in this southern Maryland peninsula formed by the confluence of the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay, I asked four medical doctors over the last year with MedStar Health in Leonardtown, Maryland and none of them had heard of PFAS.
I don’t know anyone who has been tested for PFAS in Southern Maryland. This is an area with a considerable military presence, including four large installations with documented PFAS contamination. The Patuxent River Naval Air Station and the Naval Research Laboratory-Chesapeake Bay Detachment contaminate the Chesapeake Bay, while the Indian Head Naval Surface Warfare Center and Joint Base Andrews poison the Potomac. (PFAS isn’t the only chemical in the seafood. Mercury, PCBs, Chlordane, DDT, Dieldrin, and Toxaphene are also present. Don’t eat the “mustard” in crabs. Don't eat the crabs.)
You’d think medical professionals here would have heard about PFAS by now, but the local media is loath to publish reports critical of the military.
Even if the local doctors were aware of PFAS, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry has been instructing clinicians to tell patients that blood tests will not provide information to predict health problems. Andrea Amico, with the New Hampshire group, Testing for Pease says physicians haven’t had the knowledge or tools to treat those with PFAS exposure. “Most haven’t heard of PFAS, or the health effects associated with exposure,” she said. Many doctors simply don’t receive detailed environmental health training. The NASEM report ought to help in this regard.
Community Liaison
I was honored to be included as a community liaison for this study. The Academy captured my essence in their report:
“Patrick Elder (Military Poisons) - Patrick Elder articulated concerns and insights about the understudied role of PFAS exposure from food. Elder stated that he believes there is too much emphasis on PFAS levels in drinking water, with too limited a focus on PFAS exposure from food, particularly seafood.
Elder contextualized this position by detailing his experiences testing surface water and seafood items near his home in Southern Maryland, adjacent to the Naval Air Station Patuxent River Webster Field Annex. Elder’s efforts resulted in the detection of significant PFAS concentrations in surface water and seafood items. Elder published the results in the local press, leading to concern and outrage in the community.
He indicated that a subsequent public meeting with Navy officials resulted in an unsatisfactory exchange of information with the local community, as Navy officials reiterated that the chemicals in question were no longer in use and there was no medical treatment to reduce PFAS in the human body. The community sought increased testing on seafood items and water, expressing disagreement with the Navy’s assertion that not enough is known about PFAS in seafood and the human body to justify immediate intervention.
Elder further highlighted the untenable data gaps for PFAS in food in the United States through a comparison: the European Food Safety Authority recommendations suggest up to 86 percent of PFAS exposure stems from food intake while the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a statement suggesting there is no evidence that dietary choices should consider PFAS contamination. Overall, Elder emphasized the importance of better limiting PFAS exposure from food and seafood items in the United States and incorporating this vector of exposure when considering health effects and health studies.”
I like the word “untenable,” although they didn’t embrace my positions. They just can’t. The problems are too big and there’s too much money on the line. It’s all about the money.
I’d re-word this from the report: “Known environmental exposures to PFAS include living in a community with PFAS-contaminated drinking water, living near industries that use fluorochemicals, serving in the military, and consuming fish and game from areas with known or potential contamination.” I’d mention that living in a community near a military installation greatly increases the likelihood of exposure.
Recommendation 4-4 from the report says, “In areas with known PFAS contamination, clinicians should advise patients that PFAS can be present in fish, wildlife, meat, and dairy products and direct them to any local consumption advisories.” I would have included areas without known PFAS contamination as well, considering that Bumble Bee clams from China contain 20,133 ppt of PFOA, about 7 orders of magnitude higher than the concentrations the EPA says is a danger in drinking water. |