“The Wolverine state looks like it came down with chicken pox on a new interactive map and report released by the Environmental Working Group, which shows the spreading ubiquity of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance, or PFAS, contamination in the United States.
The EWG says there appears to be no end in sight to the increasing number of sites polluted by the industrial chemicals, with Michigan being the ‘current hotspot’ among the list of 22 states with known PFAS contamination sites around the country.
There’s 94 sites on that list as of March. There were 52 known sites in 19 states when EWG published the map last year. In 2017, North Carolina was atop the PFAS hotspot list.
Exposure to PFAS has been linked in human studies to some cancers, thyroid disorders, elevated cholesterol and other diseases.
‘This shows that we’re not anywhere close to knowing the true extent of the contamination that’s out there,’ said Bill Walker, an investigative editor at EWG, a nonprofit consumer watchdog group which has studied the PFAS family of fluorinated chemicals for 20 years.
‘It’s really just a matter of time before another state or community discovers they’ve got a problem’…
The EWG considers the PFAS contamination an example of failed federal leadership at the EPA, which has only issued non-enforceable advisory guidelines related to levels of chronic lifetime exposure rather than putting PFAS compounds on the regulated list…
Phil Brown, director of the Northeastern University research institute, which worked with EWG to develop the PFAS report, said individual PFAS compounds like PFOA and PFOS are significant pollutants despite no longer being made in the U.S.”
Read the full article by Garret Ellison.