“The Defense Department has for the first time disclosed the locations of military installations where tap water or groundwater on or off base is contaminated with highly toxic fluorinated chemicals. But the list is incomplete, naming only locations where water is polluted above the Environmental Protection Agency’s “safe” level for tap water, which is well above levels found safe by independent scientists and regulations in a growing number of states.

In a report to the House Armed Services Committee, the Pentagon listed 36 installations in 23 states and territories, as well as in five nations overseas, where tests found on-base drinking water contamination exceeding the EPA’s lifetime health advisory for the fluorinated compounds PFOS and PFOA. In addition, the Pentagon identified 90 U.S. installations where PFOS or PFOA released on-base has contaminated groundwater. In many of these places, the contaminated water has migrated off-site, polluting nearby communities’ tap water with fluorinated chemicals in concentrations above the EPA advisory level.

Maureen Sullivan, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, provided the list to the Armed Services Committee in March. It was first reported April 27 by The Military Times, which said the list includes 50 Air Force bases, 49 Navy or Marine Corps bases, 25 Army bases and two Defense Logistics Agency sites. Some of the bases on the list are now closed and have been converted to civilian uses…

The EPA’s advisory level is 70 parts per trillion, or ppt, for the combined level of PFOS and PFOA, but it is not an enforceable legal limit. New Jersey recently set the nation’s lowest legal limit for PFOA in tap water, 14 ppt, which is expected to take effect next year. In 2016, Philippe Grandjean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Richard Clapp of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell published research concluding that an approximate safe dose of PFOA and/or PFOS in drinking water is 1 ppt…

The Military Times reported that Sullivan told the committee the Defense Department had moved quickly to shut down wells, install water filters and/or provide bottled water at the 24 contaminated bases where the military is the drinking water supplier. But because the EPA advisory level is not an enforceable standard, fixing the problem is moving slower at the 12 contaminated bases where a local utility or private contractor supplies the water.”

Read the full article by Bill Walker