“Kristen Mello wasn’t invited to the Environmental Protection Agency’s upcoming ‘National Leadership Summit‘ on PFOA, PFOS, and other PFAS chemicals. For most of her life, Mello, a member of Westfield Residents Advocating For Themselves, drank water contaminated with the chemicals that are going to be discussed at the meeting. At least six compounds in this class seeped into local drinking water from firefighting foam used at the Air National Guard base in her hometown of Westfield, Massachusetts. Mello and several of her immediate family members have developed some of the health problems associated with the chemicals, including thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, and liver problems…

Although the summit is intended to identify actions ‘needed to address challenges currently facing states and local communities,’ according to the agency’s website, the people in these communities who are directly affected by the chemicals will be strikingly absent from the meeting.

‘We have 35 members as part of our coalition and every single one of them has reached out either to the EPA or to their state agencies asking to be represented at the summit,’ said Shaina Kasper, Vermont and New Hampshire state director at the Toxics Action Center. ‘In each case, we’ve heard, ‘No, there will be no community group representation.’ We’re so disappointed.’

While the people suffering from this contamination will not be at the meeting, the manufacturers of the chemicals used in the production of Teflon and other nonstick, water-resistant, and stain-resistant products will be well represented…

The EPA will stream one hour of the meeting, and also recently announced a plan to visit states with impacted communities this summer…

The summit comes on the heels of the revelation, first reported by Politico, that the EPA and the White House tried to suppress a report from the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, or ATSDR, that calculated safety levels of certain PFAS chemicals that were up to 10 times lower than health advisory levels that the EPA set in 2016…

But there is far more at stake in the controversy over safety thresholds than optics or headlines. The ATSDR’s numbers, which were calculated based on the chemicals’ effects on the immune system, a more sensitive impact than the EPA used to derive its own limits, recognized that human health effects can occur at extremely low levels of exposure, which are present on and near many military installations where firefighting foam containing PFAS was used.

The Defense Department, which is responsible for hundreds of these sites, has much to lose from the ATSDR’s proposed risk levels, which could ultimately be used to calculate safe water levels and engineering standards that would guide the cleanup of these sites. Already, the cost of cleaning up the bases and surrounding areas to the EPA’s current standards has been estimated in the billions of dollars. Lowering the acceptable level of the chemicals further could add billions more to cleanup costs.”

Read the full article by Sharon Lerner