“Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known collectively as PFAS or PFCs, are contaminating water supplies and the environment across both peninsulas of Michigan.

The toxic compounds are found in our rivers, our lakes, our soil, our groundwater, our drinking water, our fish, our food, our bodies and our Great Lakes. They are, as one scientist who helped manufacture them noted, the ‘most insidious pollutant since PCBs.’

‘They call them ‘zombie chemicals,’ ‘ said Cathy Wusterbarth, a former lifeguard on a contaminated lake who wonders if past bouts with breast cancer and rheumatoid arthritis are linked to the PFAS that’s been spreading through the local groundwater for decades…

To date, more than 30 sites in 15 communities across Michigan have confirmed PFAS contamination in the soil, groundwater or surface water. Uncertainty shrouds the sites as residents worry about their health and property, and question whether their government is doing enough to protect them…

Nationally, the chemicals are becoming a larger issue. Some federal officials urge more protections – yet critics say both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Defense have failed to halt the spread of poison and clean up existing contamination…

Michigan municipal water systems are finding PFAS, some of which get their water from the Great Lakes. Systems that draw from Lake Huron and Lake St. Clair in suburban Detroit are finding low levels. Lake Michigan, which provides drinking water for millions in metropolitan areas like Chicago, Milwaukee and Grand Rapids, is fed by tributaries that include the Kalamazoo River, St. Joseph River and Muskegon River — all of which have tested positive for PFAS…

Isaacs and other environmental officials won’t call the move to establish MPART a “crisis” response, but the scale of the effort conveys a public health emergency. No one knows yet how many high concentration areas exist in Michigan. Or how many people are consuming PFAS in dangerous quantities. Or even where and how it’s spreading into natural resources.

But the fact the state is even asking those questions now marks a dramatic change.

In 2012, upper management at the DEQ received a report urging a comprehensive effort to test for PFAS around the state and halt exposure through water filtration efforts. The report landed on the desk of Dan Wyant, the DEQ director who resigned in the wake of Flint’s water crisis.

Wyant says he passed the report onto division directors at the DEQ, but the actions recommended by the authors, both PFAS specialists, largely were ignored until last fall.

Although the DEQ Water Resources Division conducted limited PFAS sampling in 2013 that helped generate some local fish advisories, the results were missed or didn’t filter down in other DEQ divisions. One example: despite results showing PFAS in the Rogue River in Rockford, local remediation division supervisors didn’t know Wolverine had used PFAS until citizen activists presented them with easily obtainable evidence last year…

Without enforceable federal standards for drinking water or cleanup, states are left on their own. In January, Michigan set 70-ppt as a limit on groundwater people use for drinking water…

Meanwhile, emergency responders are one serious plane crash, gasoline tanker truck fire or equipment malfunction away from creating another PFAS plume.

The PFAS-laden AFFF foam is an environmental time bomb waiting to go off at airports, bases and in municipal fire departments large and small.

Records obtained by MLive through the Freedom of Information Act show large quantities of foam remain on the shelves of at least 353 Michigan fire departments, much of it made before manufacturers swapped out the chemicals in 2002 for newer PFAS compounds that aren’t supposed to last so long in the environment…

‘The foam has a shelf life of 10 to 25 years,’ said Sehlmeyer, who was surprised by how much of the foam some smaller departments around the state had…

‘They said the stuff was so safe you could drink it,’ said Stephen Moldenhauer, a firefighter at the base from 1984 to 1988. ‘We used to wash our cars with it. I took home the empty foam cans to my kids for piggy banks.’

Moldenhauer brought home foam-drenched gear on a regular basis. He wonders whether AFFF exposure contributed to his heart attack at age 45 and tumor-like growths in his legs. He wonders whether PFAS exposure through drinking water or other means have contributed to his wife’s seven miscarriages and other reproductive problems in his family.

In order to get his military health benefits to treat the problems as an environmental exposure, the Department of Veterans Affairs is ‘going to tell me to prove it,’ he said.

‘How do I prove it?’…

Michigan is poised to test all 1,380 public water systems this year, Isaacs said, because they account for the drinking water for 75 percent of the state. Testing also will be done on Michigan’s 2 million private wells.”

Read the full article by Paula Gardener & Garret Ellison