“PARCHMENT, MI — Tammy Cooper, her husband and their 6-month-old daughter moved only a few blocks to their new home, but they left the city of Kalamazoo for Parchment, a place where high levels of PFAS would be found three years later.

The family makes sure to eat organic foods and cooks their meals at home. They found out Thursday, July 26, that their drinking water was contaminated at levels more than 20 times greater than an EPA lifetime health advisory.

Born a healthy 7-pounds, 2-ounces, Cooper’s daughter, Jillian, found trouble gaining weight after the move. Now 3, she is in the lowest 1st percentile of body weight for her age group and continues to breastfeed.

Doctors wonder whether she has thyroid problems. Cooper can’t say for sure that her daughter’s issues are linked to PFAS, but the thought lingers…

Uncertainty is common among residents of Parchment and Cooper Township after 3,100 people were told late Thursday, July 26, to immediately stop drinking the water. Officials are still trying to determine where the contamination came from and how long it existed…

Since discovery of the contaminant in such large concentrations in Parchment’s drinking water, state and local officials have not said whether PFAS exposure is causing health issues in community.

Kalamazoo County Medical Director William Nettleton said it’s not clear how many people are affected. Individual blood tests for PFAS won’t tell doctors much, he said…

A community-wide research study could show whether specific health issues are more common, but Nettleton said it’s too early in the evidence-gathering process for a study.

Another area of uncertainty focused on the size and scope of concerns for those with private wells in areas outside the current 1-mile-radius study area.

More than 40 private wells within that proximity to Parchment’s contaminated source water wells have been tested by the DEQ so far to find the extent of exposure to PFAS.

Mark DuCharme, DEQ incident management specialist, said the DEQ is working on a long-term solution for wells that are found to be contaminated, and that the state could pay for filters…

DuCharme said monitoring wells at a former Crown Vantage paper mill dump site were tested Tuesday. Once the source is discovered, he said, it could help explain how long PFAS was in city water…

The DEQ is working to determine where PFAS might have been used in the area.

Based on Parchment’s history as the ‘Paper City,’ a shuttered paper mill and nearby landfill came to the forefront immediately, DuCharme said…

DEQ spokesperson Scott Dean said food wrappings have historically used fluorinated compounds to repel water, oil and grease…

The mill site changed hands multiple times through the years — from Kalamazoo Vegetable Parchment Co., Sutherland Paper Co., Brown Co., James River Corp. and Crown Vantage Corp. until it went bankrupt in 2000.

An 80-acre landfill near the Kalamazoo River was capped after Crown Vantage closed in 2000. It was used to dump fly ash and other waste from the nearby paper mill until it was capped at the request of the DEQ…

There are 18 monitoring wells at the landfill. DuCharme said not all of the wells have been found, so it could take a few days to collect samples. Lagoons at the site will likely be tested as well.

Other possible sources were mentioned by the community Tuesday, but DuCharme said the DEQ is focused on the site it knows the most about first. For now that’s the landfill.

The Kalamazoo River flows north through a valley, according to DEQ, which causes groundwater to flow toward the river on each side of the bank.”

Read the full article by Malachi Barrett