Read the full article by Mara Hoplamazian (NHPR)
“New research from the University of New Hampshire suggests treating tap water for PFAS contamination household-by-household could provide a more affordable solution than treating water systems as a whole.
A paper from economist Scott Lemos, a senior lecturer at the University of New Hampshire, examined how much residents are willing to pay to filter out potentially harmful PFAS from their water. Those man-made chemicals have been used in a wide variety of consumer products and are linked to negative health effects.
The research comes in the wake of new limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency on allowable levels of some PFAS chemicals in water. That agency says the health benefits of treating for PFAS would outweigh the costs.
Lemos’s team surveyed about 300 people across the state. They found on average, residents are willing to pay a bit more than $150 dollars per year on top of their normal water bill for PFAS remediation, or between $13 and $14 a month.
According to his team’s math, that would add up to much less than the cost of upgrades needed to filter for PFAS across a whole water system.”…