Read the full article by Keith Matheny (Detroit Free Press)
“If potentially health-harming, nonstick ‘forever chemicals’ PFAS are in a brewery’s water supply, they tend to end up in its beer, a study has found. And though the study doesn’t name the beers it tested or their brewers, it found high levels of some PFAS compounds in beers from Kalamazoo and Kent counties in Michigan.
‘We found if there is PFAS in the drinking water that the brewery is using that there tends to be PFAS in the beer that consumers are drinking, unless there is advanced filtration that’s happening like reverse osmosis or activated carbon − which is not happening in a lot of cases at this time,’ said Jennifer Hoponick Redmon, the study’s lead author. Redmon is senior director of the environmental health and water quality program at RTI International, an independent, nonprofit research organization based in North Carolina focused ‘on science-based solutions to help human health and the environment.’
Some 23 different beers were studied, primarily plain lagers and ales from each company or brewery for consistency and because lighter beers were less onerous to prepare, clean and analyze with laboratory equipment. Researchers evaluated for the presence of 17 different PFAS compounds in beer using a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency method for measuring PFAS in drinking water.” …