Maine Streaming Sense

Will Maine's breakthrough ban of toxic Forever Chemicals become standard?

There’s a group of man-made chemicals at the center of a story involving sinister politicians, greedy corporations, social injustice, and up and coming redemption. We don’t know yet if there will be full remediation and justice, but the tide does seem to be turning. Several stories broke this week about PFAS, the chemicals at the center of this saga, including the world’s first ban on this class of toxic chemical group. Another headline about this week is about questionable exemptions made by the US government to allow the use of PFAS for certain manufactures and industrial users. Why all this fuss about PFAS? PFAS chemicals are widely used from food storage to fracking because of their water and stain resistant qualities. However, a substantial body of research links exposure to PFAS to cancer, liver disease, decreased immunity, kidney disease, plummeting sperm counts, endocrine disrutpion, high cholesterol and birth defects, as the starter list. What’s more, PFAS have extremely long lifetimes in the environment, giving them their common name of Forever Chemicals. Forever chemicals, as the name implies, will remain in the environment and bio-accumulate up the food chain for many many generations to come even if we stop producing them today. Many consider it madness that we haven’t banned them all.

The acronym PFAS stands for poly- and per-fluorinated alkyl substances and are a group of 9,000 man-made chemicals. Breaking down their name: poly means many and per, in chemistry, means the maximum proportion of one element in a compound. So polyfluorinated means fluorinated many times and per fluorinated means fluorinated the most possible times. In turn, fluorinated means the replacement of a hydrogen atom in a molecule with a fluorine atom. And the last part of the name tells us PFAS are alkanes - a molecule composed of carbon and hydrogen arranged in a tree like structure. The whole picture of a PFAS is then a tree shaped molecule of carbon and hydrogen with a bunch of the hydrogens replaced with fluorine. To understand the characteristics of PFAS we turn to the periodic table. Fluorine is the ninth element and is a halogen, meaning it is one electron short of a full outer shell. Because of this, fluorine, like other halogens, has extremely high bond energies, because they really like to have that last electron spot filled. In fact, the carbon-fluorine bond found in PFAS is one of the strongest in organic chemistry and explains why PFAS are so persistent and don’t decay. And to help us remember it is carbon-fluorine which underlies this longevity, note that the initials C-F were inverted to F-C to give the common name of forever chemicals.

The strong bond also explains some of the stain and water resistance properties of PFAS that are so useful to many industries. We are exposed to the PFAS in food containers, carpets, leather and apparel, textiles, paper and packaging materials, guitar strings, cosmetics, Scott Guard, and non-stick cookware. In addition around 100 million people in the US have PFAs in their drinking water, we can also ingest from food grown in soil or watered that has been PFAS polluted. And we also ingest PFAS from animals we eat as it bioaccumulates its way up the food chain. In fact, 97% of Americans have PFAS in their blood stream. It has been found at dangerous levels in the rain, in polar bears at the north pole, in breast milk and in marine mammals. There are hotspots of PFAS contamination as well, especially in areas where foams are used for fire fighting or fire fighting practice, at PFAS production facilities and where there is localized contamination of drinking water.

Put together the characteristics of PFAS’, including its ubiquity, its long lasting nature, its bio-accumulation and its toxicity, we might wonder WTF is going on and why there hasn’t been a blanket ban on all PFAS. Well, the good news is that a number of forever chemicals have been banned and some manufacturers have voluntarily agreed to stop using the most studied of the PFAS - PFOA and PFOS, if you must know. In fact, these two categories of PFAS, known as long chain PFAS, are no longer manufactured in the US - although we still import carpets, textiles, packaging etc etc with these chemicals in them. But what’s more insidious and difficult to route out is that instead of the long chain PFAS, US industries now manufacture short-chained PFAS. Originally touted a safer alternative, research has shown that the short chained PFAS are equally as persistent and are even more mobile in the environment and more difficult to remove from drinking water than the long-chained versions. Short chained PFAS bioaccumulate at least as much as and probably more than long-chain PFAS. And while research on these replacements is still new, there is evidence that they are have similar toxicological effects as the long-chain PFAS. This is known as a ‘regrettable substitution’ but one which allows industry to continue prioritizing profits over well being.

The saga of regrettable substitutions and piecemeal legislation has resulting in the concentration of PFAS growing in the environment while only 1% of all PFAS have been tested for hazardous effects. This is why many groups from doctors, to scientists, to activists are calling for a ban on all PFAS, as a class. The state of Maine has stepped forward this week to be the first government in the world to enact a wholesale ban of PFAS, except in instances where it is ‘currently unavoidable’. Importantly this ‘currently unavoidable’ category is to be decided by the government and is meant to cover medical devices. By 2030 the sale of products containing PFAS compounds will be banned in Maine.

This action by Maine seems to have spurred the House of Representatives to finally do something as well. Just 5 days after Maine announced its ban, the US House of Representatives passed the PFAS Action Act of 2021, which, while not a full out ban on PFAS, is a start. If passed in the Senate the PFAS Action Act will establish a national drinking water standard for some PFAS, the long chained PFOA and PFOS, as well as placing discharge limits on PFAS release and a moratorium on the introduction of new PFAS in commerce. The House voted 241 to 183 to pass the bill with 23 Republicans voting in favor. That’s good to see.

In other parts of the world, the EU has been ‘moving forward’ to phase out all PFAS by 2030, a broader remit than the US legislation, but also not yet binding. The UK is lagging behind as it scrambles to set up its own regulatory systems now that it is out of the EU. Under the Health & Safety Executive, the program UK Reach “will investigate the risk of PFAS and consider how best to manage any identified risks.” It is in environmental legislation that the EU really shines for it is a consolidation of efforts and also levels the playing field for those companies which want to behave in environmentally responsible ways. Sadly, that ship has sailed for the UK and it must scramble to catch up in environmental protection.

And finally, I promised you governmental corruption and corporate greed. Many of us will know about Exxon spearheading efforts to reduce the credibility of scientific consensus with regard to climate change. Well, they’ve been using the same playbook to undercut the scientific consensus to regulate PFAS. A news story by The NY Times and Physicians for Social Responsibility was published this week explaining how PFAS was injected into 1200 fracking wells in the US. Not only were these chemicals intentionally released into the fracking environment, where unintentional and unexpected seepage is routinely found to happen, but PFAS laden, post fracking waste water is sprayed on roads to keep down dust or to melt ice. Even occasionally this post-fracking PFAS rich water is used to irrigate farms where the water table has been drained to frack. In one well in Glosscock County, Texas, 324 pounds of PFAS were injected into one well. One cup of this injected PFAS can contaminate almost 8 BILLION GALLONS of water.

But the story becomes even more nefarious when we discover that the EPA, the ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION Agency, set up to safe guard our air, water and soils, green lighted requests by oil companies to dump PFAS into the environment at fracking sites across the USA. You’d think common sense would have put a halt to this from both a climate change perspective (we shouldn’t be getting more fossil fuels out of the ground) and a clean water vantage point. But if precaution doesn’t sway you, you’d think the 2016 EPA report “Hydralulic Fracturing Water Cycle”, which showed extensive evidence that fluids used in fracking leak into groundwater, would stop industry from inject PFAS into fracking wells. The 2016 EPA report further estimated that eight million Americans get their drinking water from underground water within a mile of fracking sites. And which communities do you think are most impacted by tainted water? Poor and colored ones. So fracking with PFAS is a social justice issue as well as an environmental and a public health one.

To tie up the evil package of polluted water, obscuration and profit, note theat the EPA allow exemptions to the fracking industry to not have to meet standards for safe drinking water and the Clean Water Act. This is referred to as the “Halliburton Loophole” for Halliburton is the one of the 3 largest manufacturers of fracking fluids and patented hydraulic fracturing in the 1940s. And do you remember who was CEO of Halliburt before he became Vice President of the United States? Dick Cheney. I can’t help but shake my head in utter disgust. But not wanting to leave you on a such a negative note - lets remember that Maine is leading the way and hopefully the class ban on PFAS will soon be Maine Streamed.