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posted by takyon on Monday January 27 2020, @11:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the bottoms-up dept.

U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': environment watchdog

The contamination of U.S. drinking water with man-made "forever chemicals" is far worse than previously estimated with some of the highest levels found in Miami, Philadelphia and New Orleans, said a report on Wednesday by an environmental watchdog group.

The chemicals, resistant to breaking down in the environment, are known as perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. Some have been linked to cancers, liver damage, low birth weight and other health problems.

The findings here by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) show the group's previous estimate in 2018, based on unpublished U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data, that 110 million Americans may be contaminated with PFAS, could be far too low.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @07:50AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @07:50AM (#949973)

    In the Netherlands the government shut down all sectors that were involved with soil movement due to this last year.

    Due to all the uncertainties around PFAS they took the detection limit of it and all soil that contained more was basically forbidden to be moved around untill they determined the safe limit (which took about two months). Still, some construction projects are still on hold, but most things could continue after raising the limit about 7 fold.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @03:26AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @03:26AM (#950438)

    citation please?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @07:35AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @07:35AM (#950546)

      Dutch news: https://nos.nl/zoeken/?q=PFAS [nos.nl]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @12:10AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @12:10AM (#950914)

        Thanks, I was swamped by useless pdfs in english.