PFAS in Drinking Water Review
All the PFAS posts I've written over the past year
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***Updated August 13, 2024.***
The next PFAS story still doesn’t want to be written. There are a couple of unanswered questions that I don’t want to leave hanging. I thought this might be a good time to give you an overview of all I’ve written on the subject over the past year, going back to last March when just a few of you were here.
PFAS in toilet paper is a powerful reminder that these compounds are everywhere and should be phased out of commerce. But in dealing with contamination in drinking water, we need to keep the focus on the major sources such as firefighting foam.
Many will choose filtration or reverse osmosis as the solution. The odds are high that the filters they install will contain components made by the very companies that made the poisons they’re removing. The initial installations and periodic filter replacements will represent a windfall for them.
They have us coming and going.
How industry-backed environmental disinformation campaigns keep us feeling shamed and powerless, and what we can do about it.
This article formed the basis of a submission to the Washington State Environmental Justice Council, pointing out that the state of drinking water in rural Washington State is an environmental justice problem.
A week in June saw new lawsuits and a settlement. The stock market shrugged.
In highly individualistic societies, including most Western countries, but especially the United States, politicians, corporations, and others have weaponized our lizard brains against us. They have done this by taking advantage of our fixation on personal freedom and property rights to portray solutions to societal problems as threats to liberty so that our lizard brain reacts.
More on why it’s hard to make progress on environmental issues.
A couple of years ago, I realized that I could help best by writing past the distractions and outrage to bring attention to these issues and public pressure to bear on the political class. After a year in the trenches with the grant, that’s what I’m back trying to do.
It's taken relentless pressure from community groups and agency staff to achieve the results seen so far. Issues still exist, but I'm hopeful that the new regulatory limits and a focus on improved communication will bring safe drinking water to those affected by PFAS contamination from military installations, whether they're on a large water system or a private well.
The bottom line is that the response to PFAS contamination from non-military sources is a geographic lottery, both state-to-state and within a state.
A group of us write a letter to the Washington State Department of Ecology requesting input on their PFAS spending plan.
EPA sprints to keep PFAS rules safe
The EPA's enforcement discretion in its PFAS Superfund designation will help make sure that the polluters, not the victims, pay for cleanup.
Despite all the problems, these folks are better off than those whose PFAS contamination comes from a civilian source. We'll dive into that in the next post.
And I hope to have that to you soon. Thanks for reading!