Uncovering the Source of Widespread 'Forever Chemical' Contamination in North Carolina

[usonian]

https://pratt.duke.edu/news/uncovering-the-source-of-widespread-forever-chemical-contamination-in-north-carolina/

An environmental chemistry laboratory at Duke University has solved a longstanding mystery of the origin of high levels of PFAS—so-called “forever chemicals”—contaminating water sources in the Piedmont region of North Carolina.

By sampling and analyzing sewage in and around Burlington, NC, the researchers traced the chemicals to a local textile manufacturing plant. The source remained hidden for years because the facility was not releasing chemical forms of PFAS that are routinely monitored. The culprit was instead solid nanoparticle PFAS “precursors” that degrade into the chemicals that current tests are designed to detect.

Incredibly, these precursors were being released into the sewer system at concentrations up to 12 million parts-per-trillion—approximately 3 million times greater than the Environmental Protection Agency’s recently-enacted drinking water regulatory limit for certain types of PFAS.

While precursors typically degrade slowly over time into types of regulated PFAS, Burlington’s atypical wastewater treatment practices were turbocharging the transformation. With these chemicals especially concentrated in sewage sludge and the resulting biosolids commonly used as fertilizer across the region, the findings indicate PFAS will continue leaching into the region’s soils and waterways for decades to come.

Paper: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/acs.estlett.5c01014/suppl_file/ez5c01014_si_001.pdf
I am getting so good at bypassing paywalls.
Most papers are published separately from paywalled journals, or available from their University sites.

[BComplex]

1. I'm east of Burlington where they discovered this, but every time I turn on

my garden hose hooked up to my well water, it comes out like soap suds for the first 5 minutes. North Carolina is so totally polluted thanks to all the corporate republicans running the congress! It's too bad, because it's otherwise a beautiful State.

[usonian]

2. I live in rural California. And have an 1100 ft. deep well.

I won't ramble. For its advantages, I have to maintain it entirely at my own cost. Other than the scenery, it's the big benefit of living far out. Only thing piped in is electricity, and that sometimes goes out so I got a propane powered backup generator.

No econony of scale, and control comes at a cost.

I really hope things in NC improve but it must be tough. CA had a run of Republican governors and it was pretty awful. Much better now.