Speaker 1: What's going to happen with all of these non stick
Speaker 1: chemicals you've been hearing so much about, and who's going
Speaker 1: to pay for whatever it is that's going to happen
Speaker 1: this week on Parts per Billion, Moshi Moshi, and welcome
Speaker 1: back to Parts per Billion, the podcast from Bloomberg Environment.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, David Schultz. So if you've listened to
Speaker 1: this podcast before, or read our website, or just encounter
Speaker 1: with one of us on the street, you've probably heard
Speaker 1: us talking about this class of nonstick chemicals called pfast.
Speaker 1: That's pfas. It's an acronym for a scientific word that
Speaker 1: I'm not going to attempt to pronounce on a podcast.
Speaker 1: These are chemicals, these p fast chemicals. They were using
Speaker 1: things like teflon, Scotch Guard, some food packaging, and lots
Speaker 1: of firefighting foam, and they're great for stopping fires and
Speaker 1: for making things not stick to other things. But as
Speaker 1: it turns out, they're not great for the environment. EPA
Speaker 1: recently came out with a big plan detailing how plans
Speaker 1: to address the environmental issues around pfas. So we thought
Speaker 1: we'd bring in our environmental reporters who've been covering this
Speaker 1: issue pretty exhaustively. We have Sylvia Carrion in here, who's
Speaker 1: been reporting on the issues surrounding the cleanup of p
Speaker 1: fas and to talk about how these chemicals affect drinking water.
Speaker 1: We have me I'm me hi everyone, So Sylvia, thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us. First off, we went into a
Speaker 1: little bit about what p fas chemicals are, but let's
Speaker 1: get a little bit more into depth about that. What
Speaker 1: exactly are they and what have they been used for
Speaker 1: in the past other than teflon, which everyone knows about. Sure. So,
Speaker 1: the thing that makes these chemicals so effective is that
Speaker 1: they have this very strong carbon fluorine bond. It's one
Speaker 1: of the most one of the strongest chemical bonds found
Speaker 1: in nature, and that's also that's what makes them effective
Speaker 1: for nonstick applications, but it's also what makes them persistent
Speaker 1: in the environment, right, so they stick around for a
Speaker 1: long time. They call them the forever chemicals because they
Speaker 1: just never go away. And as we mentioned, they were
Speaker 1: used in stick packaging, nonstick fabric treatments, but also firefighting
Speaker 1: foam and it seems like that's one of the big
Speaker 1: areas where people encountered it the most, is that they
Speaker 1: would use it in this foam. They would spray it
Speaker 1: on runways a lot of times on military bases, and
Speaker 1: it would seep into the groundwater, and that's where it
Speaker 1: would start to be a big problem. Why are people
Speaker 1: concerned about it? What kind of health effects does this
Speaker 1: potentially have for humans and other creatures. We have some
Speaker 1: idea of the potential effects of these p fast chemicals,
Speaker 1: but there are so many in the family of p Fast.
Speaker 1: There are, you know, potentially thousands of chemicals in this family.
Speaker 1: We don't know exactly how each of the chemicals would
Speaker 1: affect the human body. So atsdr is part of the CDC.
Speaker 1: Part of the CDC, they are doing a study of
Speaker 1: communities near military bases where they found these kinds of
Speaker 1: chemicals to get a little bit more information about how
Speaker 1: they affect the human body, especially through drinking water. Right,
Speaker 1: and you mentioned the two biggest ones that I think
Speaker 1: people have heard a lot about are p FOA and
Speaker 1: p FOSS pfoh, And there are some of the chemicals
Speaker 1: that we know the most about. There's also one called
Speaker 1: gen X, which has been produced in North Carolina. It's
Speaker 1: a big problem there. So you're right, there are so
Speaker 1: many chemicals we don't totally know how they affect people,
Speaker 1: but there can be a lot of health issues, not
Speaker 1: just for humans, but also for cows. Apparently that's something
Speaker 1: that we've been hearing about recently, that cows that drink
Speaker 1: water that has been contaminated with these chemicals can get sick.
Speaker 1: That's going on New Mexico right going on in New Mexico,
Speaker 1: apparently a farmer had to euthanize thousands of his own
Speaker 1: cows because they were drinking water contaminating with pefast and
Speaker 1: the milk that they were producing was also contaminated, so
Speaker 1: he wasn't able to sell any of that product. Right.
Speaker 1: There aren't a lot of regulations on these chemicals right now.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's sort of it's all relative.
Speaker 1: But right now, the EPA has an advisory level that
Speaker 1: says you should only have seventy parts per billion or sorry,
Speaker 1: parts per trillion, right, m Yeah, parts per trillion. We
Speaker 1: should only have seventy parts per trillion of these chemicals
Speaker 1: in water. But that's advisory, it's not enforceable. Some states
Speaker 1: have implemented their own binding water regulations, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of the patchwork quilt across all fifty states. So what
Speaker 1: is the EPA thinking about doing on this moving forward?
Speaker 1: They just announced this big plan. What's next? Right on
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day last week? You forgot it was back active
Speaker 1: Administrator Andrew Wheeler had said, you know, we fully intend
Speaker 1: to regulate these chemicals and drinking water. So that would
Speaker 1: mean that the EPA would set this overarching federal standard
Speaker 1: for PIFOA and p FOSS and that would be that
Speaker 1: would become an enforceable standard, so they could tell people
Speaker 1: to clean it up and they would have to do
Speaker 1: it right. So not yet. Not only would they have
Speaker 1: to clean it up to that level, but they'd also
Speaker 1: have to filter out the water to make sure that
Speaker 1: there's safe levels of pfas, and that would apply to
Speaker 1: every utility water utility across the country. That's not going
Speaker 1: to happen for a while though, right, I mean, these
Speaker 1: regulations take years and years and years to be implemented.
Speaker 1: One of the issues with that is that so many
Speaker 1: different states are sort of getting in on the p
Speaker 1: fast standards train, and they're all setting very different because
Speaker 1: there's really no agreement in a scientific community about how
Speaker 1: much of it is safe for us to be drinking.
Speaker 1: So the EPA is going to have to figure out
Speaker 1: how much they think is okay for the entire country,
Speaker 1: and then once they get to that point, you know,
Speaker 1: they ask the public what they think, and then way
Speaker 1: down the line they might eventually set a standard. So
Speaker 1: in the meantime, we basically we have this advisory standard,
Speaker 1: not legally enforceable, but that's what the EPA thinks is
Speaker 1: you know, could cause some health problems. We have no
Speaker 1: enforceable standards either for cleanup or for drinking water for
Speaker 1: a long time. In the meantime, though, there are lawsuits,
Speaker 1: lots and lots of lawsuits against the companies that manufactured
Speaker 1: these chemicals and the companies that use the chemicals. Is
Speaker 1: that do you think that's where the action is going
Speaker 1: to be at least for the next few years. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Every time a new community finds out that it has
Speaker 1: PFO or p foss in the water, they want to
Speaker 1: find out, you know, who's responsible for this, and a
Speaker 1: lot of those actions result in lawsuits for the big
Speaker 1: companies that originally manufactured p foss or pifoa mo are
Speaker 1: the ones that use it in their own products, like
Speaker 1: Wolverine Worldwide, which makes a lot of different kinds of shoes,
Speaker 1: what kinds that they make? What kinds of shoes did
Speaker 1: they make? I know Keds is one of the brands
Speaker 1: that they make. There's just so many other ones. So
Speaker 1: the nonstick coatings for your keads are now the subjects
Speaker 1: of environment. So the waterproof, yes, the waterproof. We're probably
Speaker 1: not frying eggs on your shoes. Yeah, that's I guess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want your shoes to be nonstick. I guess
Speaker 1: that would That would cause a number of very obvious problems. So,
Speaker 1: you know, we've talked about the companies that made the chemicals.
Speaker 1: You've talked about the communities where they have this in
Speaker 1: their water. There's one sort of stakeholder here. I hate
Speaker 1: that word stakeholder, but let's call the mistakeholder is the
Speaker 1: military because as we mentioned, you know, this was in
Speaker 1: firefighting foam. It was used on a lot of military bases.
Speaker 1: The military could potentially be on the hook for a
Speaker 1: lot of the cleanup of these chemicals. Where are they at,
Speaker 1: what's their stance? What's going on with with the Pentagon
Speaker 1: in in terms of PFAS. So the ats your study
Speaker 1: that we talked about earlier, they have picked eight communities
Speaker 1: that they want to study that are near former or
Speaker 1: current military properties. They're all military communities, especially, so this
Speaker 1: would have been especially where the fire fighting phone would
Speaker 1: have been used, and maybe the foam chemicals from the
Speaker 1: phone got into the groundwater and maybe they contaminate the
Speaker 1: drinking water as well. So at least eight places, but
Speaker 1: there are more communities that are not part of that
Speaker 1: study that are also finding these effects from the chemicals.
Speaker 1: So that's notable in and of itself, because it seems
Speaker 1: like the CDC is sort of acknowledging that, you know,
Speaker 1: communities that are either on military bases or used to
Speaker 1: be on military basis are the most affected here. This
Speaker 1: is not something that you know, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of communities that maybe they were next to a plant
Speaker 1: that produced p fas, or maybe they were you know,
Speaker 1: just happened to have p FASS in the water for
Speaker 1: unexplained reasons. But it sounds like what we're really talking
Speaker 1: about here are you know, communities that are near military bases.
Speaker 1: Those that's where the problem is most acute. Correct, And
Speaker 1: it seems like the military is a little let's let's
Speaker 1: say ambivalent. That might be the most charitable way to
Speaker 1: put it about its role in this in this issue.
Speaker 1: You know, they're trying to work with the EPA to
Speaker 1: develop clean up standards for how to clean this out
Speaker 1: of water. But the military could be on the hook
Speaker 1: for literally billions of dollars in future cleanup costs. And
Speaker 1: I think they have budgetary priorities just like any other
Speaker 1: federal agency, and they're getting a little worried. Is that
Speaker 1: fair to say? Sure? I think as we're starting to
Speaker 1: find out the health effects of these chemicals and slowly
Speaker 1: determining what standards to use to clean them up, the
Speaker 1: Department of Defenses thinking about, you know, how much is
Speaker 1: this eventually going to cost us in the long run,
Speaker 1: and it is probably billions of dollars. Yeah, we're talking
Speaker 1: I think the two years ago I heard someone say
Speaker 1: two billion dollars, And that was two years ago, and
Speaker 1: we knew a lot less about pfas back then, and
Speaker 1: especially if the EPA implements really tight standards for cleaning
Speaker 1: up out of water, that two billion dollars is going
Speaker 1: to look small compared to what it will be you know, right,
Speaker 1: it could be a lot more ten years from now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, that was Bloomberg Environment Sylvia Carridenin and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Environments myself talking about p FAS chemicals. For much much
Speaker 1: more of our reporting on this issue, visit our website
Speaker 1: at newsdop Bloomberg Environment dot com. That website once again
Speaker 1: is NEWSTT Bloomberg and Environment dot com. This episode of
Speaker 1: pars Revillion was produced by myself with up from Jessica Cooms.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Marissa Horn and our audio engineer is
Speaker 1: Nicholas Anzelata. Special help today from Pat Rizzuto, Bloomberg Environments
Speaker 1: Chemicals Reporter. Thanks Pat. The music for pars Pervilion is
Speaker 1: a message by Jizar and thank you for listening.