Study details

PFAS are chemicals that repel oil and water and take a long time to breakdown, Vox reports. Exposure to these chemicals has been linked to certain medical conditions, including cancer, hypertension during pregnancy, and weakened immune systems in children.

For the study, researchers looked at tap water from 716 locations, including 447 that relied on public water supplies and 269 that relied on private wells, from 2016 to 2021.

"USGS scientists tested water collected directly from people's kitchen sinks across the nation, providing the most comprehensive study to date on PFAS in tap water from both private wells and public supplies," said Kelly Smalling, a USGS research hydrologist and lead author on the study.

According to Smalling, the study "estimates that at least one type of PFAS — of those that were monitored — could be present in nearly half of the tap water in the U.S." and that concentrations of PFAS "were similar between public supplies and private wells."

The researchers found the highest concentrations of PFAS chemicals in urban areas and certain regions of the United States, including the Great Plains, Great Lakes, Eastern Seaboard, and Central and Southern California.

Reaction

Jamie DeWitt, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at East Carolina University, said she was unsurprised by the study's findings.

 "There's been almost no place scientists have looked where they have not found PFAS," she said.

Elsie Sunderland, a professor of environmental chemistry at Harvard University, said the study's findings were "alarming" but cautioned, "I would be careful in extrapolating that conclusion to the entire country" since the sample size was too small.

Experts told Vox the only way PFAS chemicals can be removed is if companies either reduce their usage of PFAS chemicals or pay for cleanup. Currently, the government hasn't prevented companies from using PFAS chemicals and dumping them into public wastewater systems, according to Scott Faber, an SVP at the Environmental Working Group (EWG).

"We should be treating this problem where it begins, instead of putting up a stoplight after the accident," he said. "We should be requiring polluters to treat their own wastes."

"The issue and the cost and the burden of all this shouldn't fall on communities, it shouldn't fall on the consumer," said Tasha Stoiber, a senior scientist at EWG. "It's the polluter that needs to pay."

If individuals are concerned about the possibility their tap water contains PFAS chemicals, they can check with their public utility or have their private well tested.

"If the person has publicly supplied water, they should be able to obtain a report from their local utility. Otherwise, they also can search the tap water database from the Environmental Working Group," DeWitt said. "If the person is on a private well, unless they are covered by a court order due to known contamination, they will have to send their water out for testing on their own. Many departments of public health have recommendations on where water can be sent for different types of testing."

There are also a number of water filters that can remove PFAS chemicals. A 2020 study found that reverse osmosis water filters, which can be installed under a kitchen sink, are over 90% effective at screening out the chemicals.

The study also found that activated carbon filters can also reduce PFAS levels by 73%, however there was more variability than with the reverse osmosis filters.

Experts also noted that drinking filtered water is a better alternative than switching exclusively to bottled water, which can be expensive, wasteful, and could contain contaminants as well.

"Bottled water is known to have high concentrations of PFAS. There was a case in Massachusetts a couple of years ago where bottled water had very high concentrations of PFAS in it because it was sourced from PFAS-contaminated water," Sunderland said. "So I think you're better off drinking filtered water from a known source." (Zhou, Vox, 7/7; Falconer, Axios, 7/7; Flesher, Associated Press, 7/5)

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