School students in Maine BANNED from drinking from water fountains due to dangerous levels of PFAS forever chemicals
Students returning to two schools in Maine have been banned from drinking from the fountain after high levels of PFAS chemicals were found in their drinking water supplies.
Hundreds of students from Mill Pond and Hodgson Middle/High School in Aroostook province, located on the border with Canada, will start the year drinking only bottled water until the tap water filtration installation project is completed.
The two schools were the first in the province to test for PFAS over a year ago and found levels of up to 34 parts per trillion had been reached, well above the safe level of 20 parts per trillion required by the state.
School administrators had hoped that new carbon treatment systems would have solved the problem by the time classes resumed, but the project is not expected to be completed until late November.
Two schools in Hodgdon, Maine, were ordered last year to stop children and staff from drinking water from water fountains and faucets after both schools’ water PFAS levels were found to be well above the state maximum of 20 parts per trillion.
The school system is in the process of installing filtration systems that will remove the vast majority of PFAS from the water, but it’s a costly endeavor that won’t be completed until November at the earliest. Until then, children and staff depend on bottled water
It’s an expensive target, that school superintendent Tyler Putnam said will cost more than the $120,000 grant from the Maine Drinking Water Program.
Mr Putnam said: ‘I know this is a bit of an annoyance to people, you understand this is a process we have to go through, and it’s not an immediate solution, but we’re so glad we have a community that is so supportive. ‘
The state told the Hodgdon school district in December to immediately stop using water in the schools because of dangerously high PFAS levels.
It came amid an increase state-orchestrated water testing of schools, water districts, nursing homes and some housing projects
The district then chose to install a carbon treatment system in which activated carbon absorbs and filters out organic and synthetic compounds.
Mr Putnam added: ‘We will probably consider switching back to using the water system at the end of November. We make sure that the incoming water is treated correctly.’
The schools only switched to bottled water last year and will remain the norm until state testing confirms that the tap water is safe to drink.
The two Maine schools are far from the only ones, not only in the state but also nationwide, to have attempted to test their water believed to be contaminated.
In 2020, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency began testing 90 percent of the state’s public water systems that feed Ohio’s 250 schools and daycare centers for the chemicals.
Also in 2020, Massachusetts state officials are ordering water testing for students in two cities, New Salem and Wendell.
After test results showed high concentrations of certain PFAS chemicals, school boards in both cities approved the installation of special filtration systems.
And five years ago in Michigan, the state announced water testing for about 460 schools and 1,380 public water systems, a $1.7 million undertaking.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are microscopic man-made chemicals that can take thousands of years to break down in the environment or in the human body, hence the name ‘forever chemicals’.
PFAS chemicals give cookware their nonstick quality and raincoats the ability to repel water. They can also be found in firefighting foam and factory runoff that seeps into groundwater.
PFAS also often produces food packaging that ends up in landfills where they can leach into the soil and air over time.
The chemicals seep into the water supply through several mechanisms.
Industrial sites and military bases often produce PFAS runoff, as do agricultural sites using PFAS-laden pesticides, as do sewage treatment plants.
Most studies of the relationship between cancer and PFAS have focused on one of approximately 12,000 chemicals: PFOA.
A 2020 report published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that elevated levels of PFOA in the bloodstream nearly doubled a person’s risk of developing renal cell carcinoma, a type of kidney cancer.
A 2011 study published in the journal Environmental health examined breast cancer rates among Inuit women in Greenland.
The women in the study who had breast cancer also had higher levels of PFOA and another chemical called PFOS in their blood.
They also found that women with breast cancer had higher levels of another group of chemicals called polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
It has also been shown that women exposed to the chemicals during pregnancy are more likely to have an underweight baby.
And the chances of a pregnant woman in the US being exposed to PFAS are high — a CDC report estimated 97 percent of Americans have PFAS in their blood.