{"id":1247,"date":"2023-03-15T13:38:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-15T17:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/?p=1247"},"modified":"2023-03-15T13:38:00","modified_gmt":"2023-03-15T17:38:00","slug":"epa-says-no-amount-of-pfas-is-safe-in-drinking-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/education\/epa-says-no-amount-of-pfas-is-safe-in-drinking-water\/","title":{"rendered":"EPA says no amount of PFAS is safe in drinking water"},"content":{"rendered":"

HOOSICK FALLS- Federal regulators Tuesday called for stringent new limits on PFAS substances — including a variant that a decade ago threw this Rensselaer County community into a health crisis<\/a> over water pollution.<\/p>\n

The Environmental Protection Agency said that no amount of PFAS or polyfluoroalkyl substances is safe for drinking water. They are calling for a maximum legal level, which represents the limit of enforceability, of no more than 4 parts per trillion.<\/p>\n

\n

That\u2019s less than half of New York\u2019s existing limit of 10 parts per trillion and far tougher than the existing federal cap of 70 parts per trillion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s welcome news for the rest of the country. Unfortunately we were almost the guinea pigs to get it to that level,\u201d said Michael Hickey, whose father John died of cancer.\u00a0 The cancer that afflicted Hickey, as well as maladies such as thyroid problems that hit other Hoosick Falls residents, prompted Michael Hickey to begin prodding state officials to investigate the public water supply.<\/p>\n

Hoosick Falls\u2019 water was found to be contaminated with high levels of PFOA, a PFAS variation, coming from several plastics and chemical plants in the area, including the Saint-Gobain plastics factory where John Hickey had worked.<\/p>\n

What ensued was a years-long saga in which townspeople and environmental activists finally convinced the state departments of Health and Environmental Conservation to investigate and then take measures to contain the problem.<\/p>\n

Currently, Hoosick Falls has a carbon charcoal filtration system for its water and officials plan to find an alternate, permanent water supply away from the polluted groundwater wells. There remains some outstanding litigation remaining from the lawsuits, and $90 million<\/a> in settlements, that resulted from the contamination.<\/p>\n

Read more from Rick Karlin of The Times-Union<\/em>:\u00a0 https:\/\/www.timesunion.com\/news\/article\/epa-says-no-amount-pfas-safe-drinking-water-17839125.php?IPID=Times-Union-HP-state-package<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HOOSICK FALLS- Federal regulators Tuesday called for stringent new limits on PFAS substances — including a variant that a decade ago threw this Rensselaer County community into a health crisis over water pollution. The Environmental Protection Agency said that no amount of PFAS or polyfluoroalkyl substances is safe for drinking water. They are calling for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1865,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1865"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1248,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions\/1248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}