There’s always a lag in understanding the consequences
If you’re a bit mystified by all the talk about “PFAS,” fire-fighting foam, Fairchild Air Force Base, and Spokane International Airport you’re not alone. Why is it relevant to folks other than those with water wells on the West Plains? How does this story fit into the larger picture?
PFAS stands for Per- and polyFluoro Alkyl Substances, a class of chemicals invented in the 1940s that previously did not occur in nature. Heralded by the chemical industry for their impressive slipperiness and water-repellant qualities, PFAS in all their variations came into widespread use over the next half century for everything from making stain-resistant carpets (Scotchgard) and clothing (Gore-Tex) to effective suppressants for fuel fires at airports. Along with those useful qualities of PFAS come two other less recognized properties: PFAS tend to bio-accumulate, that is, animals and plants concentrate these chemicals in their tissues and, since the carbon-fluorine bond is one of the most durable bonds in chemistry, PFAS are incredibly persistent in the environment and in biologic systems. (Hence, PFAS is what’s meant when you hear about “Forever Chemicals.”)
To understand how the world became aware of the health and environmental concerns around PFAS, I strongly recommend you spend a couple of hours (and $4) streaming the movie Dark Waters (2019) on YouTube. (And/or read the reporting on which the movie is based: see next paragraph for a link.) Either way, understand that the PFAS chemicals they focus on in the “Dark Waters” story are the same predominant chemicals that are seeping through the ground water on the West Plains. Those main PFAS chemicals are PFOA and PFOS. PFOA (aka “C8” for its eight carbon atom backbone) which was used for decades in the manufacture of Teflon and Gore-Tex. It was an essential ingredient in the Aqueous Film-Forming Foams (AFFFs) used in fire-fighting at airports like Fairchild and SIA. PFOS was also used in AFFFs and was once the primary ingredient in Scotchgard.
“Dark Waters” is based on the excellent 2016 New York Times Magazine investigative article “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare.” Click the following link to read the story (It is a “gift article”, i.e. there should be no paywall.):
An important point from this whole story is that the funding (and the spur) for a key scientific study that clearly demonstrated the health risks of PFAS ingestion resulted only from this high profile lawsuit documented in the NYT article and the movie. Discovery and production of thousands (if not millions) of tons of PFAS—and the dissemination of PFAS based products—pre-dated the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. PFAS production and use was therefore “grandfathered” in.
PFOA and PFOS are now banned and/or phased out of production in much of the world, but we are left with the residual chemical contamination seeping into the groundwater from a multitude of sites, including many airports.
Judging by his actions, Spokane County Commissioner Al French that would rather that the extent of PFAS contamination on the West Plains remain under-investigated, swept under the rug, and the health risks faced by constituents drinking contaminated well water remain hidden from view. French’s associate, Larry Krauter, CEO of Spokane International Airport, would rather lobby to change the regulations than to acknowledge the risk and make efforts to mitigate it. There must be some deeply-seated belief among these people that those living on the West Plains are somehow expendable in the pursuit of industrial development and monetary value of the property around the airport. Officials that fail to put the health of their constituents first don’t deserve to remain in office.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. For a glimpse of the science behind quantifying the health risks of PFOA (=C8) in humans check out this website: C8 Science Panel. Much of this research (perhaps all of it) came about as a result of the lawsuit detailed in “Dark Waters.” (Note that PFOA is only one of the PFAS. This is just the tip of the research iceberg investigating the adverse health associations of these “forever chemicals.”) The overall conclusion: “For six disease categories, the Science Panel concluded that there was a Probable Link to C8 exposure: diagnosed high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, testicular cancer, kidney cancer, and pregnancy-induced hypertension.”
P.P.S. THE LARGER PATTERN: The PFAS story is another example of a repeating pattern. A product, tobacco, for example, is packaged in a new way (cigarettes) or invented in a lab (PFAS). The product or chemical is found enjoyable or useful in some way. The product’s advantages are marketed to the public. (In the tobacco example the marketing included the infamous physician endorsements of smoking.) Thanks to marketing and peer pressure the product becomes embedded in our lives. (Smoking becomes ubiquitous; Teflon-lined pots and pans were found in most kitchens; Scotchgard becomes a household name.) The people and companies making the product happily make profits—and are generally and genuinely convinced that they are doing something good for consumers. Everybody’s happy.
Then someone notices that people exposed to high doses of the product sometimes exhibit health problems that might be related to that exposure. (Lung cancer in heavy smokers, kidney cancer in DuPont chemical workers exposed to PFOS.) Researchers, spurred by such observations, expose animals in the laboratory to relatively high doses of the product and observe a higher incidence of a health effect in the exposed animals when compared to unexposed control groups (where the exposure or non-exposure is the only variable). Of course, unlike humans, the experimental animals are relatively genetically homogeneous and, since they have naturally shorter life spans than human, the effects of exposure appear on a shorter time scale.
Usually by this time the corporations making profits from producing and selling the product shift into high gear pumping out propaganda questioning the validity of the laboratory studies. (An unrealistically high dose was administered, lab rats aren’t humans, the results are only suggestive, grandma smoked all her life and lived to be a hundred, etc., etc.)
Testing in humans to gather evidence of health effects is where things get complicated—and expensive. It is unethical to intentionally expose one group of human subjects to a chemical, drug, or product suspected of having health effects while monitoring a carefully matched, unexposed control group and compare the difference in outcomes. Consequently, scientists, including epidemiologists and statisticians, work to understand the risk of exposure by comparing a group of people exposed to the chemical, drug, or product to an unexposed group. The quality of such studies in humans depends on a multitude of factors including the extent of the exposure (which varies, of course) and the matching of the two groups for age, gender, race, other exposures, etc. The best studies have large numbers of well matched participants in which the two groups are followed for a period of time and the outcomes compared (a “prospective study”). The conclusions of any study are enhanced by extensive “peer review” in which other scientists examine the details of the study for biases that might affect the result.
It is no wonder, then, that concluding that a low level exposure to a chemical, drug, or product has nasty health effects over the remainder of a human life always requires years, often decades, to come to light. The original glow of the discovery and popularization of the product starts to dim. This is a pattern we’ve seen many times. Examples include cigarette smoking, DDT, trans-fats, chlorofluorocarbons, thalidomide, asbestos, and the burning of carbon-based fuels (see the History section at any of those links for details). Even after a risk is well understood and documented by a majority of the scientific community it still takes years before a clear message is received by the general populace. That is sometimes due to the ongoing efforts of folks with a vested interest in the chemical, drug, or product, folks who are suspicious of science, and people who simply do not wish to hear.
And one final note: Of course there are examples in which one or a few studies claim to demonstrate a risk or benefit that is later thoroughly debunked, but the controversy lingers. A classic example of this is the debunked link between vaccines and autism (Robert F. Kennedy’s favorite topic). More recently, the supposed link between modest amounts of red wine consumption and health benefits was debunked—but I expect it will take decades for that message to penetrate. See “How Red Wine Lost Its Health Halo.” Here’s the link to what should be a free read: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/well/eat/red-wine-heart-health.html?unlocked_article_code=1.aU0.bcG0.t3BkJ1GWLc11&smid=url-share