Drinking water consumed by millions of Americans from hundreds of communities spread across the United States is contaminated with dangerous levels of toxic chemicals, according to testing data released Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The data shows that drinking water systems serving small towns to large cities – from tiny Collegeville, Pennsylvania, to Fresno, California – contain measurable levels of so-called “forever chemicals”, a family of durable compounds long used in a variety of commercial products but that are now known to be harmful.
The water of as many as 26 million Americans is contaminated, according to an analysis of the new EPA data performed by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a Washington DC based nonprofit.
The latest science is clear: exposure to certain PFAS, also known as forever chemicals, over long periods of time is linked to significant health risks,” Radhika Fox, EPA assistant administrator for wWater, said in the release.
But the road ahead remains perilous, says Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, a Pennsylvania-based environmental nonprofit that has pressed state regulators and the EPA for nearly two decades to take decisive action on PFAS.
But a report by Eurofins Eaton Analytical laboratories, a California-based lab that performed some of the earlier testing for the EPA, found that by using more accurate technology available at the time, the chemicals were actually present in an estimated 28% of systems.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Drinking water consumed by millions of Americans from hundreds of communities spread across the United States is contaminated with dangerous levels of toxic chemicals, according to testing data released Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The data shows that drinking water systems serving small towns to large cities – from tiny Collegeville, Pennsylvania, to Fresno, California – contain measurable levels of so-called “forever chemicals”, a family of durable compounds long used in a variety of commercial products but that are now known to be harmful.
The water of as many as 26 million Americans is contaminated, according to an analysis of the new EPA data performed by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a Washington DC based nonprofit.
The latest science is clear: exposure to certain PFAS, also known as forever chemicals, over long periods of time is linked to significant health risks,” Radhika Fox, EPA assistant administrator for wWater, said in the release.
But the road ahead remains perilous, says Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, a Pennsylvania-based environmental nonprofit that has pressed state regulators and the EPA for nearly two decades to take decisive action on PFAS.
But a report by Eurofins Eaton Analytical laboratories, a California-based lab that performed some of the earlier testing for the EPA, found that by using more accurate technology available at the time, the chemicals were actually present in an estimated 28% of systems.
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