Drinking water of millions of Americans contaminated with 'forever chemicals'
Source: The Guardian
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 on 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 non-profit. Studies have linked the chemicals to cancers, immunodeficiencies, reproductive harms and developmental effects in children.
Scientists and environmental advocates have increasingly warned about the harms of chemicals like perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) in recent decades, leading to an agreement between the the EPA and chemical manufacturers such as DuPont and 3M to phase out PFOA by 2015.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/17/pfas-us-drinking-water-contaminated-forever-chemicals-epa
EPA data release link - https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-releases-initial-nationwide-monitoring-data-29-pfas-and-lithium

FirstLight
(15,108 posts)It's all the preservatives that are keeping us alive lol
appalachiablue
(43,531 posts)brooklynite
(96,882 posts)BumRushDaShow
(152,972 posts)Evolve Dammit
(20,656 posts)
ffr
(23,185 posts)Stargazer99
(3,203 posts)We would not want corp America to be a responsible enitity-profits you know can't spend money of safety of the general public because no one will do anything about it anyway
Prairie_Seagull
(4,203 posts)They are supposed to be afraid of us. Sure does not seem like it to me.
Many irons in the fire right now but those seem pretty important.