{"id":20765,"date":"2016-05-19T20:20:51","date_gmt":"2016-05-20T01:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20765"},"modified":"2016-05-19T20:20:51","modified_gmt":"2016-05-20T01:20:51","slug":"with-new-epa-advisory-dozens-of-communities-suddenly-have-dangerous-drinking-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20765","title":{"rendered":"With New EPA Advisory, Dozens of Communities Suddenly Have Dangerous Drinking Water"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WITH NEW EPA ADVISORY, DOZENS OF COMMUNITIES SUDDENLY HAVE DANGEROUS DRINKING WATER<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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THE EPA ANNOUNCED\u00a0new drinking water health advisory levels today for the industrial chemicals\u00a0PFOA<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0PFOS<\/a>. The new levels \u2014 .07 parts per billion (ppb) for both chemicals\u00a0\u2014 are significantly lower than standards the agency issued in 2009, which were .4 ppb for PFOA and .2 ppb for PFOS. In areas where both PFOA and PFOS are present, the advisory suggests a maximum combined level of .07 ppb. While the old levels were calculated based on the assumption that people were drinking the contaminants only for weeks or months, the new standards assume lifetime exposure and reflect more recent research.<\/p>\n

The new federal standards may unify what has been an inconsistent official response to the presence of these perfluorinated chemicals, or PFCs, in drinking water. They will also instantaneously create official water contamination crises in dozens of cities and towns across the country.<\/p>\n

According to the EPA\u2019s most recent\u00a0data<\/a>\u00a0on unregulated drinking water contaminants, released in January, 14 drinking water systems around the country reported levels of PFOA that exceed the new federal threshold, while 40 reported PFOS above the new cutoff. In all, water systems in 18 states, as well as in Guam, are contaminated.<\/p>\n

Some of these water systems have already begun to quietly address the problem. In Suffolk County, New York, where public drinking water wells show PFOS levels of .33 and .53 ppb, the contaminated water \u201chas either been blended with other wells to reduce the level of the compound to non-detection or their use has been limited to the greatest extent possible,\u201d according to Kevin Durk, director of water quality and laboratory services for the Suffolk County Water Authority. Though he does not know the level of PFOS in the water that comes out of local taps, Durk wrote in an email that \u201cit is a virtual certainty that levels of any detected chemical would have been reduced.\u201d<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WITH NEW EPA ADVISORY, DOZENS OF COMMUNITIES SUDDENLY HAVE DANGEROUS DRINKING WATER THE EPA ANNOUNCED\u00a0new drinking water health advisory levels today for the industrial chemicals\u00a0PFOA\u00a0and\u00a0PFOS. The new levels \u2014 .07 parts per billion (ppb) for both chemicals\u00a0\u2014 are significantly lower than standards the agency issued in 2009, which were .4 ppb for PFOA and .2 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1470,11628,5567],"class_list":["post-20765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-epa","tag-sharon-lerner","tag-the-intercept"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20766,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20765\/revisions\/20766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}