Water of about 26 million is contaminated as new data offers the most robust look into exactly which communities are polluted
  • AutoTL;DRBEnglish
    5•1 year ago

    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.

    I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • @WagnasT@iusearchlinux.fyiEnglish
    5•1 year ago

    Not to downplay that this is terrible but you should know there have been studdies that show you can reduce the amount of forever chemicals in your blood by donating blood regularly, among other health benefits like getting paid for it.

    • Unaware7013
      6•1 year ago

      Pretty sure you can’t get paid for donating whole blood, but you can for plasma.

      • @WagnasT@iusearchlinux.fyiEnglish
        3•1 year ago

        Many places will give you gift cards, donating plasma also has the effect of reducing pfas in your blood (allegedly) and you get real money.

        • Unaware7013
          4•1 year ago

          Interesting. I’ve only ever donated whole blood to the Red Cross, and they explicitly said they don’t do any kind of reimbursement when I asked. But that was a decade ago while I was donating plasma and needed the extra money and couldn’t take not being able to do ate for a few months.

          • @QuikxSpec@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2•1 year ago

            Oneblood offers jncentives to get more people to donate. Not much but about $200 per year + donation themed clothing, blankets, towels locally. Platelets get about $250. These numbers are getting lower each year

          • @WagnasT@iusearchlinux.fyiEnglish
            1•1 year ago

            You can get paid way more for plasma, the places where I live take hours though so it may not be worth it. I just donate whole blood and Oneblood gives me gift cards and swag, the double walled water bottles last time were surprisingly good quality, and probably lined with pfas.

  • @sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
    2•1 year ago

    The good news is that I’m probably unaffected. The bad news is that I have family areas that probably have high concentration (from the follow-up study mentioned in the article that reduced the impacted population to 28M).