Cumberland County is the latest to approve spending millions to provide public drinking water to two schools and an area with well contamination caused by the Chemours chemical company. Read more.
Tag: chemicals
A group of Democratic West Virginia lawmakers announced plans Monday to introduce legislation to regulate a group of toxic, man-made fluorinated chemicals. Del. Hansen said the bill, which is still being drafted, would require facilities that use or produce PFAS chemicals to disclose that information to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. Read more.
Albany, New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo signed a bill yesterday, December 9, that will ban the sale of certain cleaning products, cosmetics and personal care products. The purpose of the ban is to reduce the risk of drinking water contamination from the 1,4 – dioxane chemical that can still be found in some consumer products. This bill will not go into effect until January 2022. Read More.
Read more from Governor Cuomo’s news release.
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Port Neches Evacuations Increase
On Wednesday (December 4), residents of Port Neches were asked to voluntarily evacuate their homes in response to the TPC Group plant explosion that occurred early last week. Originally ordered to shelter-in-place, residents are now being asked to temporarily vacate the area surrounding the plant to reduce risk of exposure to harmful chemicals still lingering in the air. Read More.
The California Breast Cancer Research Program, in partnership with the California Department of Public Health, the Occupational Health Branch and the University of California, San Francisco, has developed a tool to research women’s exposure to chemicals in the workplace. The goal of the research and the basis behind this tool is to provide women with information on industries that have a higher risk of exposure to
chemicals that may cause breast cancer. The tool shows data on over 160 different occupations in California and data on over 1,000 different chemicals. Read More.
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WVE’s Health First Roadmap
The Women’s Voices for the Earth (WVE) released a report outlining the levels of progress cleaning product companies are making in terms of chemical safety and transparency. The report establishes a “Health First Roadmap” that outlines strategies for companies to follow for chemical safety and compliance that will ultimately put health first. WVE tracked and compared the progress of 6 companies: the Clorox Company, Procter & Gamble, RB, SC Johnson & Son, Inc., Seventh Generation, and Meliora Cleaning Products.
Read the Full Report Here.
Access to the WVE Website
Minden, WV is home to the Shaffer Equipment/Arbuckle Creek Area Superfund Site for nearly 30 years. This past Wednesday, October 23rd, community members met with agency officials from the EPA, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to discuss future plans for the remediation of the site. Plans include further soil and water sampling and excavation and cap repair. The site was placed on the National Priorities List (NPL) in May of 2019 that will help to provide more funds for the sampling and removal of contaminants in and around the river. Read More.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment released a multiyear report examining the impact of oil and gas drilling on residents living within 2,000 feet of fracking sites. The study found that individuals that live in proximity to a site have increased exposure to benzene and other chemicals that cause nosebleeds, headaches, and trouble breathing. Colorado officials are looking into more air monitoring near homes and stricter regulations on air emissions while more research is conducted to fully examine the health risks associated with oil and gas production. Read More.
Represnetative Brian Baldridge proposed a bill that will prohibit Dayton, Ohio fire departments from training with PFAS infused foam. The dangerous chemical has been found to have contaminated an aquifer underneath the fire training center that sources the city’s drinking water. The bill still allows for the use of the foam in necessary fire fighting circumstances; however, departments must find an alternative training source by January 1, 2020. Read More.
By Sharon Franklin
Elizabeth Gribkoff of the Vermont Digger recently reported in her article Years after discovery, PFOA looms over Bennington residents, that individuals such as Sandy Sumner and his wife who live in North Bennington, Vermont have their lives permanently altered by contamination from the former ChemFab plant, a Teflon coating plant. The Sumners use to have a large vegetable patch in front of their house, but they are now afraid to eat anything grown on their property because the soil and groundwater is contaminated with chemicals that are very harmful. When the plant was operational, Sumner and neighbors complained to the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the factory management about the acrid emissions from the smokestacks. Sumner states “My wife and I, we were constantly sick,” “We couldn’t keep our windows and doors open. We got headaches, migraines, sore throats, nosebleeds.” When the plant closed in 2002, the Sumners found out from the state that their drinking water well was contaminated with 580 parts per trillion of Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA — more than 29 times higher than the Vermont drinking water standard.
In April, 2019 the state of Vermont reached a final agreement with Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, the current owner of the ChemFab factory. As stated in the agreement “Under this final settlement, … Saint-Gobain will directly fund a significant portion of the waterline extensions and be responsible for long-term monitoring, the drilling of replacement wells, and the long-term operation and maintenance of in-home treatment systems. Waterline work in the East Side of the Town of Bennington is estimated at $20 to $25 million. Pending final budget approval, the State has agreed to commit $4.7 million to extend waterlines to the maximum extent feasible.”
In the Fall of 2018, Water-line extensions were completed at roughly 200 houses on the western side of the contaminated area, including the Sumners’ home. Construction on the second phase of water line extensions in Bennington has begun, but many homes won’t be connected until 2020. However, the Bennington residents like the Sumners impacted by perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) contamination are still dealing with potential long-term health impacts, costs of water bills and resignation that their properties will be indefinitely contaminated.
Some good news for the Sumners came on August 27, 2019. The lawsuit he and his wife with eight other residents filed against Saint-Gobain, seeking to make the company pay for property damages and long-term medical monitoring for PFOA-related illnesses, took a step forward, when a federal judge allowed the case to advance as a class action.
Sandy Sumner says “We’re not happy to be involved in the class action.”. “It’s stressful. But I wouldn’t shy away from it — it’s too important.” He hopes the lawsuit will help pressure chemical companies to prevent contamination like this from occurring. “Because they’re not going to do it on their own,”.
Jim Sullivan, one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against St. Gobain Performance Plastics, says “The airborne PFOA contamination in Bennington differs from, say, an industrial spill, where the focus is on cleaning up a particular site, “But in this case, the contaminated site is right here, we’re living on it,” he said. “And everybody who’s had their property contaminated is living on the contaminated site.”
Sitting in the living room of his home, Sumner said the impact of the PFOA contamination on the property value remains a “question mark.” As the house is his family’s nest egg, he hopes they can get a good price for it when they eventually go to sell it. “At the same time, anyone who wants to buy this house, I would make damn sure that they knew that even though those flower beds are beautiful, that the soil and groundwater is contaminated”. “And, it will be while you’re living here.”
Photos by: Mike Dougherty/VTDigger