Testing, mitigation, fear.
All three words are connected to so-called forever chemicals in Orange County, where the industrial toxins once used in everything from non-stick pans and fireproof pajamas to teddy bears and lipstick have been found at levels high enough to pose a local health threat.
And all three words – or at least the ideas they stand for – figure to be particularly germane this summer.
For example, testing related to forever chemicals and Orange County health is about to have a moment.
For the past six years, researchers at UC Irvine have been studying how drinking water that contains PFAS (the scientific term for forever chemicals, a family that includes about 15,000 substances) may have affected the health of people who lived in six north and central county cities (Anaheim, Garden Grove, Orange, Yorba Linda, Santa Ana, Tustin and Irvine) between 2000 and 2019.
The UCI researchers have looked at possible PFAS connections to issues like high cholesterol, obesity and thyroid disease. Other researchers in other studies have focused on questions about such issues as kidney cancer, testicular cancer and early-onset puberty. In all, more than a dozen different health issues have been discussed – and, in some cases, confirmed – as being linked to PFAS.
The UCI study was approved by federal regulators because parts of Orange County have been deemed to have a slightly elevated PFAS exposure. That means testing as recently as 2022 showed more PFAS in north and central county water than is typical of water systems across the country, but less than what’s been found in communities with the highest PFAS-related risk, often rural towns that hosted chemical plants that churned out the stuff for much of the 20th century.
Some preliminary findings from UCI’s research will be made public in an online meeting on July 28, a town hall that also will include reports from researchers working on studies in six other states. (For information about how to attend, go to the PFAS Multi-Site Health Study page on Facebook.)
“The good news is the exposure, locally, is lower than what’s been seen in other communities involved in the study,” said Scott Bartell, an environmental health researcher and public health professor at UC Irvine who has led the local study.
But that might be cold comfort, given that communities in the multi-site study were chosen because of their PFAS exposure.
Bartell also noted that lower exposure doesn’t mean zero health risk.
He said PFAS research, overall, is finding increasingly strong connections between PFAS chemicals and a range of diseases. But Bartell added that specific findings are tough to make, in part, because virtually every human has at least trace levels of PFAS in their body.
“There’s still no control group,” he said.
On the mitigation front, officials from the Orange County Water District said last week that the agency has completed more than half of the new filtration systems and other changes it needs for 102 wells deemed to have too much PFAS to pass federal and state health guidelines.
The agency – which supplies water for most of central and north Orange County – recently applied for about $160 million from a court settlement involving chemical makers such as 3M, DuPont, BFAS and Tyco. While that money will be helpful, agency officials say it’s just a sliver of the $1.8 billion the project figures to cost, locally, over the next few decades.
“From 2021 through 2024, we raised our rates about 10% a year,” said Jason Dadakis, who is overseeing local PFAS mitigation as the agency’s executive director of water quality.
“Hopefully, that should obviate the need, at least in the short-term, for future rate increases.”
The filtration systems built into county wells work in a manner similar to what is used (and recommended) for home tap water; as devices that simply trap and collect PFAS chemicals.
“It’s a physical restraint of molecules,” Dadakis said. “That’s how it works.”
Once collected, PFAS chemicals are viewed as still too toxic to be treated as routine hazardous waste. For now, local PFAS filters are trucked to a demolition plant, in Utah, where they are incinerated at temperatures as high as 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit.
But PFAS chemicals are known as forever chemicals because they don’t break down easily, and the current incineration disposal process presents its own health risks. Because of that, it’s likely to be replaced in the near future, possibly by something even hotter. One proposed alternative, from researchers at State University of New York at Buffalo, would involve industrial-sized microwaves that can reach up to 7,000 degrees Celsius, or roughly as hot as the surface of the sun.
Such extremes – in the nature of PFAS chemicals and in the lengths needed to make those chemicals go away – are one reason why so many non-scientists are starting to care about, and fear, their long-term exposure to forever chemicals. As of Friday, July 18, membership in the Facebook Group “PFAS in the News (And In Your Blood)” had grown to more than 425 people.
Though she’s not part of that group, Judy Suarez, an engineer who lived in Brea during the early 2000s, said she understands the unease that comes with knowing she spent years drinking water that it turns out was less safe than she – and health experts – once believed.
Exactly how unsafe, she said, is the source of her fear.
“It sure feels like it might be a bigger deal than we’ve all been led to believe,” Suarez said.
“Please don’t let me sound like I believe in conspiracies. I don’t,” she added. “But this might actually be worse. Nobody knew how bad these chemicals were and, based on what I’ve read, we’re only starting to figure it out.
“If it turns out I’m ever diagnosed with cancer, or whatever, I’ll definitely have that in the back of my mind
“It’s scary.”