A class of chemicals known to cause serious health issues is found to be present in the tap water supplies of millions of U.S. citizens, according to a new study.
Researchers estimated that “71 to 95 million people in the conterminous United States potentially rely on groundwater with detectable concentrations of PFAS for their drinking-water supplies prior to any treatment.” This comes to roughly 20 percent to 27 percent of Americans being exposed to PFAS. Forever chemicals “have contaminated drinking water supplies across the United States owing to their long-term and widespread use,” the study said.
Americans may “unknowingly be drinking water that contains PFAS because of a lack of systematic analysis, particularly in domestic water supplies.” In their analysis, researchers collected PFAS samples from several types of well networks in the country. Observation wells, used to gauge changes in groundwater levels over a period of time, had the highest occurrence rate for PFAS.
Forty-two percent of public water supplies, 29 percent of water used for irrigation and other purposes, and 17 percent of domestic wells contained PFAS. “The higher detection frequencies found for observation wells may be because the wells are typically shallower than other well types, as they were designed to monitor shallow water in agricultural and urban land use settings,” the study stated. Out of the 24 PFAS chemicals analyzed, at least one was detected in 37 percent of all groundwa.