Community Panel demands EPA action at Regional meeting in Horsham

On Wednesday (7/25/2018), Mark Cuker represented Upper Dublin Township at an EPA Region 3 Community Stakeholder Meeting in Horsham, PA concerning PFAS contamination in the drinking water in Upper Dublin, Horsham, Warminster, Warrington, and Warwick Townships.

Mark participated in the community panel with Hope Grosse and Joanne Stanton, two fellow members of the National PFAS Contamination Coalition. The presentation featured powerful videos of interviews and personal stories of affected residents, putting faces to the statistics and humanizing the number of cancer incidents.

The main concerns they emphasized were the spread of contaminants in combination with other toxins, lack of consideration for the most vulnerable populations (namely residents with previous exposure, the elderly, and, most importantly children’s health and safety, inconsistent state and federal responses, lack of transparency, inadequate monitoring and failure to use the best available technology to address the contamination, lack of enforceable regulations, and the financial burden of making residents pay for clean drinking water and blood testing. Mark, Hope, and Joanne therefore urged the EPA and the U.S. Government to provide blood testing for all residents, and regulate PFAS chemicals as a class with a national enforceable maximum contaminant level.

The full list of Community Panel recommendations are as follows:

• Establish a maximum contaminant level that is the most protective of our children and other vulnerable populations for all PFAS chemicals
  • The maximum levels recently reported by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) are 7 to 10 times more protective than the EPAs (PFOS 7 micrograms/liter and PFOA 10.5 micrograms/liter)
• Classify PFAS as hazardous substances
• Treat PFAS as a class and regulate them together and not one compound at a time
• Agencies need to evaluate vulnerable water systems not subject to the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR)
• Eaton/Eurofin labs — methods now exist to test for multiple PFAS in water at lower levels than is currently being done now
• Be honest and fully transparent in all the action steps taken to address PFAS contamination
• Use the precautionary principle; resolve all doubts in favor of human health and safety