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The article seems to play extremely fast and loose with watershed vs waste treatment plant sludge vs drinking water all being the same. Which is it? I'm parti

by VLM 10y ago

The article seems to play extremely fast and loose with watershed vs waste treatment plant sludge vs drinking water all being the same. Which is it? I'm particularly interested because I live in a community marked blue and I'm sure our industrially polluted river tested positive, yet our drinking water comes from 800 foot deep wells and is extremely hard although otherwise extremely clean. So are we contaminated because somehow the deep wells are contaminated with just this unusual pollutant, or is our industrially polluted river (or some old industrial EPA superfund site, who knows) verified as being polluted, or is our waste treatment plant essentially failing us? (Or of course a combination) In an era of infotainment and clickbait and fake news its sad to see harvard in the domain name, but its the current year, its not the authors fault that someone is profiting off scientific research, etc. Its surprisingly difficult to figure out the percentage of people who drink deep municipal well water vs groundwater vs near-ground-water (shallow wells often private and contaminated). Therefore I don't know if my situation of drinking deep well water (presumably safe) but living in a contaminated area is unusual or typical.

spydum 10y ago
I must be missing something: doesn't this say published August 2016?
herbps10 10y ago
My understanding is that just because you live in a blue area of the map doesn't mean you have contaminated water. Also, note that this paper only looks at public water supply testing data, not private well water. From the linked article: "From the authors of the study: We have mapped watersheds in the United States that have potentially high concentrations of PFASs based on U.S. EPA data. This does not mean that all drinking water supplies within the highlighted regions contain high PFAS concentrations, but that at least one sample from at least one water supply was reported to be at or above levels considered safe by the U.S. EPA between 2013 and 2015. However, no measurements have been made in many water supplies across the country. We recommend increased monitoring of these contaminants in our drinking water. For more information, please contact the EPA: Cathy Milbourn, Milbourn.cathy@Epa.gov, or Monica Lee, Lee.monica@Epa.gov." I'll follow up with my colleague to see if she has any thoughts.

by VLM 10y ago

spydum 10y ago

I must be missing something: doesn't this say published August 2016?

herbps10 10y ago

My understanding is that just because you live in a blue area of the map doesn't mean you have contaminated water. Also, note that this paper only looks at public water supply testing data, not private well water. From the linked article: "From the authors of the study: We have mapped watersheds in the United States that have potentially high concentrations of PFASs based on U.S. EPA data. This does not mean that all drinking water supplies within the highlighted regions contain high PFAS concentrations, but that at least one sample from at least one water supply was reported to be at or above levels considered safe by the U.S. EPA between 2013 and 2015. However, no measurements have been made in many water supplies across the country. We recommend increased monitoring of these contaminants in our drinking water. For more information, please contact the EPA: Cathy Milbourn, Milbourn.cathy@Epa.gov, or Monica Lee, Lee.monica@Epa.gov." I'll follow up with my colleague to see if she has any thoughts.