Michigan lawmakers hold virtual town hall regarding PFAS contamination

More legislation needed to address emerging contaminant

by ELINOR EPPERSON
Contributor

Contamination by PFAS and other “forever chemicals” should be a priority for elected officials in southeast Michigan, legislators and advocates said at a virtual town hall on Monday, Sep 13. The event was the latest in a series of information sessions hosted by state Sen. Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor).

“PFAS is everywhere,” said state Rep. Yousef Rabhi (D-Ann Arbor). “PFAS” stands for per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a family of man-made chemicals in use worldwide since the 1940s.

PFAS is used in a variety of household and commercial products to make them grease or water-resistant. It can be found in food packaging, nonstick cookware, and fire-fighting foams. These chemicals can leech into drinking water or food and stay there for a very long time, earning them the moniker “forever chemicals.”

“They’re very slippery,” says Rebecca Meuninck, meaning PFAS compounds travel quickly through various substances and are difficult to filter out. Meuninck is the deputy director of the Ecology Center in Ann Arbor, a nonprofit that conducts studies and provides public education on a variety of environmental health subjects. At the town hall, Meuninck emphasized that preventing exposure to PFAS is the best way to protect community health.

PFAS builds up in organic tissue over time and is very difficult to break down due to the “strong carbon-fluorine bonds” that are part of all PFAS compounds. PFAS can negatively affect liver tissue, pregnancy outcomes, and thyroid and cholesterol levels, according to the EPA. PFOA, a PFAS compound, has been linked to cancer in humans.

“They’re useful, but also really harmful,” Meuninck says. There are over 5,000 types of PFAS compounds, making them difficult to research and regulate. Besides consumer products, PFAS is also used in several manufacturing processes. Plants that produced auto parts, leather, and paint have contaminated several sites in Michigan.

This kind of contamination led Sandy Wynn-Stelt and Robert Kerr to form the Great Lakes PFAS Action Network (GLPAN) this year. The organization works to connect those directly impacted by PFAS contamination with experts such as the Ecology Center.

Wynn-Stelt and Kerr spoke at the town hall about their personal experiences with industrial PFAS contamination in West Michigan. Wynn-Stelt’s drinking water was contaminated by a tannery operated by Wolverine World Wide since 1958.

The Michigan PFAS Response and Action Team (MPART), created in 2017 by an executive order from then-governor Rick Snyder’s office, has been investigating potential sources of PFAS in drinking water. So far, it has identified over 180 contaminated sites in the state. Of these, six are in Washtenaw County.

This does not include the Tribar-owned Adept Plastics Finishing Inc. facility, which city officials have said is the source of PFAS contamination in the Huron River through several counties.

The Environmental Working Group, a non-profit dedicated to reforming chemical safety and agriculture laws across the United States, estimates that as many as 2,400 drinking water systems across the country are contaminated with PFAS. The EPA issues health advisories for areas with detected PFAS levels at or over 70 parts per trillion. However, these advisories are “non-enforceable and non-regulatory” and only exist to guide state, local, and tribal governments.

“Regulations haven’t caught up” with the problem PFAS poses, Rabhi said at the town hall. He recently introduced HB 5250 into the Michigan House of Representatives. The bill proposes banning the manufacture, sale, and distribution of food packaging that contains PFAS, bisphenols, or phthalates. Rabhi wants to ensure that Michigan residents “aren’t buying poison.”

Rabhi is also an advocate of “polluter pay” bills, which would require private entities that pollute a given area to pay for clean up. In 2019, Rabhi and Irwin introduced identical legislation in their respective chambers requiring corporations to pay to clean up any drinking water sources they contaminate. The bill never left the House.

“We have no way to hold [polluters] accountable,” Wynn-Stelt said at the town hall. Currently, the only way to require polluters to pay for clean up is through litigation. In 2017, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE), Plainfield and Algoma townships sued Wolverine World Wide for dumping tannery waste containing PFAS into the townships’ groundwater supply. The company settled for $69.5 million in 2020.

On the federal level, U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Ann Arbor) sponsored HR 2467, also known as the PFAS Action Act of 2021. If enacted, the bill would add PFAS to a list of “hazardous chemicals” that the federal government is legally required to clean up. HR 2467 passed the U.S. House of Representatives and has been sitting in the Senate since late July.

“We need to have the political will to phase out all non-essential uses of PFAS,” Meuninck says. She hopes to see legislation in Michigan similar to a “comprehensive” set of bills recently passed in Maine.

In the meantime, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has already issued advisories warning residents not to touch accumulations of foam on the Huron River or eat fish caught there. To filter out as much PFAS from the drinking water supply as possible, the city installed large granular activated carbon filters in the water treatment plant in 2017. The Ann Arbor Fire Department has switched to a PFAS-free fire-fighting foam.

“The city of Ann Arbor has done a good job,” says Meuninck. Still, she encourages Ann Arbor residents to buy a filter for their home water. A reverse osmosis filter is best for catching the PFAS compounds the city’s plant can’t catch. MPART suggests residents who get their drinking water from a well should get their well water tested.

Meuninck also encourages anyone concerned about PFAS to check out GLPAN’s website and get involved. By spreading awareness and working with legislators to regulate PFAS use, Michigan “can finally turn off the tap on PFAS contamination in Michigan.”

To see a recording of the entire town hall, click here. To learn more about health effects from PFAS exposure, check out this webinar from the Ecology Center.

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