Adding insult to the injury of our antiquated, failing water infrastructure and lack of a National Water Plan comes the PFAs carcinogenic water contaminant affectionately referred to by scientists as “Forever Contaminants”. The good news is that PFAs does not discriminate. Regardless of race, creed, location or economic status, we have all consumed PFAs in our water and will continue to do so perhaps for decades yet to come. My use of the phrase “good news” is of course sarcastic for these contaminants may the the most dangerous and pervasive to ever contaminate our water supplies.
What exactly are PFAs? The acronym stands for Per-Fluoro Alkyl substances. These are the chemicals used to make non-stick cookware and the many fire retardants used by our fire fighters as well as by personal fire extinguishers. We have been dumping these pollutants all across our lands for decades and now chemical analyses finds them in our drinking water, far and wide, all across the globe.
PFAs are called forever chemicals because they are extremely stable and just like plastics, do not break down. The real danger to us is that most of our current treatment plants do not have the technology to remove PFAs and at least for now point-of-use home filtration will be our best bet. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of options available to the consumer right now that remove PFAs. Hopefully, before long we will see new products that can remove these nefarious contaminants.