Legislators plan to introduce PFAS bills in both houses

EPA acknowledges PFAS contamination from fluorinated containers

Sen. Jesse Kiehl and Rep. Sara Hannan, both D-Juneau, say they plan to introduce bills during the current legislative session to protect Alaskans from adverse health impacts of unregulated toxin substances.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly known as PFAS, are a group of unregulated man-made chemicals used in many consumer products, in industrial applications and firefighting foams for Class B petroleum and chemical fires. They were first produced in the 1940s by companies including Dupont and 3M, notes Pam Miller, executive director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics and co-chair of Pesticide Action Nexus, which works internationally to make the world toxic free.

PFAS pollution is a public health crisis in Alaska and requires urgent state legislative action, including health protective drinking water standards for the entire class of PFAS chemicals, Miller said.

The legislation should also include providing safe drinking water for contaminated communities, she said. Use of PFAS in firefighting foam, food packaging textiles and other non-essential products also should be banned through legislation, she said.

Contaminated communities also need access to testing of local foods, health care and medical monitoring for early signs of PFAS-related diseases, Miller said.

In Alaska, the dispersive use of AFFF (aqueous film forming foam) on military bases and airports has contaminated the drinking water of communities from the North Slope to Southeast Alaska.

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PFAS are highly toxic at exceedingly low levels of exposure, Miller noted in a mid-January presentation to Anchorage’s Sand Lake Community Council. To date PFAS have been found at over 100 individual sites in nearly 30 locations in Alaska. Ten Alaska communities have PFAS in their drinking water at levels deemed unsafe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and it is likely that the number of communities with contaminated water will grow as more sampling is conducted in the state, she said.

On Friday, Jan. 15, the EPA acknowledged that the agency has found toxic PFAS coating barrels in which widely used pesticides are shipped, raising new public health concerns, according to a statement released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, (PEER).

One day earlier the EPA issued a statement saying that through a coordinated effort by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and a pesticide manufacturer, the EPA determined that fluorinated high-density polyethylene (HDPE) containers used to store and transport a mosquito control pesticide product contain PFAS compounds that are leaching into the pesticide product.

The EPA has issued a request for information under the Toxics Substance Control Act to the company that fluorinates the containers used by certain pesticide manufacturers, requesting information about the process used to treat the containers. The federal agency is also asking that pesticide and other companies using fluorinated containers, and entities that provide container fluorination services engage in good product stewardship and examine their distribution chains to identify potential sources of contamination.

EPA officials said more information on this subject would be posted at epa.gov/pesticides/PFAS-packaging as it becomes available.

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