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Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

latimes.com

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Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#41

Post by MisterTea »

hanniabu wrote: post #26
jen_h wrote: post #25

Filter your water if you live anywhere near an airport or military base anywhere, it's not just California. In Satellite Beach, Florida, the contamination from Patrick AFB was discovered after a group of Satellite Beach High alumni realized they all developed cancer around the same time and decided to start digging. [ https://pfasproject.com/2018/08/08/satellite-beach-florida-f... ] They dumped everything in a trench…

> not realizing there was an underground waterflow there I'm amazed whenever I see this. (A) what makes it okay to just dump stuff in a ditch? (B) are these people really clueless that no leaching through soil occurs?

The various secret government programs did whatever it took to protect our precious bodily fluids from foreign contamination. Visible hazardous waste disposal is a great indicator that something interesting going on. So you hide it in a hole and pretend it's for the greater good of whatever dogma you sold your soul to.

Lord knows how much hazardous waste has been carelessly buried under orders from dogmatic maniacs obsessed with "winning" at all cost, including our future.

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#43

Post by jen_h »

nate wrote: post #40
jen_h wrote: post #25

Filter your water if you live anywhere near an airport or military base anywhere, it's not just California. In Satellite Beach, Florida, the contamination from Patrick AFB was discovered after a group of Satellite Beach High alumni realized they all developed cancer around the same time and decided to start digging. [ https://pfasproject.com/2018/08/08/satellite-beach-florida-f... ] They dumped everything in a trench…

I'd also just filter/test your water everywhere :( I'm in Chicago, and my daughter and I decided to test some public water fountains near the city zoo for lead. Thought it would be an interesting way to expose her to more science. I also had a suspicion of water fountains I've been finding now "capped" and no longer working. One of the fountains we tested with a home test kit from Home Depot came up positive for lead…

There's also an epidemic of cyanobacterial (also known as blue green "algae") contamination around the US.

We've traveled all over the country and have personally encountered it everywhere -- from Oregon to New York to central Florida...it's all over the midwest, in the Great Lakes -- seems to be anywhere there's farming.

I'm not sure what you do for that, though -- not sure it can be filtered, and boiling just makes it worse as it's toxic when it's dead. I'm honestly more terrified of cyanobacteria than PFAS, and it's everywhere.

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#44

Post by isthispermanent »

This kind of reminds of when we dump tons of salt on the roads when winter storms come around the east coast. It solves one problem but what other problems is it causing?

It would be incredibly naive to think dumping all these chemicals on the ground wouldn't cause some type of negative externality.

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#45

Post by eloff »

isthispermanent wrote: post #44

This kind of reminds of when we dump tons of salt on the roads when winter storms come around the east coast. It solves one problem but what other problems is it causing? It would be incredibly naive to think dumping all these chemicals on the ground wouldn't cause some type of negative externality.

It rusts cars for one. It could make the soil too salty for growing if runoff accumulates in one place, but usually it will be diluted too much to matter. I don't know if chemicals other than salt are used commonly on roads, that could cause other issues.

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#46

Post by swampthing »

jen_h wrote: post #43
nate wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also just filter/test your water everywhere :( I'm in Chicago, and my daughter and I decided to test some public water fountains near the city zoo for lead. Thought it would be an interesting way to expose her to more science. I also had a suspicion of water fountains I've been finding now "capped" and no longer working. One of the fountains we tested with a home test kit from Home Depot came up positive for lead…

There's also an epidemic of cyanobacterial (also known as blue green "algae") contamination around the US. We've traveled all over the country and have personally encountered it everywhere -- from Oregon to New York to central Florida...it's all over the midwest, in the Great Lakes -- seems to be anywhere there's farming. I'm not sure what you do for that, though -- not sure it can be filtered, and boiling just makes…

It's cumbersome, but I think you can use something like Steripen for that (UV).

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#47

Post by analog31 »

eloff wrote: post #45
isthispermanent wrote: post #44

This kind of reminds of when we dump tons of salt on the roads when winter storms come around the east coast. It solves one problem but what other problems is it causing? It would be incredibly naive to think dumping all these chemicals on the ground wouldn't cause some type of negative externality.

It rusts cars for one. It could make the soil too salty for growing if runoff accumulates in one place, but usually it will be diluted too much to matter. I don't know if chemicals other than salt are used commonly on roads, that could cause other issues.

Calcium chloride is also used -- it is more effective per pound and is thus cheaper to transport, plus it works at lower temperatures. And it rusts cars even more aggressively.

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#48

Post by s0rce »

swampthing wrote: post #46
jen_h wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also an epidemic of cyanobacterial (also known as blue green "algae") contamination around the US. We've traveled all over the country and have personally encountered it everywhere -- from Oregon to New York to central Florida...it's all over the midwest, in the Great Lakes -- seems to be anywhere there's farming. I'm not sure what you do for that, though -- not sure it can be filtered, and boiling just makes…

It's cumbersome, but I think you can use something like Steripen for that (UV).

That might kill the algae but likely won't destroy most of the toxins in the water that the algae produce. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanotoxin

Re: Firefighting foam leaves toxic legacy in Californians’ drinking water

#50

Post by bluGill »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #14
mschuster91 wrote: post #2

> The Air Force delivered free five-gallon jugs of water to the Mendez home for more than two years. In 2018, it paid to have the house connected to the municipal water system. Ruben Mendez said he now pays $100 a month for water he used to get for free. Sorry, what? 100$ a month for residential water ? Either this guy is running a farm operation or something is seriously broken.

Nobody running a farm is wasting expensive municipal water on irrigation when they have a perfectly functional well on the property. I'm not sure it's even possible to run an economically solvent farming operation off municipal water in the US for any crop other than maybe indoor weed.

Many farms in the US run off a municipal water supply. Only in the west do farms have irrigation systems. When you get east of the Missouri river there is enough rainfall to water the crops and so you don't have any irrigation needs (I don't know why the climate changes so drastically on this line but it does). Even if you have a well, if you are east of the river it is only for household and livestock use, not irrigation.
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