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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

#101

Post by gurumeditations »

rhacker wrote: post #51

I feel like everyone thinks Flint and Erin Brockovich were the only two water incidents in the country. If you look for water pollution news - you'll find that places near garbage dumps are coming up highly toxic, all over the country. Everyone seems to think the administration has it under control. They don't. There is benzene, hexavalent chromium and thousands of pollutants found in our water all over the country.…

Our future has really been stolen from us. Decades of pollution from greed and decadence and excess, as Thunberg says “fantasies of eternal economic growth”, have totally destroyed our future (speaking as a young person). Climate change robs us of a stable world, robots rob us of our livelihoods, and decades of ‘economic growth’ have poisoned our bodies and minds from birth through polluted water, air, and food.

Everything is an ecosystem. You can’t have wild growth without paying for it, and the people of the past 75 years have stolen our bright futures from us and stuck us with the bill. Your comment reminded me of just how fucked up everything is. I think the 21st century will be consumed by the efforts to clean up the giant mess the 20th century left us. Goodbye economic growth. They stripmined the timeline and left us nothing.

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

#102

Post by twblalock »

gurumeditations wrote: post #101
rhacker wrote: post #51

I feel like everyone thinks Flint and Erin Brockovich were the only two water incidents in the country. If you look for water pollution news - you'll find that places near garbage dumps are coming up highly toxic, all over the country. Everyone seems to think the administration has it under control. They don't. There is benzene, hexavalent chromium and thousands of pollutants found in our water all over the country.…

Our future has really been stolen from us. Decades of pollution from greed and decadence and excess, as Thunberg says “fantasies of eternal economic growth”, have totally destroyed our future (speaking as a young person). Climate change robs us of a stable world, robots rob us of our livelihoods, and decades of ‘economic growth’ have poisoned our bodies and minds from birth through polluted water, air, and food. Ever…

Cleaning all that stuff up is an opportunity for growth. Entire industries will need to be involved in order to pull it off.

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

#104

Post by sjg007 »

mntmoss wrote: post #100
Apocryphon wrote: post #89

So does this mean San Franciscans should avoid drinking tap water?

City of San Francisco is one of the exceptional ones since it secured the best water from Hetch-Hetchy many generations ago, and the worst that is likely to ever happen is bad pipes, and possibly contaminants in the specific areas that saw military use(i.e. Hunter's Point, Treasure Island, Presidio). Other towns in the Bay Area have something bigger to worry about, OTOH, even tech workers at the major SV campuses. Th…

You basically need to keep your windows open in SV. That and live up in the hills.

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

#105

Post by samatman »

erentz wrote: post #97
ubertoop wrote: post #54

I grew up approximately 2.5 miles from a major rocket manufacturer. We're talking R&D and manufacturing of jet propulsion and rocket systems since the 80s. They totally polluted the water tables in the area with by-products of rocket fuel and other industrial chemicals used to clean engines. They were fined in the 90s and supposedly worked with local water authorities to setup a filtration system... but decades later…

> Even worse... many women from the community I grew up in have developed strange autoimmune disorders in their 40s and 50s. Interesting myself, my wife, and a number of friends have remarked on how a lot of people around us are getting sick with difficult to explain neurological illness in the past few years. I try to keep my skeptical hat on and say it’s all probably within some base rate, and we are just older, et…

Silicon Valley, as the name indicates, was once the world capital of semiconductor manufacture.

It leads the nation in Superfund sites per square mile.

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

#106

Post by rurp »

twblalock wrote: post #102
gurumeditations wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our future has really been stolen from us. Decades of pollution from greed and decadence and excess, as Thunberg says “fantasies of eternal economic growth”, have totally destroyed our future (speaking as a young person). Climate change robs us of a stable world, robots rob us of our livelihoods, and decades of ‘economic growth’ have poisoned our bodies and minds from birth through polluted water, air, and food. Ever…

Cleaning all that stuff up is an opportunity for growth. Entire industries will need to be involved in order to pull it off.

In some cases, sure, where there is a clearly identifiable problem. But widespread pollution is particularly insidious because it can cause large amounts of people to develop serious health issues that have no clear cause and no reliable treatment.

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

#107

Post by gurumeditations »

twblalock wrote: post #102
gurumeditations wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our future has really been stolen from us. Decades of pollution from greed and decadence and excess, as Thunberg says “fantasies of eternal economic growth”, have totally destroyed our future (speaking as a young person). Climate change robs us of a stable world, robots rob us of our livelihoods, and decades of ‘economic growth’ have poisoned our bodies and minds from birth through polluted water, air, and food. Ever…

Cleaning all that stuff up is an opportunity for growth. Entire industries will need to be involved in order to pull it off.

That’s like saying poisoning is good for people because the sicker people are, the more hospitals and doctors you’ll need. The money has to come from somewhere. There is no profit in cleaning up messes, just loss reduction. The money, trillions of dollars just for climate change alone, has to come from somewhere. If past generations had not been so greedy, that money would be in our pockets. Instead, it will be burned because we have to clean up the unfathomable messes older people have created.

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

#108

Post by rsync »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #63
philips wrote: post #49

Can someone recommend a consumer water testing kit that covers things like this?

No, you can't test for PFAS with consumer kit, it's dangerous at 70 parts-per-trillion levels and is tricky to handle without contamination. The test itself is expensive, too. I'm in the part of Rockford, Michigan contaminated by Wolverine/Hush Puppies/Caterpillar shoe leather tannery scraps, and they've paid Rose & Westra GZA to send techs to my house every 6 months. A friend just outside the supposedly affected are…

"In my case, however, a pair of 48"x10" granular activated carbon filters ..."

Are those backwashing filters with a head unit that contains a pump ? What level (micron) of filtration does just that unit achieve ?

Just curious ...

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

#109

Post by trockbort »

aledalgrande wrote: post #85

How can people in the US live with this level of poison in the water? I would think that the government would pick up on it and get it fixed. It is an essential element for life. Even before we start talking to damage to the environment.

The US government is the biggest polluter of them all. The US government does not care about human health or environmental preservation. Yet Americans in general cling to some deep belief that their government cares for them, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

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

#110

Post by AndrewStephens »

CarVac wrote: post #59
ubertoop wrote: post #54

I grew up approximately 2.5 miles from a major rocket manufacturer. We're talking R&D and manufacturing of jet propulsion and rocket systems since the 80s. They totally polluted the water tables in the area with by-products of rocket fuel and other industrial chemicals used to clean engines. They were fined in the 90s and supposedly worked with local water authorities to setup a filtration system... but decades later…

They did all kinds of crazy stuff in the name of rocket science. Nothing like HF as an exhaust gas... Or injecting liquid mercury into an already carcinogenic nitrogen tetroxide/hydrazine-burning chamber to boost the thrust...

For anyone interested in knowing more about the bonkers rocket research that went on in the 60s and 70s, I recommend the book Ignition! by John D Clark.

Publisher's Site: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/ignition/978081359583...

My Review: https://sheep.horse/2019/3/book-_ignition%21_by_john_d_clark...

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