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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

#91

Post by ubertoop »

agapean wrote: post #74
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…

I'd like to hear more about your neighbors experiencing autoimmune disorders. My wife is going through something similar. She has been the picture of health until this past year when she suddenly started exhibiting many symptoms that point to thyroid disorder, yet her endocrinologist says there is nothing wrong with her thyroid. She grew up in Southern California, so if the women in your community are finding success…

I'm so sorry to hear about your wife. I recommend getting multiple opinions. Unfortunately, much of this research is new and largely varies from doctor to doctor. I don't know specifics (since I'm luckily not a patient) but from what I've heard, there are many different metrics to look at. It's not as simple as any one blood marker.

As for treatments, I wish I had good news. Unfortunately, the women I know who are dealing with this are not seeing great results at all. Some have tried IGIF, Methotrexate, and steroids. It's difficult to call any of their treatments a 'success'. I guess if you consider the fact that they're still alive, that's success... But their quality of life is a fraction of what it once was.

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

#93

Post by strainer »

isthispermanent wrote: post #81
strainer wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are confusing different classes of chemical contaminants. Rock salt which is spread on roads consists of a chemical subset of seasalt - which is completely safe to humans as evidenced by healthy coastal communities. The contaminants discussed here are of an entirely different class, they are toxic at trace levels. Sea salt and rock salt are ubiquitous natural materials, if they were toxic at low levels plagues of…

It's not just about humans. Waterways, wildlife, agriculture. The term "Salt the Earth" is shorthand for covering land with enough salt to prevent anything from growing. Whether it's directly benign to humans is one thing, but the indirect effects are hard to account for.

That phrase appears to be apocryphal, salt quickly disperses in practice and no land has ever been known to be deliberately contaminated by it.

I feel these vague worries about road salting relate to this article about highly toxic contamination as a kind of "what-about-ery" but are even less connected by having been introduced as "kind-of-reminds-me-about-ery".

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

#94

Post by coryrc »

mrguyorama wrote: post #62
eloff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Northern Maine is too poor to afford significant amounts of road salt, so they supplement heavily with plain dirt and sand.

No, it's because salt stops working below a certain temperature.

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

#95

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

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…

The trick with algae is to stop it before it happens, which mostly deals with agricultural runoff.

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

#96

Post by jen_h »

Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote: post #95
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…

The trick with algae is to stop it before it happens, which mostly deals with agricultural runoff.

Herbicides, specifically (https://ohioseagrant.osu.edu/news/2009/fe052/researchers-stu...). The stuff has adapted to eat glyphosate like candy. Makes sense when you see where it flourishes (like wheat and sugarcane-growing areas -- The Army Corps of Engineers' Lake Okeechobee releases fuel the blooms on the west and east coasts of Florida).

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

#97

Post by erentz »

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, etc. but it doesn’t feel like it and multiple people are having the same bad feeling.

There’s little overlap the people affected though. (The closest thing to a cluster would be Silicon Valley.) I really do hope that the health agencies and CDC are properly doing their job and we’re not missing some response developing to a fairly widespread unrecognized pollutant.

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

#98

Post by sgc »

philipkglass wrote: post #68
sgc wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zeolites are one of the widely used alternatives developed specifically to replace salt use. They are an oil derivative, so I am not hopeful of their long term effects. They are also very expensive comparatively.

Zeolites are used as catalysts in processing oil, but they're not oil derivatives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite

Yes, I was wrong due to lack of research. I knew someone who had worked a lot on them at Chevron when i was a kid and just presumed.

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

#99

Post by masklinn »

s0rce wrote: post #48
swampthing wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do the toxins get carried on along with distillation as well?

That's ridiculously energy-intensive and you'd probably have to re-mineralise it before storage or consumption to be on the safe side. Cooking might actually be the worst issue here, low-mineralisation cooking water would leech minerals out, leading to lower nutrient intake (unless yo keep the cooking water for drinking).

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

#100

Post by mntmoss »

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. The South Bay is dotted with industrial Superfund sites and there are a lot of unknowns about when and where they'll leak out.
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