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welcome everyone who's on the line to our Alaska collaborative on health and the environment teleconference this month call is titled holding corporations accountable the role of litigation regulation and research to address the PIA Foss problem and joining us we have the executive director of the green science Policy Institute Arlene Blum and attorney and author Rob bullit I have a few other announcements to make but I just wanted to take a second and welcome you to to our call and and thank you so much for joining us today delighted to be here thank you for putting it on yeah so we're we're pleased I let everyone know that Rob a lot will be traveling to Alaska's capital of Juneau to speak with our state legislators at briefings and a hearing on March 9th so we're organizing a public screening of the film dark waters and an in-person conversation with Rob on the evening of Monday March 9th at 7 p.m. at the Centennial Hall in Juneau and so if this interests you stay tuned to our website or call our office here in Anchorage at 907 two two two seven seven one four so my name is Nick Reardon and on behalf of Alaska community action on toxics I'll be facilitating today's call and for those you not familiar J Alaska it's a regional partnership group of the National collaborative on health and the environment and we aim to advance knowledge and effective action to address these growing concerns about the links between human health and environmental factors and you can find more information at our website a key action org or health and environment org but let's let's get on to the business here I sent a link to dr. blooms presentation slides yesterday to register listeners but you can also find those at our website a take a action org and by clicking on the title of today's call and Rob a lot won't use any slides so don't go searching for those as usual it's an audio-only teleconference on a webinar so you'll need to click through the slides yourself to follow along and the call will be one hour and we'll have about ten minutes at the end well we can invite questions and comments so without further ado yeah we're honored to have in our call today and we'll begin with the founder and executive director of the green science policy council author and research associate in chemistry at UC Berkeley dr. Arlene blue welcome dr. Bluhm yeah you may go ahead and begin well thank you so much for inviting me and for all your great work in Alaska my talks on reducing the use of pee fast for healthier products people and planet and in the second slide it to introduce you to our Institute where scientists who do research but research with a goal of changing policy and purchasing so we write papers and educate decision makers in government and in business educate and have retreats and at our very first retreat we asked the question what do we do about the tens of thousands of chemicals that are an everyday product and that there are a lot of them that we know are harmful and we need to find a way to reduce exposure and there are a number of problems as in slide 3 the Regatta both substitution problem on the left you have a flame retardant called deca ether if you have an older TV about 15 to 20 percent of the weight of the plastic in your TV is indeed deck deck ether and it comes out into dust and can cause harm after years of research it was found to be highly persistent bioaccumulative toxic then there were years of advocacy finally deca eater was phased out and the replacement on the right is deca ethane and very similar in structure function and harm it's expensive to change chemicals and manufacturing processes and the chemical producers often come up with something almost identical where we don't really have enough information and that's the regrettable substitution problem another problem slide four is that there are tens of thousands of chemicals and as I said it takes years of advocacy and research to phase out one and just bewildering array but one solution inside five is to group the chemicals into similar classes with similar structure or function and then we can think about whole classes of chemicals all at once and deal with these overwhelming numbers inside six you can remember - you want to learn more we came up with six classes that contain most of the chemicals of concern and everyday product and we have four minute videos on each of the six classes with an introduction so in seven times for 28 minutes you can learn the basics about these classes where they're use why they're harmful what you can do to reduce exposure and harm and we always put an optimistic story in each class because we are optimistic so once we understand chemicals and we think about them in families we can make big progress today we're going to be talking about the first class highly fluorinated chemicals now all these classes and highly fluorinated chemicals which are now being called p5 that are have had valuable uses so we don't say you should never use them under any circumstances we say you should ask if a chemical is in the class of concern is it necessary if you say to a mom you can have a really nice white shag stain-repellant carpet that withstands chocolate milkshakes and wine but the chemicals that are making the carpet stain repellent are going to be in your children's bodies for years causing harm and on the planet forever they may think it's not worth it they might get a brown carpet that doesn't need these chemicals and if they really want that white shag carpet they might say is there a safer alternative and that's where green chemistry comes in making safer alternatives to these potentially harmful harmful chemicals so let's talk now about P foss per and poly floral alkyl substances we're on slide eight and there's a bit of alphabet soup here so I'm going to try to explain it he fuss and we call them highly fluorinated also it's a carbon chain all surrounded by fluorines and it's a class of more than four thousand different substances the two shown here with very similar sorts of names are pifo up PF o a which refers to the acid at the end after eight carbons carboxylic acid RP + PF OS which has how phonic acid at the end and those are the two that were used a lot for decades and those are the two where there's the most science so why are these chemicals so useful and so problematic and the answer is the carbon fluorine bond if it's a strongest bond in the periodic table it takes perhaps the energy of lightning to break that bond and so this gives these molecules lots of useful properties oil and water repellency but it also means that they are forever chemicals they never break down and the ones that have been studied have been found to have toxic properties so the first big interest in these came up in the ohio river valley where p foa was used to manufacture teflon released into air and water more than 70,000 residents had contaminated drinking water rob a lot you're going to hear from is going to tell you amazing story of how with the first settlement they did a study of 40,000 residents the c 8 health study and began to really learn about the harm of these chemicals slide 10 dark waters is an amazing story movie and i really recommend it so all of us in slide 11 pretty much have p sauce in our bodies and thanks to Rob's health studies that were financed by his litigation we have found a variety of health risks from these chemicals so c8 where you have 8 carbons surrounded by fluorine and two examples our P FOA and PFS that we've been talking about have been phased out due to their extreme persistence bioaccumulation and toxicity and these things have actually been known amazingly since the 60s it took about 50 years from about 65 to 2015 for them to be phased out instead inspite of serious knowledge of harm and I think one reason is because they are not considered hazardous substances but when c8 was phased out the substitute was c6 which is quite similar in persistence bioaccumulation in plants it's suspected to be toxic and as we learn more about some of these alternatives are being found to be toxic the smaller molecules move faster there are lots of them it's harder to measure and monitor them and filtration that removes c8 in many cases does not remove c6 so they're what's called a regrettable substitute however the chemical industry who made it do a lot of advertising and slide 13 that c6 is really fine and as long as you don't have piece FOA it's fine so there's all this advertising a piece o of free product and I think a lot of manufacturers take some comfort in statements like they're safe for their intended use and one that makes us get to laugh some chemist is c6 polymers cannot break down to c8 so if you have six molecules it's six carbons it's not going to break down to ca but that does not mean it's safe and but but I think a lot of product now contain c6 and the people who make their products do believe these ads I first started working on this in 2013 learned of the harm and organized group of scientists to have a monthly call on the science and policy of FIFA's we've been having a column on since 2013 in 2015 we issued a statement of Madrid statement on highly fluorinated chemicals calling on the international community to limit the use of the whole class to essential uses and building on that that we have a large PR campaign there was a lot of press and people started really learning about PFS and also about Rob blots work the next year we worked on a paper tracking places where drinking water is contaminated to the sources found industrial sites airports military and regular and wastewater treatment plants were some of the sources just as our paper was coming out the EPA set of time advisory level of 70 nanograms per milliliter for pifo and some of the following tea fuss and we calculated that 6 million people's drinking water work was contaminated the levels have been going down and slide 16 you can see New Jersey set a level it's an enforceable level of 14 New York is setting levels of 10 there's some extraordinary low levels being suggested as a level goes down the number of people with contaminated drinking water goes up quick examples of PFS problems in Michigan Wolverine treated leather with Scotchgard dumped the leather into sludge was applied to see us people in Grand Rapids area have P Faust levels up to 800 times higher than the EPA health advisory level New Mexico Air Force states led the contamination of a farmer's cows again P Faust levels up to 170 times the EPA health advisory level in Maine no floods led to contamination and again I'm for a dairy farmer Maine has taken action that biosolids must be tested 45 the cost of clean drinking water is extraordinary in the Cape Fear area there was contamination from another dau plant sorry DuPont plant making teflon they estimate it would be twenty forty six million dollars to build a water filtration plant to do carbon filtration 2.7 million to operate it each year but that plant is unfortunately additionally has a lot of other molecules smaller molecules that aren't removed by carbon filtration so an estimate of reverse osmosis which takes out all the harm was 99 million to build and 2.9 million to operate so incredibly expensive and Detlef not a scientist in North Carolina who first brought this contamination to the general public told us something that I always remember he said when it rained in North Carolina and the rain went through the trees the level of pee fast went up that's from air contamination from the plant accumulating on the leaves of the trees so that means you spend these huge amounts of money to give people clean drinking water but what about the creatures in the trees who are being exposed and and the birds and the bees and the bats who aren't doing so well and have an exposure to pee Foss isn't helping so this is a huge problem and slide 21 PFS are problematic and difficult to clean up and prevention is preferable and in case you're getting too depressed hearing all these bad things I want to tell you that a lot of good things are happening and I'm going to tell you the good things now that so we recommend only use pee fuss in products where it's essential there are some essential uses but oh goodness my slide just switch sorry okay there are essential uses and but what we think if pas youth was limited to essentials we could reduce the use by 80 or 90% even more which would lead to a much healthier world so there's a paper on the concept of essential use and you can find this reference to put it in Google and learn a lot more but uses that are not essential or things like dental floss water repellent surfer shorts ski waxes and and there are other uses that are regarded as essential but alternatives have been developed and then there are other uses where we need alternatives so slide 24 say that our Institute along with a cat and four other communities with contaminated drinking water has worked with UC Berkeley law to petition for regulation of tea faucets a petition to the EPA to ensure safe management of PFS waste and this would also result in an automatic CERCLA listing which would speed site cleanups and help transfer the liability from communities to the those responsible for the contamination thank you a cap for being part of our petition some really great news this year the military budget which was signed in December and the military budget always get fine so it's a lot of things get put in there they're really important and to do that there has to be cooperation from both sides of the aisle and there have been great cooperation from both sides of the aisle NP fuss because legislators with contaminated communities whatever their political affiliations support solving the problem so Thomas Burton and I have been working on this for a long time are just amazed at some of these provisions we for years been talking about that that military is required to use P foster firefighting foam while other countries don't use it they use say for alternatives that put out the fires and our military regulations it has to be FIFA but no more the military is required to safety fast firefighting phones in the next couple years the US Geological Survey is going to do nationwide water sampling and when you sample you tend to find PFS for example the state of Michigan only had two sites during the previous EPA sampling which was only large water systems but when Michigan looked all over I think they were up to 60 or 70 sites so people learn they hep-c fast in their drinking water they can get safer drinking water and the political will I think will increase to solve the problem another another great one we think if they prohibited fluorinated packaging and meals-ready-to-eat the military ass and it's the beginning I think of collecting and purchasing against products containing TFS hide 26 Europe is adopting total p5 drinking water standards so just instead of just looking for PF OA or peace Faust OS or the some they're looking right now 422 fuss but they want to develop a method for looking at all total flooring and that is how to really figure out what's in water and to start solving the problem the idea of a total phase-out of P files except for essential uses is gaining traction in Europe there's been proposals from Scandinavia and Germany to take action to face out on essential uses of T files in the next few years so this is amazing there's a movement away from TFS and food packaging Taco Bell just announced they are facing out p5 and we've heard most of the other major theft food manufacturers are following the same track we'll see but that's what we heard slide 29 Denmark has led the way for countries in banning all p5 in paper and paper bet for food packaging which is really a good thing and hopefully other countries will follow the largest source of exposure to piece four children was PETA's treated carpets and there were studies showing that and we actually started meeting with the carpet industry a couple of years ago sharing the science explaining them that c6 really was not a great substitute for c8 and they understood the science and based on the science the major manufacturers committed to phasing out p5 and they've been doing it such that a Home Depot can now ay they can phase out selling rugs and carpets containing PFS because the manufacturers are pretty much all out of it and this is our motto the green science Policy Institute that when you share science with manufacturers with purchasers they can move to healthier alternatives as a way of reducing harm all these brands in slide 32 have phased out p5 a kids when we worked with back in 2015 they learned about the harm and within a year faced it out of all their products worldwide and there was we're not good solutions for tablecloth so IKEA stop selling tablecloth there aren't such great solutions for oil and water repellency though there are four I'm sorry there are good solutions for grease responsi though there are oil and water repellency so all these brands in slide 32 are out of thief us so looking at slide 33 you can see carpeting food furniture outdoor gear clothing and firefighting foam are all moving away from peetha North Face recently sent me a new jacket with no PFS their first one which I've been wearing skiing this winter and it's really great to have a p53 jacket I guess one thing I could just take a minute to say I'll go back to slide 33 is the problem with gore-tex and Teflon is not so much the exposure you get because pee for us is a polymer a big molecule in gore-tex and Teflon so you shouldn't get too much exposure is if it it's all big molecule the problem is the manufacturer so in the movie dark waters it to the manufacturer of Teflon that has contaminated the drinking water and and the communities in West Virginia and Ohio if you're tough on pan is scratched you heat it to high it is a problem similarly your gore-tex jacket it's the manufacturer so when people say should I throw away my Teflon pan or my gotek socket I always say don't buy another one it's the manufacturer that's the problem on the other hand places like carpeting firefighting foam protective coatings spray-on shoes that is a monomer a single molecule and that can be directly harmful so I just want to end by saying that we have a website on slide 34 called PETA central where we change regularly with the latest news science that's curated and we find that most important papers and write one sentence about them policy we also have CFS meetings jobs this came about because the 100-plus scientists on our monthly calls were always sending us all this information that we shared with them and we decided to share it more widely so go to p5 central if you want the updates on p5 and last we send out monthly newsletters and you can sign up when you go to p5 central or if you go to our website green science policy org you can learn more about the other classes also six classes org we have lots of websites but each one leads to the others so we hope you'll stay in touch and sign up for our monthly newsletters online so I just want to end by say by limiting the use of p5 we can have a healthier world and where the green science Policy Institute thank you thank you dr. bloom I really appreciate you taking the time to share that with us that was really informative and I think a great lead-in to our second speaker the acclaimed attorney and author Robert balot whose recent book exposure became the basis for the film dark waters and he's here today to share some of his story mister bought the floor is yours thank you and I appreciate having the opportunity to talk to everybody today and Thank You Arlene that was a it was a terrific overview but I'm going to try to do today is just provide a little history of how we got to where we're at today and how we came to know what we know about pea sauce and where we're likely headed first as a lawyer I just have to make a couple quick disclaimers you know I'm not here today speaking on behalf of any client I'm just going to be giving you my own personal views my personal opinions of the history here you know I first got involved in people's issues back in 1998 I was working at my law firm where I'm still still working actually going to be there 30 years this year got a call from a gentleman out in West Virginia who was complaining about cows that were getting sick and dying on his property outside of Parkersburg and you know could we help him figure out what was going on and it was in the context of helping that gentleman mr. Wilbur Tennant and his family that we came to discover that there was a chemical in the materials disposed of in that landfill that frankly I had never heard of at the time and there was very little information available publicly or to the regulated community about what this was back then chemical called pfoa and as we all know PFOA is one of the people's one of the ones as you heard Arlene mentioned as this carbon fluorine bond of eight carbons and attached to fluorine in the context of that case when we were trying to figure out what is this pfoa and you know what does it matter if you've got 7,000 tons of PFOA so sludges in this landfill should that be an issue that we started digging into internal files from do pots that were able to shed light on what was known about this chemical and frankly it would have been known for quite some time about the toxicity of the chemical it's unique chemical structure and the potential risks and says we started digging through the internal documents about the about the chemical we came to understand that you know there there were toxicity tests going back into the 1960s this was a chemical that had been invented by 3m right after World War 2 and the DuPont company had been purchasing it beginning around 1951 to use in the manufacture of teflon at its plant in Parkersburg which happened to be the world's largest Teflon manufacturing facility this chemical was used as a surfactant not an ingredient in the products but something to use that was used to help make the Teflon materials and that DuPont had started purchasing that and actually purchasing very large quantities of it beginning in the 50s and you know this is decades before the US EPA even came into existence in 1970 decades before the first federal laws regulating chemicals coming out into the into the market came into existence the Toxic Substances Control Act you know which didn't come out until 1976 so this material is being sent down to DuPont in large quantities and because of its unique chemical structure the DuPont scientists began studying and looking into its potential impact into the environment into people and those are being exposed early on and by the 1960s their own laboratories were revealing all kinds of toxic effects in animal multiple animal species and by the 1980s there had actually been one of the first cancer studies done with PFOA in which du Pont's own scientists actually characterized PFOA by 1988 as a confirmed animal carcinogen possible human carcinogen and the company began monitoring its workers as well because what was also known and 3m and DuPont became aware of this in the late 1970s is this chemical not only does it get out into the environment as you heard from Arlene and once it's out there because of this chemical bond will stay there virtually forever it doesn't break down in the natural environment the chemical also has this uncanny ability to get into living things and get into blood and circulate and build up to higher and higher levels over time so the DuPont in 3m had started monitoring the workers and had seen that the the level of PFOA was in fact getting into the blood of the workers and was in fact building up they started tracking the workers and what we saw in the documents were concerns about libera facts concerns about birth defects concerns about it cancer rates at the company and as I'm going through all these documents this is the summer of 2000 2001 what I'm seeing is not only do we have all this information suggesting that this chemical is toxic persistence bio accumulative carcinogenic and animals that humans are being exposed but that DuPont's also aware it's being emitted out into the environment from this plant into the air where it's traveling directly into Ohio where settles on public water supply well filled but also into the Ohio River in very large quantities and into the groundwater around the plant that it had gone out and actually sampled the drinking water and found this chemical in drinking water in Ohio and West Virginia as early as 1984 and even though this chemical had predated the federal Toxic Substances Control Act and was an existing chemical that really had not been subject to much regulation DuPont scientists had actually looked at all of this information and said that they established a community exposure really the world's first drinking water guideline for PFOA back in 1988 after the cancer data came out no more than 0.6 parts per billion which they rounded up to one part per billion and the reason that's significant you know we're all talking parts per trillion now but the reason that number is significant is because that was essentially about the same level as the detection level back then so you know if you look at one of the here you've got the first drinking water guideline being set and it was essentially being set at the level could be detected because of the toxicity the persistence that by accumulative bioaccumulation potential and the potential for cancer that's was seen in the the rat studies well unfortunately the drinking water sampling had shown levels in the drinking water above that level and as we're reading this I'm realizing unfortunately that the public had not been alerted to any of this nor had the government regulators so we likely had tens of thousands of people who had been drinking this for quite some time at levels above the levels that the company itself had said and that frankly nobody really knew about it so at this point when we found out that there was this massive quantity of PFOA in the landfill that the cows were being exposed to we were able to settle the case for mr. Tennant and his family that was in 2001 yet we now knew we had massive exposure to this entire community so at that point I sent a letter to the US EPA March 6 2001 19 years ago suggesting that a drinking water guideline should be set by the EPA and that steps should be taken to come in and immediately address potential risks from PFOA exposure unfortunately that didn't happen very quickly so the community at that point was looking for a way to get this out of their water and to get medical testing so we agreed to bring what became the nation's first class-action lawsuit on PETA's chemicals that was back in 2001 we brought it on behalf of the entire team around that plant that was drinking this chemical in their water and soon thereafter I began sending as many documents as I could to the US EPA into government regulators from the internal DuPont files that were revealing the extent of this public health risk the non confidential information but that was suggesting this presented a risk of harm in asking the agencies to act in by September of 2002 US EPA did announce a priority review of pfoa and by spring of 2003 came out with their first risk assessment and suggested they may even take steps to begin banning the chemical under the Toxic Substances Control Act in 2004 the agency actually sued DuPont alleging that it had improperly withheld information about the toxicity of PFOA in particular the fact that it could cross the human placenta and that it was in public drinking water supplies above levels that the company had said and shortly thereafter DuPont ended up settling the the litigation by the EPA ended up paying what at the time was the largest civil administrative penalty in the history of the agency 16 million dollars and it also settled the lawsuit in West Virginia where community where there was finally provided water filtration systems granular activated carbon systems were installed for the public water supplies people with wells that were private wells that were impacted got in home systems all paid for by DuPont but most importantly the community wanted to know what this chemical would do to them in the long term so we set up an independent panel of scientists jointly selected by the community and by DuPont independent panel though had to be epidemiologists that had never worked for either side were independent and believe it or not we actually were able to pick three scientists of both sides agree and we they are what you probably heard too as as referred to as the c8 science panel and then they were given a feather rather extensive task they were told they were going to look at all of the existing data not just what was out there published and peer-reviewed but also all of the internal data and they were going to study the community that was impacted in drinking this and their task was to determine whether or not drinking that chemical in the water at the levels in that community were linked with serious disease and nobody really ever done this before and we weren't quite sure how long it would take or how complicated it would be but we are actually fortunate enough to have 69 thousand people in that community who participated gave blood provided medical records and all of that data was turned over to this independent panel who was then able to develop some of the most comprehensive massive expansive human health studies ever done on any chemical took them seven years they did 12 different epidemiological studies a massive retrospective exposure model some of the most impressive human health studies ever done and they completed their work in 2012 and when they were finished they ended up announcing that they had linked exposure to PFOA to six different diseases kidney cancer testicular cancer ulcerative colitis thyroid disease preeclampsia in high cholesterol and at that point once that those links came out and were confirmed we reiterated our request to EPA you know that we now have some of the most extensive human health data ever done by independent scientists confirming these links with human disease what more do we need to set drinking water guidelines at that point the EPA included PFOA and the related chemical PFOA s that have been used in scotchguard and firefighting foam in the unregulated contaminant monitoring rule where drinking water supplies went out for the first time these were typically the larger drinking water supply serving over 10,000 or more but we had sampling occurring finally for the first time nationwide for PF filet and psoas and that data started trickling into EPA 2013-2014 and what also happened is once those links had been established by the independent panel all of the people in that community along the Ohio River in West Virginia Ohio that had been exposed were entitled to medical monitoring to be paid for by DuPont but also anybody that had one of those diseases had the right to go forward and seek damages from DuPont for their disease and under our agreement with DuPont in the settlement DuPont had agreed it would not dispute that once those links had been found that it was it would not dispute that pfoa was capable of causing those diseases at those levels and so those lawsuits started to get filed in 2013 2014 about 3,500 eventually were filed in the first one started going to trial in 2015 and so you had the first trial ever against the P Foss manufacturer based on the allegation that the exposure had actually caused physical injury and that that verdict came back in 2015 holding DuPont responsible for having caused a woman's kidney cancer there were two more trials both also verdicts against DuPont including punitive damages saying that the company had acted with conscious disregard of the risks and significantly a New York Times article came out New York Times magazine in early 2016 that summarized all of this history and really kind of put it together for the first time and importantly also identified various places across the country where this chemical was now being found under the UCM our testing so communities all across the country suddenly started asking what is this why is it in our water and what's the appropriate safety guideline and this is 2016 and unfortunately at that point we still had no enforceable drinking water guideline from the EPA so just a couple months later May of 016 we get the very first long-term drinking water exposure guideline coming out from US EPA that's the one I think most people are familiar with the 70 parts per trillion combined for PFOA and PS and that had a significant impact because the Department of Defense realized that these chemicals pfoa and PSLs had been used in firefighting foams historically and had been sprayed in training exercises and other uses outside military bases and airports all across the country so when this guideline came out in 2016 the Department of Defense put together a big list of sites where these foams may have been used and started sampling them going down that list in beginning in late 2016 almost every day a new community somewhere in the United States was learning that these chemicals were in their water and that they were above the level set by the EPA and so you had even more demands that the EPA said an enforceable standard in the meantime States started moving forward and not wanting to wait you know for the enforceable standard from EPA start setting their own guidelines and as you heard Arlene mention those numbers have been coming back even lower than the EPA guideline of 70 you know you have lower guidelines from New Jersey Vermont New Hampshire Michigan New York and those numbers are going down lower and lower and as we as that information has come out people are also realizing it's not just PFOA in PSLs as you heard from Arlene what has happened as as P as information finally came out to the public over the last few years about PFOA in the hazards and that chemical finally has been phased out in the United States these these substitutes and replacements things with c6 or C for things like gin acts that DuPont has brought out to replace PFOA those are now being found in water across the country Gen X for example is being found in drinking water outside the production facility down in North Carolina state of Kentucky just sampled water supplies along the Ohio River outside of the DuPont plant out in Parkersburg sure enough Gen X is in the water all the way down the river in Kentucky already so people are as you heard from Arlene you have scientists and regulators who are now saying we need to address this entire class of chemicals now we need to be looking at this comprehensively because if you step back and look and you say it took us 20 years to finally bring out to the public what was known for decades about the health risks of PFOA and as we as we start to learn about these other people's chemicals being out there what we're hearing is a very similar refrain well we just don't know enough yet there's not enough out there about the health risk from these chemicals well that's exactly what we heard 20 years ago about PFOA and we now know that was not that was not accurate so I think folks are concerned that we should not be waiting to take it 20 years on each of these additional chemicals that steps ought to be taken now and we're seeing that in the EU I was in Europe a week or so ago and there's discussions now in in Europe and the UK elsewhere that to try to address these chemicals as a class and wasn't enough and I know I'm running out of time so I'll try to wrap this up but one of the things I've been trying to do for the last 20 years is help bring this information out to the public help bring it out to the scientific community to regulators so that everyone can be aware of the extent of this risk and be able to take steps to address it and I was I'm very pleased to see the movie dark waters come out my book exposure that summarizes this history to help make that information available to people to help spread the word about what these chemicals are and most importantly what we already know about them so that other communities don't have to repeat this 20-year saw that was experienced by the community at West Virginia we can take what we what we already know learn from that move on and hopefully spread awareness of this so thank you so much for giving me the time to talk to you and you know I'm hoping and I mean I'm encouraged as Arlene is that we are now seeing these conversations and discussions occurring at the federal level here in the u.s. at states all across the country all across the world that we now need to I think there's recognition that we now need to be taking steps to address these comprehensively and to do it now thank you thank you rob both for your work over the preceding decades and and for joining us today to share that and the book the movie I could go on but last but by no means least were joined by Pam Miller the executive director at Alaska community action on toxics and co-author of a 20-19 report here in Alaska threats to drinking water and public health and Alaska the scope of the people's problem take it away Pam thanks Nick and I just want to also echo Nick's thanks to our lean and Rob for your just excellent presentations we're so grateful that the two of you are speaking on our che call today and sharing your extensive knowledge and experience and we're also very excited to welcome you Rob to Alaska in a couple of weeks I'm going to give just a very brief overview of some of the p5 concerns in Alaska and then some public public policy efforts here in the state to address these public health concerns and as Nick mentioned we did publish an investigative report last fall for this report we we reviewed hundreds of pages of documents that we obtained through public records request and also did a thorough review of the peer-reviewed scientific literature and that is available on our website the purpose of this report is to inform the public about the issues and and necessary actions to address this public health crisis and we note that instead of acting responsibly to protect the health of Alaskans the governor Dunleavy administration rolled back protections this last year that were in process under the Walker administration and in Alaska as everyone knows we're a very aviation dependent and also have many military bases here in Alaska and the dispersive use of aqueous film forming films are a triple F on military bases and airports have contaminated the drinking water of communities from the North Slope of Alaska to southeast Alaska we have no enforceable drinking water standards as our previous speakers have noted either at the state level or at the federal level and I just want to note also that health effects are founded up to 700 times the Guidance level that has been established by EPA that's 70 parts per trillion so health effects are found in the peer-reviewed literature at the point one to one part per trillion level so we we have a ways to go in regulating these dangerous substances some of the key findings of the reports Alaska is still in the very early stages of investigating known and suspected sources of pfosten Tama nation and to date P files have been discovered at over a hundred individual sites these are mostly a triple F source areas in nearly 30 locations and at least ten Alaska communities have P Foss in their drinking water at levels deemed unsafe even by the guidance levels established by EPA which we think are not protective of human health and is also likely that the number of communities with contaminated water will grow as more sampling is conducted throughout the state today we have no investigation of wastewater or bio solids derived from sewage in Alaska to determine the extent to which these sources may be spreading P sauce in the environment despite the fact that these cloths are found in wastewater is discharged into Alaska's rivers and Cook Inlet leaching of P files from materials deposited to landfills may also be a source of surface and or groundwater contamination and this has not been investigated we've had only very limited testing of fish tissue and that has confirmed that some fish in Alaska have levels of P phos that exceed consumption advisory levels established by other states and as we know many Alaskans rely on both anatomist and resident fish species for subsistence we know that lakes and rivers and coastal areas on or near several military installations where piece house have been detected and this suggests that as a precautionary measure the state should prioritize the testing of fish for pea sauce and I just want to note that the true cost of p5 contamination is not simply represented in the hundreds of million millions of dollars already spent on site characterization and sampling the direct financial liability and the likely billions that will be spent on remediation but in the immeasurable harm to public health in the environment and I won't go into them but we have a series of recommendations in the report that really do follow I think Robin and Arlene recommendations of taking a class approach to these harmful chemicals and we're very pleased that Senator Jesse keel who represents districts in Juneau Haines Skagway Gustavus and pluck wand introduced Senate bill 176 this is a bill to establish limits on certain P five substances in drinking water provide for more comprehensive testing of water sources allows voluntary voluntary testing of the blood of affected community members and first responders and also leads us towards phasing out the use of P Foss in firefighting foam the bill is co-sponsored by Senators LV GRA Jackson bill Willa Kalki and Tom Begich and we have a companion bill HB 240 which was introduced by sponsors representatives Sara Hannon and Garant R so we're very grateful for that and look forward to working with our legislators and the public to get these bills passed the bills are referred to the Senate and House resources committees thus far we do not yet have hearing scheduled for these bills but we hope to get P Foss legislation passed this session so please do let your legislators hear of your support and call for hearings there are ways that we hope the legislation can be strengthened and we will be working to ensure that this is as strong and health protective as possible and a cat continues its work at the state national and international levels to eliminate the harmful uses of p Foss with our partners throughout the world and to prevent further harm thank you so much thanks Pam and thanks to all our speakers with our remaining time we'd like to invite questions and comments from our participants if you'd like to ask a question you can press star 2 to unmute your line state your name affiliation if you can remember to remove your line and you're finished just to keep external noise down and yeah maybe let's give preference to local calls to begin with so any alaskans out there with any questions or comments go ahead hello hi there this is David Dale from Cape Cod is question by wife site cleanup the Joint Base Cape Cod a shimmer Valley plume eyes underneath the development where I live and it's caused consulates private and public drinking water wells it turns out the source areas or the former fire training area the former racial or a treatment plant and the water and sediments in John and the shipment pond I just want to have what kind of techniques are available to remove PFS from the source there is a pisses Arlene and I'll just say that that is a really hard question I don't think either Rob and I are experts me canvas or about that but basically clean drinking water can be given to residents but particularly large water sources once they're condemned it's incredibly expensive and difficult which is why we think prevention stopping the use is the most cost-effective thing to do but I don't have real expertise in this what about you Pam do you know the answer at all or Rob it's Rob I I would defer to two others on this issue and just it's I think it's an area where we've got a real emerging area of research I mean people are really looking into it right now yeah this is panel I would I would just agree and say that we probably need agile Aska called just on that topic or che call in general about treatment technologies thanks very much for that question does does anyone else have a question or comment to share this is Karen from San Cisco can you hear me yeah okay I just wanted to ask a question about the EU policy since they have adopted the precautionary policy there I was wondering if speakers could answer the question of where they are with their elimination of tea sauce either in their supplies or in their you know in a contaminants environmentally I think I don't know if you heard my talk entirely and I put in a few examples that they are ahead of us but it's still a slow process of the Scandinavian countries and Germany are calling for you thought only to be used for essentially starting in 2025 but it's process you know so they are moving ahead just a couple days ago they set quite a low level for food so it the food news the new food level is has just come out and there's a call for public comments so a lot of different European agencies are working on the foss problem ahead of our EPA but it's still a slow process thanks guys and candy go ahead Kathy pod no it's patty from Alaska I loved hearing about all the things that are happening with the policy changes and purchasing changes but we all know and the litigation but we all know those are all long-term things and aimed at prevention which i think is stunning it obviously is we're sorry but my heart goes out to the people whose water supplies are currently contaminated or who fear that their water supplies are contaminated based on proximity to known sources of contamination like you know old military bases and what have you so my question is if you know or suspect that your drinking water is contaminated as a as a person maybe on a private well or a person in a community using public water what can people do in the short term I mean I get that we need to fight for policy change but you know if your water is contaminated right now you're sitting there looking at that glass of water and going can I actually swallow this crap I know it's a hard question Arlene do you want to take that one well people can put in reverse osmosis systems in their homes I know other Stapleton who's a leading scientist who lives in North Carolina has done that and that's expensive it is really it's really problematic and as as what's considered the Health Advisory level goes down more and more people's drinking water it's going to be above that level there's an estimate right now if he said the Health Advisory level is 70 and the company your essence that did a lot of those measurements for the EPA also measured lower levels and they calculated this the level went down to five it would be 20% of the drinking water in the country so the cost of in water is huge and everyone deserves clean water than the cost of remediation is even huger so it's really a I wants to add to that no nothing like that good well I would say in addition this is Pam I would just say in addition that we work with communities just to ensure that for those who can't afford reverse osmosis systems because they are so expensive that it's important collectively as communities people that have private wells that are contaminated to fight for a water source that is clean that is upstream from the P Foxx contamination and for example in Fairbanks people that are in private Wells are now getting water sources from the public water source in Fairbanks golden heart utilities that is contaminated so that's just not acceptable we have to fight for communities to get clean water sources that are also not found to be contaminated with P foss but I ask a question yeah I think we have time for one more question so dive in there yes this is Nancy price in California I wanted to ask about drinking water bottled water excuse me bottled water is that is there any way that that is being regulated or tested for tea sauce I know that you know there are many brands that are not spring water they're municipal water being used for bottled water so I'd like to know about that please that's a really good question and I don't know the answer afraid I don't know if anyone else on the call perhaps or Pam or Rob know it this is Rob I know it's a question that has come up quite often there's historically been circumstances where you know you need to be concerned abou where the bottling is happening to make sure that the bottling is not happening from one of these aquifers that we already know has a problem but I'm not aware of there being any sort of comprehensive approach to that at this point unfortunately might I add to our the is this talk and the slides going to be available to the public or at least to us who are on this call will the slides be posted somewhere you've you've provided me the perfect transition yes and um yeah so I want to thank everyone for participating today and yeah I'll be sending out an email within the next day or two with the recording of this call and there's already a link to the slides but with that again and so are our next call will be March 25th to discuss mushroom based bioremediation with the owners of far north funghi here in Anchorage and dr. beer gets hagedorn of sustainable earth research talking about their pilot studies taking place in Alaska and a discussion of how their methodologies have strengths or limitations here at higher latitudes and colder climates and finally it I hope you'll consider making a donation to Alaska community action on toxics to help support our monthly CheY calls your contributions help provide the support we need to continue bringing you these calls each and every month and you can give online at our website here w WK action org if you have any additional questions or comments please feel free to contact us by calling us here at our office number 907 two two two seven seven one four and yeah thanks again to everyone our speakers are participants and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your