200 Homes In Oscoda, MI Using Bottled Water; PFAS From Closed Airbase In Wells, Lake Huron, Fish

[hatrack]

EDIT

For years Wurtsmith, which closed in 1993, has been recognized as one of the most polluted places in Michigan. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed designating the base as a national Superfund site in 1994, but it was never officially listed. The EPA withdrew its oversight in 2016, leaving the Air Force and state agencies to handle the cleanup while the town and county redeveloped parts of the base. The public library is located there, as are homes, churches, play fields, a plastics manufacturer, an airplane maintenance company, and a healthcare facility.

But groundwater contamination from PFAS and other toxic substances below the new facilities spreads largely unchecked. The steady dose of chemicals into the area’s natural riches has upended lives in Oscoda. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality says that people should not eat fish that live year-round in the lower Au Sable River and in Clark’s Marsh, a wetland adjacent to the base where some of the highest chemical concentrations have been measured.

Drinking water is affected, too. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has told more than two hundred households near Van Etten Lake that are on private wells not to drink their tap water. The state is providing bottled water or faucet filters, and the town is using federal grant money to extend public water to some of the homes.

But even the public water supply is at risk. Traces of the chemicals are now found downstream, in Lake Huron, the source for the regional water system. It is even in the treated water, at a few parts per trillion, that is supplied to 14,000 homes.

EDIT

http://www.circleofblue.org/2018/world/fear-and-fury-in-michigan-town-where-air-force-contaminated-water/

[gibraltar72]

1. Last I knew

Kalitta air. Conrad Kalitta owned the old Air Force base. Had huge repair facilities there. I think flew out of there also. Old time drag racer who turned a couple planes into a damn air force.

[NNadir]

2. These compounds are very difficult to degrade. A few years back...

...when I began to think about degradation pathways for perfluoroalkyl compounds, I came across a cool paper out of China, Photodegradation of perfluorooctanoic acid by 185 nm vacuum ultraviolet light (Zhang et al, Journal of Environmental Sciences 19(2007) 387–390).

Unfortunately, the paper only applies to carboxylic acid PFOA, and further, the 185 nm light was a minor component of the mercury lamp utilized.

I did see a few days ago, a current paper on low UV lasers in the journal Chemistry of Materials, also out of China where they still fund science. It was a cool cesium based ceramic.

This would apply to degrade at least the PFOA components - and possibly, if one were to look, PFOS.

I may write about this laser paper in the future in the Science section here.

These perfluoroalkyl compounds are a very serious matter, not just in local areas - although some like this unfortunate town are hot spots - but world wide.

I'm sure Scott Pruitt will fly first class all around the world to find out all about it and to make sure it gets worse and worse.