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- [00:01]
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- [00:53]
Jason Moon
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- [01:25]
Jason Moon
hey, it's Jason Moon. I help to make safe to drink Last month our team was part of a special live event here in New Hampshire, NHPR's annual climate summit. The theme of the day was how communities can come together to face environmental threats like Forever Chemicals. Today, we're bringing you an excerpt from the conversation because if you finish this podcast with more questions, chances are you may get your answers here. Our guests were Dr. Julia Varshavsky, an environmental researcher at Northeastern Victor Davila, a community organizer with Slingshot Vermont, and the host of this podcast. Mara Hoplamazian. Juliet goes deeper into what we know about the health impacts of pfas. Victor explains how communities across the country are responding, and he breaks down how he thinks we could actually solve this problem. And Mara has the latest on the ground here in New Hampshire, and I was the one asking the questions. Mara, I want to start with you. When you started reporting on PFAS in New Hampshire, there were no federal regulations yet. New Hampshire had just implemented its own standard of 12 parts per trillion for PFAS and drinking water for certain PFAS. What have you seen change in terms of when you started reporting on this issue. And now are people talking about PFAS differently? Is the understanding different?
- [02:49]
Mara Hoplamazian
I think from my experience, people are talking about pfas, and that is different than when I started at nhpr. When I took this job five years ago, I had never heard of PFAS chemicals. And I think these days, more and more people know what that acronym means. They have a sense of that there is a class of chemicals, forever chemicals that are persistent in the environment. And I also think people have a greater appreciation for how difficult it can be to treat water and how much time and money it takes to remediate environmental contamination in water that we're drinking. And I do think those EPA regulations were a big turning point. They're very low levels. They're lower levels than New Hampshire's levels that they created in 2019. And I think from the advocates and community members I've talked to, there's a sense that it showed these chemicals are dangerous to human health even at low levels in our drinking water. And it sort of gave that understanding a push forward.
- [03:49]
Jason Moon
When you talk to people about pfas, when you're out reporting, what are people saying that they want to happen? What are they asking for when it comes to PFAs?
- [04:00]
Mara Hoplamazian
I think there are many things. One is these are complicated scientific concepts and I think people just want to understand them more. What these chemicals are, what they're doing to our bodies, what they're doing to our environment. And there's more research to do in each of those categories. We can talk about all of them. Julia probably can speak to that. I think people want to see accountability. They want to see the companies that created and put these chemicals into the environment pay to remediate the environment and pay for the health consequences in many cases of these chemicals. And as you said, there's 15,000 of these and only six are regulated. And so I think there's a big push, at least among the folks that I've talked to, to see these chemicals regulated as a class or to have more comprehensive sort of clear, simple regulation of this class of chemicals.
- [04:56]
Jason Moon
Yeah, let's stay on the science. I want to go to you, Julia. In a lot of news stories about pfas, there's a paragraph, it's like three or four paragraphs in, and they're all. It's like these chemicals have been linked to cancer, adverse health outcomes, et cetera, et cetera, on and on. What's the thumbnail? What do we need to know about how these chemicals affect our health? What are they doing to our Bodies.
- [05:24]
Dr. Julia Varshavsky
Good question. They do a lot of things to our bodies, which is why there's a lot in those paragraphs. I will say the science on how PFAS impact health and toxicology has increased dramatically in the last 25 to 30 years. We're talking thousands of studies, an almost exponential increase since the early 2000s. What we have really good information on at this point is that PFAS can impact our metabolism. So the way that we process glucose or sugar, the way that we process fat or lipids, and that has consequences for our metabolic and digestive concerns. Things like liver damage, fatty liver disease, high cholesterol, gestational diabetes is something that we have a lot of information on now. They're also linked to effects on the immune system. So vaccine response or reduced vaccine response is one of the most sensitive or one of the most striking examples of that. They're linked to kidney cancer, testicular cancer, which is a concern among firefighters especially. And they're also what we call endocrine disrupting chemicals, which means that they can interfere with the molecular hormone signaling that really orchestrates everything from reproduction to the way development happens to everyday function. So that is really relevant for things like breast cancer. The. There's a rise in hormone mediated or estrogen dependent breast cancer among young women in the US for example. So endocrine disrupting chemicals are really important to understand in that context. They've also been linked more recently to changes to the timing of when our children go through puberty, which is also, as you know, hormone driven. Things like reduced ability to breastfeed also fall under that category of health concerns that are emerging from the science. In my own research, we look at, we try to fill some of the scientific gaps that we think are important. So, for example, we're looking at how pfas affect hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, things like gestational hypertension or high blood pressure and, and preeclampsia, which is also increasing in the US population, especially among young women. And we're seeing that in multiple studies and multiple cohorts that certain PFAs are associated or linked with a 100 to 200% higher risk of gestational hypertension. So these are not trivial findings and really important to understand. We're also starting to look at ulcerative colitis, which is one of the outcomes that came out of that C8 study from Virginia. There are some studies showing potential links between pfas and ulcerative colitis, even in communities or populations that are not as highly exposed. There are a lot of health concerns. And that's because PFAS can really operate on a lot of different organ systems and mess with the hormone signaling in our bodies.
- [08:59]
Jason Moon
And there are 15,000 different ones. How are public health scientists keeping track of the different effects that different individual PFAs may have? Or is that not the right approach? Should we just think of them as a class and they do these things, or is the research looking at PFOA does this and PFOS does that?
- [09:21]
Dr. Julia Varshavsky
And the answer is kind of both. There are a lot of research that looks at just individual PFAs, but more and more we're trying to develop methods and apply methods in our research that can look at mixtures of pfas, but that doesn't necessarily translate to what science is used to make decisions on the regulatory level. Often we are just, as Maria mentioned, assessing risk chemical by chemical or regulating chemical by chemical, rather than thinking about the whole class. So that's a problem. That's a difficult problem to tackle in the science, and especially when you have changes to PFAS over time. So as we phased out the PFOA and pfos, these legacy, we're calling them now, pfas, we're seeing a newer generation of pfas that were always trying to kind of chase and understand, rather than taking a step back and trying to approach things with the maybe they're not innocent until proven guilty, maybe they should be guilty until proven innocent so that we're not constantly, as independent researchers, trying to chase the information.
- [10:40]
Jason Moon
Victor, I want to bring you in here. You are working with communities on the ground on these issues. What are you seeing? What are communities? What are they facing when it comes to PFAS in their water? What are they looking for?
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Victor Davila
I think that when you're looking at a wide range of different communities across the United States, the commonality I am seeing when it comes to how they are impacted is a deep well of grief being processed through action. There are a lot of people that I have met, and every single one of their stories is something that is absolutely avoidable. It was avoidable, and now they have to live with the consequences of burying loved ones. And that is why they tend to be so ferociously involved. It is them trying to ensure that others do not have to deal with this. It is also partially them trying to make sure that there is some sense of justice for what has happened to them in a loop that might never close. As far as how they have now had to live in their own grief for so long, the emotional impact of this is sometimes invisible because of how fearsome and proud and forward moving these people are. But ultimately, every one of them is fighting through burnout. They are fighting through jobs, sometimes multiple jobs, through being a parent, through having no time and somehow managing to carve time out, sometimes sacrificing sleep and having to travel places, sometimes on their own dime to speak in front of of people. So when I'm seeing what's happening on the ground, I am seeing something that is tragic, but it is also incredibly hopeful. It is hopeful because there's no larger group of people I will, I have seen that is definitely not going to give up. Right. The worst possible thing has already happened to them, so there is no reason for them to back down. And that is us benefiting off of their tragedy, unfortunately. But ultimately, the more people who hear their stories, ideally, the more folks will get involved in a grassroots level before they too are part of the population that is grieving.
- [13:07]
Jason Moon
Yeah, Victor, what advice would you have for someone who is hearing those stories, maybe for the first time, and they live in a community that doesn't have at least a known history of, of PFAS contamination? They're not sure what the quality of their water is. What advice would you give them? What things should they be on the lookout for? What tools would you hand them?
- [13:31]
Victor Davila
I think there's a massive network of grassroots organizing that somehow still isn't as tapped into as the scale of the problem. Right. I am the co facilitator of npcc, which is a national PFAS contamination coalition, alongside Sandy Nguyen, who is the other co facilitator of the group. They have been doing incredible work fighting forward with different partners across the United States, with different community groups across the United States, and yet we still don't actually have a full idea of how many people and individuals are in their own hometowns fighting this issue with no forward experience. Right. And we have had people who have joined NPCC who have have had a chance to share their stories of other impacted community members and be not only heard and seen for what has happened and understood in a way that you can only be understood by someone else who has suffered the same kind of tragedy. They are then given an immediate roadmap of how to navigate the systems locally around them. The biggest barrier to entry on getting involved in this is frequently not knowing who to ask to get in on the first time. And there is an increasing desire across groups like NPCC and many, many others fighting on this that are trying to do that outreach. But that is hard to do if people aren't looking for them as well. We're going to make larger efforts to do that. We're going to try to expand across people to give them those resources. But it's such a massive issue that it can feel intimidating because of the scale of it. And yet every single major victory I have seen won against PFAS has happened at a scale so small it'd be hard to believe. And yeah, so when people are first getting involved, they want to find out what's going on in their communities. There's a couple of different things they can do. One, understand what the functions of your local environmental governances are. There are a lot of people who for the first time in their lives understand how the DEC operates because they have to navigate this issue. It is weirdly a practice in democracy. There are a lot of pre existing laws, a lot of pre existing systems within state governments that are rarely utilized by citizens and that is because they have not had to be utilized. And the capacity to know what's already on the books to power map and then see what other support you can gain is critical for being able to have that momentum. If you can build on what is already there, you have to do less work. But to do that you have to do that upfront research or just take the forward step of looking for those who might have those answers, which is a much smaller step to get involved.
- [16:30]
Jason Moon
Mara, I want to ask you what is happening at the state level right now? Because sometimes that activism as we know it from here in New Hampshire, does those folks run for office and then now they're at the state House as you report in Safe to Drink. New Hampshire was one of the first states to implement its own PFAS limits for drinking water. What's next? Are we done now or what is the next step for. For PFAS regulation at the state level in New Hampshire?
- [17:00]
Mara Hoplamazian
Yeah, I think there's sort of two categories here and speaks to what Victor was saying. I think change happens in small increments over time on a huge issue like this. Which reminds me also of climate change, a huge issue that sometimes can seem too overwhelming to tackle where change happens on an incremental local scale. Often in New Hampshire there are laws and regulations that have been passed that are still being implemented. So water systems across the state are still testing to figure out what levels of these chemicals are in the water, still figuring out how to treat them. Based on the latest federal regulations, those tripled the number of water systems in the state that need to test and treat treat for these chemicals or likely will need to treat. So that's one sort of where do we go from here? We sort of treat the water. New Hampshire has also passed legislation to ban the intentionally added PFAs in a variety of consumer goods. But there's still a lot to do. You know, advocates have put forward bills to protect renters. Now in New Hampshire, landlords are not required to tell a renter if their water has tested at high levels of pfas and in some cases, if they're on a private well, not required to test that water at all. So that's something that lawmakers have proposed and has not moved forward in New Hampshire. Sewage sludge, as Mariah noted earlier, has been banned for land application in Maine. That ban has not happened in New Hampshire. That's something people are looking for. Lots of the advocates I've talked to and medical monitoring of the kind that has happened in Hoosick Falls, New York is not allowed to happen in New Hampshire. Essentially, the New Hampshire Supreme Court said that that was not something that folks could argue for in court. So that is not something New Hampshire residents will have access to. And I think there is still desire among many communities to push for the companies that created this problem to pay for the medical impacts going forward. Forward.
- [19:15]
Jason Moon
Mara, can you repeat. Hang on to that mic, because you might need it. Can you repeat what you said about renters in New Hampshire? This is such an important fact. If I'm a renter, I live in an apartment building in New Hampshire and I'm getting my water from a private well and my landlord decides to test the well and the well comes back at 100 times the EPA limit. They don't have to tell me there
- [19:40]
Mara Hoplamazian
is not a law that requires landlords to disclose to renters the level of PFAs in the water that they're drinking. There is in, like landlord law, landlords have to provide adequate drinking water. That hasn't been defined. I think there is probably an argument that adequate drinking water includes drinking water that is not at 100 times the legal limit for PFAs. But there's no sort of spelled out legislation that requires a landlord to disclose PFAs to their renters.
- [20:13]
Jason Moon
Okay, just want to make sure we clarify that. Julia, when, when, from your perspective, when you see these debates playing out in, in state houses or at the federal government, do you find that is the science making its way into those legislative decisions or is. Are you frustrated that it's not finding its way into those discussions? How does it look from your Perspective?
- [20:38]
Dr. Julia Varshavsky
Yeah, that's a great question. So from my perspective, there's a lot of good data out there. All the data I mentioned before and not all of it is being used to make decisions. And that has a real effect on what we consider to be safe levels. So those federal MCLs we've been talking about, the six PFAs that were regulated under that framework, we're talking at really low levels. So this is parts per trillion, which you can think of as one drop of water in 20 Olympic sized swimming pools. So it's very small levels. But we're also seeing small levels associated with adverse health outcomes in the science. So it makes sense.
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Windows 11 Ad Speaker
But
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Dr. Julia Varshavsky
if you don't include all the science, you are bound to underestimate the risk. And we've seen a few examples of that. In my own research we have seen that the 2023 cost benefit analysis that EPA did to inform those six MCLs didn't include that outcome I mentioned of reduced vaccine response. And if it had included that, it would have estimated the health benefits from removing PFAs from drinking water to be higher. So it would have made the mcls more protective. Another really good example of this is the Natural Resources Defense Council recently recalculated those reference doses based on the inclusion of additional studies on infant health. So the current mcls did not include studies in early life on early life health effects. So this is not a trivial issue. And it's something we see not just with pfas, frankly, but with other environmental chemicals that when we do not include all of this great science, we underestimate risk. And that's exactly, you know, what industry wants, I think. So it's a big problem that we grapple with as scientists who are not policymakers, are not regulators, but do care about the inclusion of good science in public health decision making.
- [23:05]
Jason Moon
Victor, back to what people can do at the individual level. What would you say to someone who is very interested in this issue, does their research and the water in their town is okay, and they don't maybe have specific cause for concern for their own health or their own family, but they want to be involved, they want to do something, what would you tell them?
- [23:35]
Victor Davila
I think that they are still involved, but I think that someone think that they are safe. When PFAS is a global issue, when the effective range is 4 parts per trillion in water, what that looks like when it's in your blood, which is certainly measured in a different ratio than an Olympic sized swimming pool, you're already involved. And if you're not Involved. Now you're going to be involved. It's not something that we have a choice. This is kind of a kingdom level threat when it comes to species. We now know that it reduces breast milks up to 50%. We're seeing an increased connection between PFAS and osteoporosis, like a very, very direct linkage between these things, which means that mammals are kind of on the hook at a broad scale. So I think the first thing I would say to someone is do not think that you're not at risk. The reason that this problem continues to persist despite it being an obvious issue, is because pfas help make plastics more capable. They give them rigidity, they give them heat, temperance, they give them all these different attributes which makes crude oil products and these kind of like fossil fuel products the capacity to be a cash crop at scale. That is why the industry is desperately fighting to preserve these things. That is why they are working through government to dismantle the epa. That is why they are trying to force the EPA to illegally roll back the MCLS that people worked for 10 years to pass. They are terrified of dying. As an industry, we are trying to move past plastics. Even Lego, the massive manufacturer, one of the biggest purchasers of the material, is trying to move to alternative plastics. By 2020, I think 2029, a lot of folks are seeing the impact. They are desperate to not die. I am also desperate to not die. And I think most people here are desperate to not die. And I mentioned earlier the folks who are in NPCC and the grief they are fighting through, that is not the forward mark of their character. The forward mark of the character is that they are some of the funniest people I have met. They are some of the bravest people I have met and they are everyday people. There isn't a single person in this room that shouldn't feel like they can't get involved fully because once again, you are already involved.
- [26:07]
Jason Moon
Yeah, go ahead.
- [26:08]
Dr. Julia Varshavsky
I just wanted to respond a little bit to that. So one of the studies I mentioned before on PFAS and gestational hypertension, this was in a population that had really low levels of exposure even compared to the national average. So it's not just highly exposed communities that are facing health outcomes. I think that's a really important part of the story. There's also been a D, sort of, I'm losing the word, but basically dismantling of the Office of Research and Development at epa, which is included the IRIS program, which is the Integrated Risk Information System. IRIS and that program was responsible for doing what I have been talking about in terms of using all the available data to make health protective decisions. And so dismantling that office and kind of dismantling that program essentially removes our ability to even assess the science. So that's like, in my mind, even coming from a scientist perspective, that's a huge step back from where we've gotten to this point.
- [27:28]
Jason Moon
Victor, you're talking about this is not just a human species problem. This is a all mammals problem. Our institutions to address the issue are being dismantled. Mara, I want to turn to you. What is the role of journalism in all of this?
- [27:49]
Mara Hoplamazian
I think journalists have two roles at least. I think about my work as a local journalist in two ways. One is I try to understand the really complicated chemistry, regulatory environment, all of the acronyms, and digest it, explain it in a way that people can grab onto and understand and use in their lives. So if people write into me, I've had folks from Merrimack and other places write into me with questions like, how will this affect my garden? Can I garden with water from my tap? We did a lot of reporting on questions that came up at a public meeting in 2016. I think one of the roles of a journalist is to figure out what people are curious about and find that information and explain it in a simple way. The other role I think journalists can play, and Mariah spoke about it really beautifully, is, is to listen to the stories of people who are most impacted by PFAS contamination and share them with others. And I think we can learn so much from the stories of people on the ground, people who came before us, in many cases, people who have dedicated much of their lives to fighting PFAS contamination. So listening, sort of chronicling those stories and sharing them with other people so that we can all feel a little bit more connected as we face a big sort of shared threat.
- [29:15]
Jason Moon
Is that what inspired Safe to Drink?
- [29:17]
Mara Hoplamazian
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I met so many folks in Merrimack who had stories that I just felt like people needed to hear.
- [29:25]
Jason Moon
Okay, let's talk about how this problem is fixed. Victor, we'll start with you. Paint for us a picture of a system that deals with PFAs. The problem as we currently have. How do we fix this?
- [29:41]
Victor Davila
It's really, I think, multi scale. I think that it all still comes and starts at the grassroots, right? The most changed evils. What's the term? The only thing that changes reality is action. And action at the grassroots is action at the point of interaction with the problem. And when I See what folks want and demand out of this. The ultimate end goal is is a national ban on PFAs then followed by mediation and elimination techniques being discovered. What is concerning about that still is quality. The things to do are obvious. They follow other ways that we have gotten rid of other really bad for US chemicals. It's lead point two, but way worse. When we're looking at those potential solutions, we're seeing false solutions pop up rapidly. Right now in Fort Edward, there's a giant rotary thermal kiln being tested to see if they can burn PFAS out of the soil. Burning PFAS is a really great way to turn short chain into long chain PFAs. It's a really great way to release it back into the atmosphere and have it land back into your water. But they are trying to push for it. Like that's going to help. So being vigilant about these things, it's not just the phases and steps and potential solutions. It's about the quality of those solutions and whether they actually are scalable. Right. So it starts with shutting off the tap. I think sometimes there are community members who have a hard time imagining a way out and thus try not to think about it. I was recently in Hinesburg with a community group that's trying to stop a turf field from being put up at a high school that's directly over their well water source. And when you hear families arguing who want the turf field for their kids to play soccer, they are saying, well, we're surrounded by PFAS anyway. We're constantly what's this to me? And you have to find ways to cut through that. When I talk about grassroots, I think a lot of what I'm talking about is communication. The solution is for us all to at least understand at scale what the problem is. And because I can understand where that man is coming from. But at the same time, if my arm was cut off and I was bleeding out, I would not want new holes put in me. I would want to staunch the flow of what might lead to my death. And that is where PFAs are. Step one, ban PFAs at a national level. Step two, make sure that those. Well, I guess step one is actually state level. Right. We're seeing a lot of great progress at the state level and creating a nationwide ban that models whatever the best state level ban is. And then once again, looking at that potential means to get it out of the environment at some point. And there's lots of different avenues that people are looking into which one is going to Be scalable first? I don't know, but I know it starts at the grassroots, it starts at communications, and it builds slowly up from there until it's undeniable. Right? That's kind of the point. When you build something at the top, it could topple over easily. If you start at the bottom scale and you slowly build up, it is really hard to topple down a good foundation.
- [33:02]
Jason Moon
How close do you think we are to a national ban on PFAs or what would need to happen between now and that point, if it ever comes,
- [33:11]
Victor Davila
A new administration would be nice. There's a reality in which the state level is the primary way we are seeing progress because people have more capacity to harass those in charge. There's the quote, power deals nothing without a demand. You have to maintain pressure not only around those who are trying to push against you, but you have the main pressure around those who are in favor of you. Right. Just because you have an ally at a state level in a legislator doesn't mean that you stop putting pressure on them to pursue because you didn't make sure that they don't feel pressure to back down. And we have seen that time and time again where people we thought were going to be champions took a more middling approach because they felt pressure. It is a matter of maintaining that consistency, maintaining a level of strain. Because when you speak truth, when you speak truth, the power in front of people who don't like hearing the truth, that is implicitly you creating tension and is the maintenance of that tension that potentially yields results forward when it comes to getting people to do the right thing. So I cannot remember the original question. What was the original question?
- [34:30]
Jason Moon
How close we were to a national ban on PFAs.
- [34:33]
Victor Davila
I want to say I will definitely see it within my lifetime. I want to be hopeful in that way. I don't know when we're going to see it gone forever, but I think we are looking at a place where the European Union is looking at addressing it at scale. More and more countries are getting more and more concerned about it. It is getting harder and harder to manipulate the narrative around people in favor of these plastic chemicals. Like when I look at like Maha moms, a group that on paper one might have several disagreements with ultimately aligning on PFAs. We are seeing like the EPA currently trying to strip back these protections, but also trying to provide language to the Maha moms that's acting as if they are still doing something about it. Whether not. And I think we are going to see them come to grips with the reality that the audience isn't stupid. Right. Journalism helps educate the audience. Word of mouth helps educate the audience. And ultimately, on scale, the audience isn't stupid. And I think that is what's given me hope that I can maybe see something turn around in the next five years or a decade, because it took 10 years for us to get here. It took 10 years of a lot of people fighting and a lot of people growing when it was way less known to get here. And I am hopeful that more people will get involved. My faith in this happening sooner than later is directly linked to my faith in people wanting to live. Wanting to live a good, quality life and not wanting to be lied to.
- [36:17]
Jason Moon
Mara, let's bring this back to New Hampshire and maybe Merrimack. We haven't talked a lot about Saint Gobain, but they're gone. The plant is shut down. I think it's just a foundation at this point, right?
- [36:30]
Mara Hoplamazian
Yeah. It's like a concrete slab.
- [36:32]
Jason Moon
Yeah. Tell us about what remains there physically at the site and what remains to be done about what has been left behind.
- [36:44]
Mara Hoplamazian
Yeah, physically, not a lot, but a lot of PFAs. There are really, really high levels in the soil, high levels in the groundwater. And what remains to be done is figure out what to do with it. Essentially, you know, Saint Cobain initially proposed something called natural attenuation, which means essentially, like letting the PFAS go away on its own. But these are forever chemicals. They don't do that really. They don't really go away on their own.
- [37:13]
Jason Moon
Can you tell us some of the levels that are in the. In the. The surface water or the soil?
- [37:18]
Mara Hoplamazian
They're thousands of times the EPA sort of safe standards. When I was reading the numbers, they were so high that I texted Jason and I said, I can't believe these numbers that are in the soil. State regulators are still trying to figure out what to do about that site. They have told Saint Gobain that the natural attenuation plan does not feel good to them and that those conversations are ongoing. There's sort of. They're still testing the site to figure out what would be the next step there. But I do think that remains a big question. There's this highly polluted site that needs to be dealt with or it will continue to trickle into the water and into the Merrimack River.
- [38:04]
Jason Moon
What about other efforts at accountability for residents in Merrimack? There's a class action lawsuit that was filed. It's been ongoing for a long time. Where does that stand now?
- [38:16]
Mara Hoplamazian
Yeah, well, I also want to Be fair to Saint Gobain. Saint Gobain has paid for remediation efforts. They've paid for alternative water for folks in the communities that have been impacted by this contamination. There are still long term ongoing costs to water remediation. For example, you know, the filters that filter out pfas need to be changed regularly to make sure that the PFAS doesn't stay in those filters. That's an ongoing cost that in many of the cases that I know about, Saint Cobain is not covering out into the future. So communities do have these sort of lifetime costs that they need to handle. The class action lawsuit against Saint Cobain is still ongoing. The last I checked, a federal judge had certified the class, which means it can proceed as a class action lawsuit. Saint Gobain has objected to that, has appealed that. So that is still ongoing in the courts. And other companies that created these. So Saint Cobain used these chemicals, put them out into the environment. But the companies that created These chemicals, like DuPont 3M, they've, you know, there are massive settlements nationally that New Hampshire is benefiting from. I think the whole, the last time I checked, the state had gotten about $30 million. And those payments will continue coming until 2033. So there is funding coming to do remediation. But from the communities I've talked to in Meramec, around Meramec, there's concern that the long term costs of keeping people safe from these chemicals in their drinking water will not be covered by the settlements with those companies.
- [39:55]
Jason Moon
Well, thank you all so much for your expertise and answering all my questions. Thank you. Now you're going to have to answer more questions from the audience.
- [40:03]
Audience Member (Zina from Nashua)
Hi, I'm Zina from Nashua, so downstream from Merrimack and I had a few questions. Mainly the interaction of PFAS contamination with climate change. We just declared a drought in April in New Hampshire and if you measure the concentration of PFAs, wait till the end of the summer, it might change because of the droughts that we're experiencing. So once and done is not really the right way to measure and it costs money to keep measuring at the other side. The PFAS in the ocean has been found to reduce the ability of the ocean to absorb carbon. So it's a global and local problem and it's impacting our most marginalized communities. So just like climate change. So I wonder what else have you seen with the interaction since we're at by degrees of climate change and PFAS pollution?
- [41:04]
Jason Moon
Mara, do you want to take that one?
- [41:05]
Mara Hoplamazian
The drought impacts that you mentioned? Is something that I've been thinking a lot about as the state is in this very prolonged drought right now. As Victor said, there's a deep connection between plastics, which are made from oil and, and pfas. I think the sort of causes of climate change and the causes of this contamination issue are deeply linked. And in terms of, you know, New England is seeing heavier rain because warmer air can hold more moisture. And so over the course of time in this part of the country, that dynamic I think is changing the way that water flows and where pollution goes and how contamination can move from soil into other parts of the world. So those are my initial thoughts, but I'm sure that is worth more reporting.
- [41:57]
Dr. Julia Varshavsky
I mean, I think climate change is just the way I think about it is that it exacerbates all of these other issues that we've talked about. One important link I think also is with some of the remediation efforts that burn PFAs. I think Victor had mentioned one of those. Some of those release very potent greenhouse gases. So that's another reason why that's not necessarily effective or appropriate solution to pfas. So thinking about it that way, I think is important. But in general, the way we think about climate change in my field is how it might exacerbate exposure. So the drought example is a good example. The heat is a good example because it allows for more air pollution in the air and the acidity of the oceans and waterways is affected, which can change our exposures. The potential for hurricanes and flooding to spread hazardous substances like Superfund. Sites that have toxic chemicals, including PFAS, is also a big threat.
- [43:15]
Audience Member (Zina from Nashua)
My name is MJO McCarthy from Wakefield, New Hampshire and I think my question is for you, Victor, to the point of being someone who, to my knowledge, my water is good and I'm in a part of the state that is probably better. But wondering what I can do because we are affected. I lead hikes throughout New Hampshire with the New Hampshire Chapter, the amc. And we ostensibly are talking to people all of the time who care about the environment. And they're coming from all over New England with different water conditions. And we tell them all the time, no cotton, you can't hike with cotton. We all love our Nalgene bottles, we all love our tents that are ultralight and waterproof. We all want our insulated boots that are okay for winter. And people are looking for us on answers to these questions. What can we do when we're talking to these people? Is there anything that we can do on a personal consumerism level or. Or is it all on the pressure for these companies to make these products somehow magical without the pfas? I mean, what do we tell the public when they ask questions because we are in New Hampshire, which is the coolest state, how to enjoy it without ruining it. Thank you.
- [44:43]
Victor Davila
I think it's really hard, but I think it's unfortunately connecting back to that stretching the enemy out thing. There is no version of mass consumer replacement that is actually going to fix the problem. It's going to provide pressure, right? More people buying cast iron instead of Teflon, more people moving into glass products instead of plastic products. That certainly puts a marker pressure on the industry to follow for selfish reasons. But that is not a guarantee at scale because people are going to be drawn in towards cost. There are currently PFAS free alternatives to what you're describing, but they're all incredibly expensive and not necessarily easy to get your hands on. And while one could argue that there was until this last 80 years there was a world in which people did those things without synthetics, ultimately that was inconvenient. And Americans love comfort. So if we're going to be able to address this at scale, there are websites and lists that help create a platform. Like here are a bunch of PFOS free products. But even then, sometimes we're looking into people creating loopholes of PFAS free because they're not talking, they're saying that we don't put in the seven chemicals that are currently registered as an issue and they will skirt around that. When we have people get introduced to this notion, I like to give them as many options as I can when it comes to like, what can be replaced. And then ultimately encourage them to write letters to their legislators. Right? To send them links to websites to let you find out who is your assembly district person, who is your representative in the epa. Right? Getting people to feel empowered to interact with those governance systems while they are trying to remove themselves in every other way possible covers a larger base. There's a degree to which a lot of this is strategy. There's a degree to which a lot of this is determination. There's also a degree where this is kind of gambling. Not everything will necessarily succeed, but the more things you manage to put your weight behind, the more likely you are to succeed. So you are in a critical point in which you can be a source of information to people and a network that helps connect people to resources. Resources that I think is implicitly more valuable than just making a personal change. Because some people can afford to make a personal change entirely and then that stops with them. And so yeah, I would just, I would encourage to look for not so many solutions that you burn yourself out trying to chase every possible angle, but the one or two things you can lock in on to push forward consistently and maintain tension on the issue.
- [47:33]
Jason Moon
Thank you all for this discussion. Thank you all for your questions and thank you for listening to this excerpt from NHPR's 2026 climate summit.
- [47:53]
Victor Davila
Foreign.
- [48:05]
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