Maine Is a Warning for America’s PFAS Future – by Zoë Schlanger

4 comments

1. Zoë Schlanger: “Because Maine is the first state to try to mitigate PFAS this thoroughly, it is also the first to confront PFAS’ particular bind: What do you do with a pollutant you can’t destroy? After Maine banned sludge-spreading in 2022, slurry began to pile up precariously at the state landfill … And until chemists and engineers can undo PFAS, more places will start to see that they’re caught in a cycle in which these compounds move from water to soil to bodies to water.” [https://theatln.tc/9oUuBrmr](https://theatln.tc/9oUuBrmr)

2. We can remove it from wastewater and then destroy it in biosolids, but it’s expensive and complex. Like double your wastewater bill expensive. It’s early in the rollout of the technology (pyrolysis and gasification), the costs may drop a bit but get your wallets out.

3. A few relevant excerpts I think are worth reading:

   “It’s a reality for everyone; it’s just a matter of whether they know about it,” Apul said. As soon as any place in the U.S. does look squarely at PFAS, it will find the chemicals lurking in the blood of its constituents—in one report, 97 percent of Americans registered some level—and perhaps also in their water supply or farm soils. And more will have to look: Yesterday the Biden administration issued the first national PFAS drinking-water standards and gave public drinking-water systems three years to start monitoring them. The EPA expects thousands of those systems to have PFAS levels above the new standards, and to take actions to address the contamination. Maine is one step ahead in facing PFAS head-on—but also one step ahead in understanding just how hard that is.

   So far, other states have taken a different approach to PFAS. Virginia, for instance, kept permitting sludge-spreading even after environmentalists had loudly raised concerns about the chemicals’ impacts, though the state did begin requiring industries to test for PFAS in their waste stream last year. Alabama has reportedly rejected pleas by environmental groups to begin testing for the compounds. Michigan, another state with a history of spreading sludge on farmland, has found PFAS in its beef. In Texas, farmers recently sued a waste-treatment giant alleging that it knew or should have known that its sludge had PFAS in it.”

   Basically, this is DDT but 10000x worse.

4. Maine farmer here.

   This has been a devastating mess for my state and my industry. Many farms haven’t recovered. Many won’t. I am constant shocked when I talk to folks outside the state that don’t know about this mess.

   It broke the month after I bought my farm and I got lucky my land was never spread on, frankly. A couple of the other farms I looked at? Screwed.

   We have orgs who are still constantly and vehemently advocating about this issue and it’s just exhausting and frustrating. Maine passed new laws to manage this… and they are getting pushed back and fought against.

   I, in all honestly, do not grasp why anyone thought spreading sludge was a good idea in the first place. It’s such a BS solution.

   Now we are looking at the water in schools, and towns, and I filter the water in my home through a special filter so that we limit consumption. I live off grid and we drink mostly collected rain water… but that stuff is in the ground, so I knew it was in the rain before we had the studies to prove it.

   I filter the water we give our animals, because now to run a dairy you have to have your milk tested for PFAS. I’m not at that production level but I hope to be one day…

   We were already dealing with the huge climate shifts as the Gulf of Maine is the fastest warming body of water in the world. And Maine’s topography makes farming so different farm to farm. But hey, let’s add mass poisoning by the state.

   Hi. I’m a farmer and this makes me really angry.