Town says water safe for most despite PFAS contamination

NORTH ATTLEBOROUGH, Mass. — You can’t see it, smell it or taste it -- but just knowing it’s in the water is enough for Tammy England to exercise caution.

“Right now, until I get further information on it, I’m using bottled water,” she said. “We have a young child in our house and it’s a little concerning to think that the drinking water may not be safe.”

Actually, North Attleborough Public Works Director Mark Hollowell says the drinking water IS safe -- for most residents. Even though two of the town’s nine wells were found to have levels of compounds known as PFAS over the state limit of 20 parts per trillion.

One of the wells was taken off-line, Hollowell said. But the town could not afford to lose water produced from the other well.

“The DEP (State Department of Environmental Protection) does have an advisory for three sensitive sub groups,” Hollowell said. “Pregnant women or nursing women, infants or people with autoimmune diseases.”

Those groups -- along with those whose immune systems may be compromised due to such things as cancer treatments -- are advised to drink non-PFAS bottled water until the town can fix the problem.

And Hollowell said it’s well on the way to doing that. Tuesday night, DPW presented plans to the Conservation Commission for a granular activated-charcoal treatment plant for the first of the compromised wells.

“And that’s going to go out to construction next month and should be completed in June,” he said. “And once that’s completed, we’ll start construction on the second well.”

The estimated cost of each filtration system is $4 to 5 million, Hollowell said.

The town is also working with DEP to set up a kiosk to provide those sensitive subgroups with ultrapure water until the filtration system is put in place.

All residents can safely use town water for bathing and other external uses.

Hollowell said it’s likely PFAS got into North Attleborough’s groundwater through firefighter foam -- one of its most common uses -- draining into waterways.

Unlike some other chemicals, PFAS compounds do not dissolve or degrade readily, said Christopher Higgins, PhD, a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines.

“All of them have one, and in many cases, 15, 17 carbon fluorine bonds in a structure that imparts extreme resistance to transformation and degradation,” Higgins said.

He said that’s especially true of a subgroup of interest that’s extremely persistent in the environment. “Hence they’re referred to as ‘forever chemicals,” Higgins said.

Just as PFAS compounds persist in the environment so, too, do they persist -- and build up -- in the human body.

“When I take them in they don’t just pass right through my body,” Higgins said, “as my cup of coffee might this morning. But rather, they stay in my blood, they stay in my body. And what that means is that there’s a potential for a longer-term impact.”

But what that impact is -- is uncertain.

Some studies have shown PFAS compounds can induce liver damage, birth defects, newborn death and immune system damage in lab animals. But those studies used high levels of PFAS. And animal studies have, at times, notoriously missed the mark as predictors of human disease.

For example, the artificial sweetener sodium saccharin suffered devastating press after reports it caused bladder cancer in lab rats. Later, researchers found no connection between saccharin and bladder cancer in humans.

North Atlleborough residents who remain fearful of the drinking water can take some heart in knowing Massachusetts adopted an extremely strict standard last fall, when compared with the federal government, regarding PFAS compounds.

“The EPA set an advisory limit back in 2016 of 70 parts per trillion,” Hollowell said. “This past year, in October, the Massachusetts DEP set a maximum contaminant level for drinking water communities at 20 parts per trillion, which is 3.5 times lower than the EPA.”

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