Riverkeeper testifies on "forever chemicals" at NYS Assembly
December 4, 2024
Shannon Roback, PhD
Science Director
Riverkeeper Science Director Shannon Roback recently testified in front of the NYS Assembly Environmental Conservation Committee hearing on PFAS contamination in water.
The following is Shannon’s testimony, edited for clarity and brevity.
“I'm Shannon Roback, I'm the Science Director at Riverkeeper. I have a PhD in environmental science and engineering. I've been studying emerging contaminants for almost 20 years at this point.
Video loading...One thing to note, first of all, is that PFAS are forever chemicals, that's a terminology that's being used. But in the scientific community, we refer to PFAS as persistent organic pollutants. That's a category of pollutants that do not break down easily in the environment and that accumulate in humans and animals. Other chemicals in this category of persistent organic pollutants are things like PCBs and DDT, which were banned. PCBs were banned in 1979. And DDT was banned in 1972 by the Nixon administration. What we've done with PFAS in this case now is we've asked for manufacturers to do a voluntary phaseout.
And that has happened with things like PFOA and PFOS [two types of the thousands of PFAS chemicals]. What happened during that phaseout is that PFOA and PFOS were reduced in the quantity that they're used and manufactured, although some are still imported and make their way into our products. Those are the longer chain compounds — PFOA and PFOS were the first that we started to detect in the environment.
When those were voluntarily phased out, they were replaced with the short chain PFAS. The short chain PFAS actually persist in the environment for longer and are more bioaccumulative. That means they're more likely to build up in humans and animals. So unfortunately, it was not a great switch.
PFAS are ubiquitous in products and also in the environment. There's been a lot of discussion here today about ‘Is this coming from industry? Is it coming from consumer products?’ We just don't know. But the truth is there has been some science to try to understand this.
A very recent paper published in 2024 [tried] to assess whether residential wastewater or industrial wastewater was primarily responsible for PFAS loading of wastewater treatment plants. This was across the United States — it wasn't specific to New York. They looked at a lot of publicly available data, but basically what that study found is that it's actually residential wastewater that's responsible for the bulk of and the majority of PFAS loading to wastewater treatment plants.
I joined Riverkeeper about a year ago. I came from academia. I had a research team at University of California-Irvine, and we were working on a paper that will be published shortly where we actually went into people's homes to try to understand where the PFAS was coming from that was going down their drain into wastewater treatment plants.
Because, again, the wastewater treatment plants are just receiving this. There's nothing really that they can do about it, but the burden is placed on them to try to get rid of it. And it's just very, very expensive to do so.
So when we did that analysis, we actually had to send these kits to people to use in their home, and they had to wear jumpsuits and gloves and hairnets in order to take these samples from their home, because PFAS is in everything.
We had them take tap water samples. We had them take samples from their bathroom sink, from their shower, from their kitchen sink, from their laundry. We also had them take excrement samples. They were very nice volunteers.
What we saw is that the highest loading within the home wasn't coming from excrement and it wasn't coming from tap water. It was coming from shower water and laundry water. What is in shower water and laundry water? It's all of those soaps and personal care products in the case of the shower.
In the case of the laundry, it's a breakdown of fibers of clothes that are coated. Clothes are increasingly made from artificial fabrics. And those things break down. And we have evidence that water resistant clothing, for example, will break down in the laundry machine and it will end up in the wastewater from the laundry process.
Wastewater treatment plants were not designed to remove PFAS. They were designed to remove solids and disinfect water so that people downstream didn't get typhoid and cholera. It's very, very expensive to remove this stuff, in either wastewater treatment plants or in drinking water treatment plants.
Really the priority should be on source control. Once that waste makes its way to the wastewater treatment plant, yes, it can end up in biosolids, yes it can end up in effluent, because, again, the treatment plants are not designed to remove that from the effluent. It can also be aerated from the wastewater treatment process.
During the treatment process there is some aeration. The treatment process basically helps bacteria break apart other types of things in the wastewater. But that can also cause the PFAS to go into the air. We have studies showing that at wastewater treatment plants and at landfill sites, we have higher PFAS concentrations in the air around those sites than we do in sites where there aren't landfills and aren't wastewater treatment plants. So that stuff will go up into the air, and then it will come back down through deposition.
It will come down either by gravity, which is dry deposition, or it will come down when it rains, which is wet deposition, and then it will make its way back into our water system. We are taking these chemicals and we're just moving them between compartments.
Once they're made and once they're added to these products, it's just very, very difficult and expensive to actually destroy them. And it really has not been happening at scale, which is why really just preventing these things from getting into products in the first place is where you're going to get the most bang for your buck.
In terms of a regulatory focus, source control is really important. Manufacturing source control, things like banning chemicals, like we did many years ago at EPA to just prevent them from getting into products altogether.
There was a time before PFAS. We all survived and we lived pretty decent lives. It's definitely possible. Really thinking about the short chain PFAS, which are the PFAS that are in most use now is what we want to focus on. PFOA and PFOS have been voluntarily phased out. We're still dealing with their cleanup.
But what have not been voluntarily phased out are the short chain PFAS. And those are being used more and more. They're being detected in the environment more and more, and we don't have regulation targeting them. So let's not just deal with these pollutants of the past. Let's try to deal with the pollutants that we’re actually manufacturing and putting in products right now.”
Riverkeeper protects and restores the Hudson River, and safeguards drinking water supplies through community partnerships, science, and law. Our core programs improve water quality, restore habitat for an abundance of life, and address the impact of climate change on our waterways. Founded in 1966 as the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association, Riverkeeper became the model for more than 320 Waterkeeper organizations around the world and helped establish globally-recognized standards for waterway and watershed protection. We continue to work toward the goal of a swimmable, fishable, and drinkable Hudson River for all. Learn more, get updates, and support our work by visiting https://www.riverkeeper.org
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