PFAS Contamination in the U.S

To put a brand name to it.

The original "Scotchguard" was PFOS and it was reformulated in the early 2000s to PFAS which is believed to be less dangerous.

PFOS and PFAS are "fluorosurfactants" which are surfactants in the sense of "surface acting agents" but are very different from the usual soaps, detergents and disinfectants that help things mix. Applied to solid surfaces it does the opposite. It's pretty amazing that you can apply it to a rug, pour coffee on it, and it wipes right off without sticking.

Don't know why but I've always associated Ohio with poor environmental regulation. For the last decade anyway.

It has to be biases in reporting. How else could North Carolina be riddled with it but there be none in Virginia and South Carolina?

Also so far as military bases go it seems to be all of them.

Ohio certainly doesn't have a pristine environmental record. https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Cuyahoga_River_Fire

What’s up with Michigan, New Jersey and New Hampshire? They seem totally fouled up.

Likely it is legislation, but probably it's required testing for certain permits or environmental reasons and then that testing gets reported.

I live in upstate NY and I've never heard of anyone testing for PFAS. In our schools they do bi-yearly drinking water tests for lead and a handful of other things, but not PFAS.

It also just might be where chemical plants or recycling centers are located. My brother used to work at a chemical recycling plant in New Jersey, there's a LOT of those kinds of plants in New Jersey. Surely the goal is 0 spills or accidental dumping but there's no way that's 100% fool proof so surely where this stuff has been created/treated/recycled there's going to be higher concentrations.

I don't see any pristine states. These chemicals are literally everywhere, all over the world.

Note that more dots on the map does not mean more PFAS. It means more data.

> As a foreigner, why is it that select states are absolutely riddled with water contamination while most are not (and some are pristine)?

Historical reasons, for one - for example, the Silicon Valley has the most Superfund sites in the US (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/09/silic...) as a legacy of the chip production that was concentrated there. For PFAS contamination specifically, part of the answer is the distribution and size of airports and military bases, where PFAS are / have been used in firefighting activities and the runoff water was not filtered.

Another reason is lax supervision, enforcement and willful ignorance on part of politics - many local politicians don't want to disturb the major employers in town for fear of driving them away and the federal government isn't much better, the Trxmp administration was notorious for de-regulating (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-envir...).

When analyzing the United States you have to remember that most of it is empty. Most of the time when you see a picture like this, it's because of the population distribution. These areas look clean because people don't live there. https://www.census.gov/history/www/reference/maps/

Or alternatively, https://xkcd.com/1138/

Its also not clear how to gauge these dots. One dot may cover an enormous area or a small area. One might wonder if some instances are double counted. On the big picture level, it's reasonable down to the level of "where the people at"

My partner, who is an environmental engineer that specializes in superfund site remediation, took one look at the map and said "Colorado is only a hot spot because they're actively looking for it and other places aren't."

Depends on legislation too. Our water, in NC, is marked on the map. We’re fed from the Neuse River which is contaminated upstream. Unfortunately I don’t see that our water quality report even mentioned PFAs, at least not back in 2020: https://www.fuquay-varina.org/DocumentCenter/View/744/CCR---...

I've worked at Xerox and in the Kodak sites around Rochester, NY, USA. They're all EPA Superfund sites. Surely there's negative health impacts of working on contaminated ground, but MANYMANY* high tech locations in the USA are EPA Superfund sites due to that's where the tech was created and the buildings and infrastructure were already present, so current tech companies just keep using them. Most of the buildings I had worked in had regular tap water testing performed and if any test came back with too high of levels then water filters were installed. I'm sure Apple does similar.

Xerox even has a bunch of patents about how to suck up and treat ground water.

Santa Clara County has the most Superfund sites of any county in the US, so it's hard to find somewhere to build that isn't contaminated. Between mercury mining, agriculture, the military and the semiconductor industry, SiValley is quite polluted.

Could those confidence intervals overlap more? Jesus.

Two of the hotspots I found in NJ within miles: an elementary school and a middle school. D:!!!

It also represents a significant effort in collecting data.

Oh, that city? Or was it the other one, in that one state?

Which city?

What is fearmongering, that teflon is proven to leach into food and disrupt body signaling in yet poorly understood ways? :D