N.C. EMC votes to regulate 3 out of 8 forever chemicals

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Environmental Management Commission held meetings on Sept. 11 and Sept. 12 to set water quality standards for three out of eight per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) found in North Carolina waterways.

According to the EMC’s meeting minutes, the Groundwater and Waste Management Committee voted to move forward with regulating three PFAS: perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and GenX. 

Environmental Attorney and EMC Member Robin Smith said she has been looking forward to the commission making the decision to send draft water quality standards for PFAS out to public notice.

“The commission did that at this meeting with respect to some groundwater standards for three PFAS substances but did not take any action on the surface water standards for PFAS substances,” Smith said.

She said a number of studies have linked different PFAS substances to health effects ranging from liver damage to increased risk of certain types of cancer. 

“The concern is largely about having levels of PFAS substances in drinking water that may be unhealthy for the people drinking that water,” she said.

Executive Director of Cape Fear River Watch Dana Sargent said she attended the EMC meetings. Several EMC members said the NCDEQ was not providing them the information they need to move surface water standards, she said. 

“The DEQ has repeatedly provided them answers to every single question they've asked, [it's] just that they don't like the answers. So that’s false,” she said.

Sargent said that because the EMC is moving forward with regulating more standards for three PFAS, they will find additional PFAS in their sampling tests.

“So that means, then those will have to be regulated,” she said. “In the long run, it's good that they moved forward on a few.”

Sargent said she is still frustrated because the decision goes against what the commission is charged to do. 

Katy May, co-director of the Community Engagement Core for the Center for Human Health and the Environment at N.C. State University, said PFAS don’t degrade once they’re in the environment, meaning those chemicals end up in people's bodies. 

“When people and animals drink the water, when we water our gardens with that water, when we eat fish from that water, when we hunt animals that drink that water or eat plants that use that water, those chemicals are getting into our bodies,” May said.

May said North Carolina has one of the highest percentages of people who use private wells for their drinking water, which use groundwater that contains elevated PFAS levels. 

Democracy Green Executive Director Sanja Whittington and President La’Meshia Whittington said their organization provides free water quality tests. 

Some people who have received free water quality tests have shown the results to their doctors, which has helped their doctors make a prognosis and treatment plan, La’Meshia Whittington said. She said many of these people have extreme kidney disease.

“I want to say that the EMC has to put a ban on all eight surface and groundwater [PFAS], and not to do so is a miscarriage of justice,” Sanja Whittington said.

La’Meshia Whittington said landfills are historically and strategically located in black and brown and disadvantaged communities, so they are overburdened and over-saturated with high levels of different chemicals, but specifically PFAS.

May said some communities face elevated exposures to PFAS usually because they live near a site that is producing or disposing of PFAS.  

The real inequity in PFAS is who can afford cleaner drinking water, May said. 

“And so the interesting thing when we're talking about PFAS in drinking water is it's different from a lot of other environmental [issues] and environmental justice issues in that it can impact people regardless of your income, your race, education level, whatever it might be,” she said

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