Paul the Waterman sheds light on pressing water safety issues and explores the broader implications of water contamination by forever chemicals in this episode. He discusses the concerning findings of PFAS in everyday products, linking them to severe health effects such as cancer and immune system disorders. The episode features an in-depth interview with a farmer impacted by this contamination, offering insights into the turmoil and legal challenges faced in efforts to seek justice. Paul also outlines practical solutions like reverse osmosis filters to help listeners mitigate personal risk, asserting the need for immediate collective action and awareness.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome to Water Talk with Paul the Waterman, brought to you by Water Pros. Paul the Waterman is Colorado’s expert on all things related to the water we use and drink in our homes. Have you ever thought about where your water actually comes from? Is it safe to drink? Is it harmful to my health, my skin, or my hair? Paul the Waterman knows water, and he has the answers. So get ready to talk to the Waterman yourself right now. Call in with your questions to talk with your host, Paul the Waterman.
SPEAKER 09 :
hey good afternoon everybody welcome to water talk i’m paul the water man happy new year glad to have you uh with us today uh if you’d like to call in with questions or comments i’d love to talk to you you can call us here at 303-477-5600 so what a year it has been One of the things that we’ve learned in the last few weeks, I’ve learned especially, was how extent in the dangers of the forever chemicals. PFAS, P-F-A-S, P-F-O-S, and then also Gen X chemicals. And then there was a chemical we learned about that started it all, and it was called C6. And it’s polyfluoroalkali. That’s a mouthful. And this was created by 3M Corporation along with DuPont. And this is something that it’s a man-made chemical. It was used, you know, after World War II in the 1940s. They were found in products such as the nonstick cookware, Teflon. And we heard, you know, at the DuPont plant, there was a lady who was pregnant working in that Teflon department and, you know, had a baby, a boy, who had had multiple surgeries. And we heard, as he’s an adult now, he’s with his own family, he still has PFAS contamination in his body. PFAS are also in the stain-resistant fabrics and firefighting foam. So that means we have a concern here in Colorado because all the forest fires or the firefighting foam used to fight forest fires have the PFAS contamination. The PFAS are incredibly persistent in the environment. They’re present everywhere in our bodies, in the grass, in the trees, the fruit, the vegetables, the animals. It’s all over, and it builds up in our bodies, and it’s a product that does not break down, nor does it deteriorate. So the acidity, acidic water, doesn’t even break down PFAS, PFOs, or Gen X chemicals. And because they don’t break down easily, that’s why they’re called forever. They’re going to be in our environment forever. For years to come, we have contaminated soil concerns regarding PFAS. And so what’s happened is biowaste. Biowaste comes from waste treatment plants. So all the human waste that’s removed out of the water And then, of course, they recycled that water and give it right back to us. But all the human waste was sold or given away. You know, most of it was given away free to farms that, you know, was full of PFAS contamination. And today we’re going to hear a story about a farmer in Michigan and what happened with him and surrounding farmland and testing. And here’s an interesting fact about this. And, you know, during the last couple of shows when we were bringing this, you know, really to, you know, the forefront attention on how bad it was, they started, and it kind of confused me a little bit, but they started with the EPA’s mandate or recommendation limitation of PFAS was one part per billion. And then if you remember, the analogy they used would be an Olympic-sized swimming pool and one drop of PFAS in an Olympic-sized swimming pool would be the contaminant of enough to one part per billion. Now… The EPA states that the minimum contamination level is four parts per trillion. Isn’t that something? A part per billion, now it’s down to four parts per trillion. You know, because the PFAs, PFOs, PFAs, Gen X chemicals can accumulate over time, that’s where the health risk comes in. If they don’t leave our body… and they can accumulate in our body and build up in our body, kidney cancer, liver cancer, thyroid cancer, testicular cancer. What if these cancer rates, especially in young people, cancer rates are increasing in young adults. What if this is from the PFAS contamination? I don’t even think they begin to really take a serious look at this. The fact that two major companies, can create such a global contamination issue and still be able to manufacture products and goods is beyond me. Because we also learned that there were major civil lawsuits and settlements that those companies had to partake in based upon the damage and the waste that their product created. The National Institute of Environmental Health and Science has shown that PFAS can be found in the blood of 97% of Americans.
SPEAKER 1 :
97%.
SPEAKER 09 :
These chemicals can enter our bodies through contaminated water, food, and even air. So think about when you take a shower in the steam. See, we have three major problems in our water supply today. One is the PFAS. Two are pharmaceuticals. We learned also this year, or last year, that pharmaceuticals still are in the water supply. Once your body takes a medication and it’s metabolized, or it’s called a metabolic, and then you get rid of it by going to the restroom, that’s in the water supply, and it stays in the water supply. So common sense, dying commodity in today’s world. Hopefully not for too long, though. Let’s think about this. If you can have a small contaminant measured in a part per trillion be harmful and hazardous to human health, what do you think medication could be at? I’ve always said it doesn’t take a large number to have a contaminant issue or problem water. The National Science Foundation program director Anne Marie Scholl-Mannolter, pardon me for that, Anne, states the widespread presence of PFAS in the environment and their potential health effects are a major public health concern. A study that links PFAS exposure to various health issues, including what I just mentioned, liver damage, thyroid disease, and weakened immune system, which also means that whatever vaccines that we get, it can affect the potency of a vaccine. One of the most significant sources of PFAS exposure is drinking water contamination. And we’ve demonstrated in the last couple weeks that the PFAS contamination in water especially is not just a local concern, it’s global. It’s a globally concern. And even some people are stating, hey, stop eating seafood. PFAS is something that once it gets into the body, it could take a decade of you drinking and eating non-PFAS contaminated water and food for it to start reducing and actually leaving your body. So this is something that, you know, can we take care of it? Absolutely we can. PFAS can be removed by a point of use reverse osmosis drinking water system. PFAS can also be removed by anion resin base unit. And everything, you know, that can remove PFAS, activated carbon is one, you know, should really be supported by water softening. Soft water is the base for all. standard filtration because hard water can create havoc on water filters. The thing to also think about when we’re talking about the PFAS contamination is how long it’s been going on. It’s generational. It’s been since the mid-40s. And then you’ve had factories that were dumping PFAS contaminants in rivers and lakes and streams. And it’s not just in the United States, and it’s not just in the Midwest United States, around Minneapolis and Michigan. It’s all over. And then other, you know, industrialized countries are doing the same thing, dumping it into, you know, the oceans. And so how PFAS, you know, accumulate around the world is through rain, right? Now, the other factor we have as a problem with our drinking water is the microplastics. Microplastics, so with PFAS contaminations, microplastics contamination. Microplastics are tiny, tiny particles. Plastics don’t decay. They don’t deteriorate. They just get smaller and smaller and smaller. There is a study done that, you know, if you’re at home and you’re dusting or if you’re sitting in your chair and the sun is, you know, shining in the window and you ever see the dust, Particles in the sunlight, that could be full of microplastics. We could be breathing those in. We have chlorine-chloramine contamination where that’s used as a disinfectant in our drinking water. So there’s just several issues we really need to pay attention to. And not only us, but we need to start getting the local government to put a game plan together. We know that the federal government, the EPA, has issued standards and guidelines that local municipalities are going to have to follow by 2029. But I’m hoping that with this new administration coming in, there’s going to be a realistic approach. Because how can you filter… on a major level what i mean a major level how can you take an eight inch water main with the water coming in at 60 70 gallons per minute at over you know 180 to 200 psi and as you know travel through those you know the water filtration excuse me the water treatment system through the waste treatment plant that’s sent right back to your home how are you going to treat that How can that be done? Now, if water filtration media like activated carbon or anion resin isn’t treated properly, then it’s just not going to become useful very long. And, you know, with anion resin, which is very effective, that’s a super sensitive filtration media that has to have soft water. Same with activated carbon. Activated carbon has to have soft water. Activated carbon is like a sponge. It’s going to absorb all the organics. So how long will that last and then what are we going to do? But here’s the bigger issue. The waste treatment plants itself with the human waste and the human waste that’s contaminated with PFAS, what are we going to do with that? And how many farmlands have been contaminated with the PFAS contamination that spread to the livestock and the meat and poultry and pork that we eat? How do we know? Is the FDA going to have a label that they’re going to put on poultry and chicken? Chicken, of course, poultry. Pork and beef that’s going to have a PFAS contamination label? So let’s start with this program that we have that we want to share with you. It’s from Vice News, and it’s about a farmer whose farm was contaminated by PFAS, and he got that from organic disposable waste that came from the waste treatment plants or the sewage plants. So let’s go.
SPEAKER 12 :
All right, hold on.
SPEAKER 14 :
I’m trying to get him up.
SPEAKER 12 :
This farm has been an agrostic name for over 100 years. We went from milking cows back in the beginning history of this farm and went to raising beef cattle and got my license to sell directly to the public. You work hard for what you have and you have a legacy and you build for generations to get where you’re at. This is all I’ve ever done. It’s all I’ve wanted. It was all taken away from me in one swoop, a big business dumping PFAS down the drain. There’s a reason that they’re covering up what they do, because they knew.
SPEAKER 16 :
How’s it going, Jason? Gianna Tavoni. Thank you for having us out here. So tell me a little bit about your family farm here.
SPEAKER 12 :
Right now there is 70, I think there’s 71 cows out here right now. had made a great marketplace myself. Our sales have climbed 20, 30% every year for the last four or five years. We were planning on building a storefront. I was GMO free. We want to grow a safe crop. We want to raise a safe animal. We want to raise it clean. Thought we were doing everything right.
SPEAKER 16 :
When did this nightmare begin for you?
SPEAKER 12 :
The nightmare itself really started probably in November. of 2021. The government come to me and said they want to do a biosolid study. And they come in here and did a mass testing, four or 500 soil samples. And then in December of 2021, they wanted meat samples.
SPEAKER 16 :
Were you nervous at that point?
SPEAKER 12 :
Oh yeah, I was scared. Gave him the meat samples. And a month later, they notify me that, oh, we need to do a Zoom meeting with you on Thursday. And I’m like, yeah, whatever, no big deal. And when I got on a Zoom meeting, it was four people I’ve never met before. And the guy’s like, oh, we’re so sorry this is happening, blah, blah, blah. And I stopped. I’m like, what are you talking about? He goes, you don’t know? And I said, no, I don’t know. He goes, oh, he says, you have PFAS in your meat.
SPEAKER 16 :
PFAS are known as forever chemicals. They were largely introduced to the world in the 1950s by 3M, and later on, DuPont, which made Teflon.
SPEAKER 10 :
Teflon has a great future and its uses will be many.
SPEAKER 16 :
As early as the 1970s, 3M discovered that the chemicals were, quote, more toxic than anticipated. An internal document from 1981 found C8, a type of PFAS, in the blood of eight female employees. Two of them had children with birth defects. Now, there are thousands of PFAS in nearly everything we touch or consume. They’re considered some of the most persistent toxic compounds in existence. They can build up in our blood and organs when ingested and have been linked to a number of serious health problems, including thyroid disease, liver damage, cancer, and fertility issues. When they were found on Grostick’s land more than a year ago, Michigan regulators shut down his farm and ordered a seizure notice. He’s now barred from selling his meat indefinitely.
SPEAKER 14 :
First time I heard about PFAS was the day that we received the seizure. How many truckers can you get on there? When it happened, we were good. We were selling the most meat we have. We have the most amount of animals we’ve ever had on this farm. We were at the farmer’s market. We had a really good base of customers. I work at Livingston Educational Service Agency. We do preschool programs, and we sold meat to where I work, farm to table, and we were feeding it to the children. The next few months got a little difficult because I had to watch my husband start to sell pieces of the farm. He had to have an auction. It all got on display right here in front of our house for weeks, and then it was all gone. So just to watch him have to see that dream go away, it was really hard.
SPEAKER 12 :
We knew right away it was the bile solids, that that was the culprit of where everything was coming from. Bile solids were a great fertilizer source for us to go along with the operation.
SPEAKER 16 :
In the early 1990s, the EPA was looking for a way to dispose of waste from wastewater treatment plants. So it recommended using biosolids, which are essentially treated sewage from homes and businesses, as fertilizer. But nearly 30 years later, in 2018, the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General admitted the agency didn’t know the impact that pollutants and biosolids could have on health and the environment. Regardless, states continue to offer biosolids to farmers, in some cases for free.
SPEAKER 01 :
how much was going undetected to the city for many years, and of course, unfortunately, to the detriment of Mr. Grostick. The state just wasn’t doing this investigation on a whim. They didn’t just pick Jason Grostick out of a hat and go to his property in the farmland in Howell, Michigan and say, hey, let’s see if PFAS is here. No, this was a lengthy, ongoing study.
SPEAKER 16 :
In 2018, Michigan did something that had never been done before in the US. It tested water across the state for PFAS.
SPEAKER 01 :
Michigan was testing the waters of the state to determine, are there high levels of PFAS in any of them? And if so, where is it coming from? And one of the bodies of water was the Huron River. Sure enough, the Huron River did have high levels of PFAS. So they tested upstream to figure out where it’s coming from. And they determined there was a large amount coming from the Wixom wastewater treatment plant. So the state tested the various input points. and determined that the highest test, by far, by thousands of times, was Tribar.
SPEAKER 16 :
Tribar is an automotive supplier that makes parts for big names in the auto industry, including Ford. And did they know that they were doing that?
SPEAKER 01 :
I guess what I’d tell you is the law says it doesn’t matter. The law says that if you didn’t know, shame on you. If you did know, shame on you. But the point is, you got to know it’s in your waist. If you are going to dump… toxic industrial waste into a wastewater treatment plant, you have to know what’s in it.
SPEAKER 16 :
An internal memo obtained by Vice News shows that Tribar was using PFAS chemicals in its chrome plating plant since at least 2008, and that Tribar did not test for the chemicals. Local regulations did not require them to. So when Jason Krostek first accepted biosolids from the state of Michigan in 2010, it was contaminated with the chemicals coming out of Tribar.
SPEAKER 01 :
Right here, paragraph 11. The monitoring and testing data of Tribar Manufacturing’s discharges shows that Tribar has violated its wastewater discharge permit.
SPEAKER 16 :
In August 2022, Grostic filed a lawsuit against Tribar for millions of dollars. An early estimate put soil remediation alone at more than $600 million.
SPEAKER 12 :
We’ve got grant money from the government that’s buying us feed, but that still doesn’t begin to cover the extra cost of doing business the way we’re doing business. It gets tougher every day wanting to do it because there’s no income from it. What’s the last year been like for you? I tell people now it’s like dying of cancer. It’s there and you don’t know when it’s going to happen. Realistically, I don’t think I have a future anymore. Nobody’s ever going to buy meat for me again.
SPEAKER 16 :
Are you all planning for what five months from now looks like?
SPEAKER 12 :
No. Scares the shit out of me. It’s all I’ve ever done. I built a reputation to sell beef and build, for lack of better terms, an empire that my kids could run. And now there’s nothing. You ready, bud?
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay, so I want to take a quick interruption. And so one of the things that I want to share with you is clearly PFAS contamination is a concern for cancer. One of the things that, you know, the study has also linked PFAS contamination, possibly linking to brain, esophagus, and skin cancers. So… I’ve always talked to you guys about the National Primary Drinking Water Regulation. And what I want to focus on, on top of what we’re hearing today regarding PFAS contamination, is there are three, four main contaminants that are disinfection byproducts that are used in drinking water disinfection. So that means that they add these contaminants as part of water sanitation. So when you take the fecal matter and the urine, so let’s call that sewage, not to be gross, but that’s what it is. When we take that out of the water, one of the contaminants is bromate. A byproduct of drinking water disinfection, increased risk of cancer. And then, you know, the maximum contamination level. This is in milligrams per liter, which is 0.010. Now, keep in mind, that, again, is another contaminant, part of the disinfection byproducts that we have to worry about, along with the PFAS contamination. Chlorite. Chlorite. A byproduct of drinking water disinfection. Anemia in infants and young children and then affects the nervous system. That’s at one milligram per liter. Total trihalomethanes. That is a byproduct from drinking water. It’s the chlorination, the chloramine. And then that mixed with organics create trihalomethanes. That can create liver, kidney, or central nervous system problems and increased risk of cancer. On top of the PFAS contamination. There are studies also, they’re concerned that PFAS can be absorbed through the skin. PFAS, a study out of the University of Notre Dame found it elevated levels of PFAS in the fitness tracker and smartwatch bands. That was in July of 2024. Okay, let’s pick it back up.
SPEAKER 12 :
Who do you blame in all this? I want to say I blame the government for allowing sludge to be applied to the farmland. But really, I blame corporate America the worst because they get away with anything they want. They can dump stuff down the drain, they can poison this, they can do that, and nothing ever happens to them. Mixing up the feed so the cows can eat it. It’ll never be the same old, same old, bud.
SPEAKER 16 :
When Michigan found that Tribar was a source of PFAS contamination, they asked the company to install filters. And it worked, initially.
SPEAKER 05 :
The subscriber you have dialed is not in service.
SPEAKER 16 :
So hard to get any of these guys on the phone. But Vice News spent nearly a year investigating Tribar’s environmental record and found a pattern of serious violations, some of which are still happening today.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, this one, right?
SPEAKER 16 :
We spoke with more than a dozen former and current employees at Tribar. They all requested anonymity. Could you introduce yourself in a way that will maintain your anonymity? Anything you can tell us about your role at Tribar?
SPEAKER 07 :
I was in a management role with a very intricate knowledge of the inner workings.
SPEAKER 16 :
Why did you eventually decide to leave?
SPEAKER 07 :
You know, you have a moral and ethic code. You have your reputation. I wanted to leave with it intact.
SPEAKER 16 :
People just seem really terrified of speaking out. Why is that?
SPEAKER 05 :
The company has a lot of environmental and health issues inside the plants. They weren’t buying the chemicals they needed to keep the line running safely. You have very toxic and hazardous chemicals that have a specific process that they need to go through. And people that were very critical to daily operations started leaving.
SPEAKER 16 :
Why is that? And what effect does that have on the operation there?
SPEAKER 05 :
At one point in time, these were two separate companies. You had Adapt Plastic Finishing and Man-Tribal Manufacturing. You know, those were privately owned by two individuals. And at some point in time, they were acquired by this private equity group called HCI.
SPEAKER 16 :
HCI Equity Partners, a Washington, D.C.-based firm, acquired Tribar in 2015. According to employees, that’s when things got even worse.
SPEAKER 07 :
Obviously, with a new equity firm taking over, we noticed cost-cutting.
SPEAKER 16 :
How quickly did you notice it?
SPEAKER 07 :
Immediately.
SPEAKER 16 :
So what was the priority for them?
SPEAKER 07 :
Money. Finances.
SPEAKER 16 :
Did that priority, in some cases, impact environment, health and safety of the community?
SPEAKER 07 :
Everything. Yes, it was all money-driven.
SPEAKER 05 :
The quality of work that people were proud of doing was being compromised, and they were being asked to cut corners and do things faster and efficiently.
SPEAKER 16 :
How does that affect safety and health, really, of the community?
SPEAKER 05 :
When people are leaving and especially not being replaced with the adequate help. For example, the environmental guy, to my knowledge, never really had any experience. I mean, he was a shipping clerk before he took on this, what I would consider a major role within the company. You’re creating an environment that is just a ticking time bomb.
SPEAKER 16 :
Tribar did not accept repeated interview requests. In a statement, Tribar and HCI said that they have invested more than $42 million in their facilities and equipment, including sophisticated environmental controls. They also said, quote, no one has been fired or laid off for identifying a potential issue. However, multiple sources told Vice News that they are still concerned with how the company handles PFAS chemicals.
SPEAKER 07 :
processes like the granular activated carbon system for the PFAS. The whole reason for that GAC system is for PFAS remediation.
SPEAKER 16 :
So this is a carbon filtering system that strips the PFAS out of the wastewater.
SPEAKER 07 :
Exactly. When that GAC system is running the way it’s supposed to, that outcome for PFAS is non-detect. You’re claiming that the GAC system catches it all, but if the GAC system is plugged, it doesn’t catch it all.
SPEAKER 16 :
Why isn’t the GAC system working properly to filter that?
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay, so I want to interrupt right there. So granular activated carbon was effective in removing the PFAS, as stated by the EPA. But if it’s not maintained properly, it doesn’t do anything. And then it could release more PFAS. It could go in reverse because it’s an exhausted media. Once it becomes exhausted, it has to be disposed. And it’s a hot item. It’s full of contaminant. So activated carbon absolutely will work. The problem is how many gallons of water can activated carbon filter before that filter media is exhausted and no longer will function properly. That’s something that that company obviously didn’t think about or maintain. But then now let’s go to the bigger scale. What’s the municipality going to do? Activated carbon is one item that will absolutely reduce the PFAS. We’ll remove it to a non-detectable level, which is great news for us. This is what we need. Now, you can use an activated carbon filtration system in your home. You absolutely can. Reverse osmosis is something that will absolutely work as well. However, hard water is a determining factor. We know in Michigan they have hard water. They have iron content. So if they weren’t going through pre-filtration, if they weren’t feeding that activated carbon with soft water, then that activated carbon got full and then it stopped working.
SPEAKER 16 :
And you saw that firsthand? Did you feel pressure from executives to keep the plant going when things weren’t going well? What did that pressure look like?
SPEAKER 1 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
They’re not making parts. They’re not making money. It’s all their push is to make it run, make it run, make it run.
SPEAKER 16 :
And in order to run, they got to get that wastewater out.
SPEAKER 06 :
That is correct.
SPEAKER 16 :
Doesn’t Tribar have to abide by certain regulations around what levels of PFAS have to be at before water is released?
SPEAKER 06 :
They do. But conveniently, every document for the past 24 months is missing. I’ve seen them. I’ve put hands on them. Then the day the investigators come in, they’re gone. Gone. Nobody knows where they are. So what do you actually do?
SPEAKER 05 :
I was approached to sign off on some documentation that had to be turned into Eagle. And I said, this isn’t right. This account here is not correct. And I was told, doesn’t matter, sign the document so we can turn it in. And I refused to sign until I’m not putting my name on anything that’s falsified. And it was probably within a couple of weeks of that, the treatment started where it was
SPEAKER 16 :
Was there any question in your mind why they were starting to treat you that way? Tribar denies failing to properly document or respond to environmental concerns. In a statement, they said they will, quote, continue to take our responsibility as a good corporate citizen very seriously. But EGLE, Michigan’s environmental agency, confirmed they have issued Tribar 15 different violations in the last year, including for missing documentation and for not keeping accurate records. EGLE did say Tribar’s PFAS emissions were in compliance with state regulations in 2022. Why did you decide to do this interview?
SPEAKER 06 :
Anything we discharge potentially can get into a waterway that now leads to someone’s home. And it’s affecting lives long term. And there’s children that are going to grow up with birth defects. There’s children that are going to grow up with cancers they don’t even know about right now because of PFAS. And somehow my company glosses over and says, I’ll eat the fine, don’t worry about it.
SPEAKER 16 :
If you lose your job over this, will it have been worth it?
SPEAKER 06 :
I’d do it any day.
SPEAKER 12 :
Mortgage bill, property taxes, membership dues for MCA, loader payment, ski loader payment, health insurance, All in grand total, on an average every month, $8,000. Basics. And if I don’t start getting some money income real soon, it’s not going to last much longer.
SPEAKER 14 :
The stress, it’s ridiculous. It really is. Not knowing every day. I had concerns that he could have hurt himself. because he was so depressed, not knowing what was gonna happen. I worried like if he went down to do chores, if he was gonna come back. Because you hear about it all the time, farmers taking their own lives. And I asked him straight up, I said, I need to know, like, have you thought about this? Is this something on your mind? Because we have kids. And he said, no way, no way.
SPEAKER 16 :
Does your wife have good reason to worry about you?
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, I said no. I mean it.
SPEAKER 16 :
When Grostick’s farm was shut down, he had already sold hundreds of pounds of meat to multiple customers.
SPEAKER 13 :
You’re gonna wanna watch your step. They’re really steep, they’re old.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay, so I want to add a couple things. The next segment that we’re going to play, we’ll talk about a customer that purchased the meat and his thoughts. And then it’s going to get interesting. It’s going to talk about a former employee and the contamination of residents and farmland. You know, in a recap, 3M is basically the center of the PFAS controversy. So in 2021 and 2022, 3M reported that it sold more than 20,000 products that contain PFAS in the United States. Scotchgard. It’s a well-known brand of fabric and upholstery protects the fabric from, you know, water, water resistant. That’s what’s PFAS. Firefighting foam, as we mentioned. Industrial cleaners. Certain industrial cleaning products have used, and that’s exactly what this company that manufactured, you know, chrome and automotive parts in Michigan did. That’s PFAS. Electronic parts also come coated with PFAS. So that’s contamination when those electronic parts are disposed of and they are put in our landfill. 3M announced in December of 2022 that it would stop making PFAS and discontinue using them in products by the end of 2025. So they’re still producing them today. It’s important to note that 3M has phased out products of some long-chain PFAS, such as PFOs and PFOS, and have been working on alternatives. And some of the alternatives are now already outlawed by the EPA, and those are the Gen X chemicals. So the EPA, in 2024, outlined Gen X chemicals as being harmful. And, you know, for them to be discontinued in use, you know, anything that you have water repellent for fabrics. So, you know, we have lawn furniture that has, you know, cushions in our lawn furniture. Anything that’s water repellent is a PFAS. The other concerning thing is the PFAS and food packaging. And one of the things that got me was the PFAS that’s in the popcorn and the microwave popcorn bags. That’s that’s just that’s troubling. And then the plastics PFAS are in food wraps, plastic wraps. So it’s a double whammy, isn’t it? You got the plastic wrap that creates microplastic and inside the plastic is a PFAS coating that’s water resistant to keep moisture out of the packaging. So this next segment is going to be very interesting, and one of the things that they’re going to talk about is farm contamination, but you’re going to listen to a lady. Her and her husband bought a Christmas tree farm. He died of liver cancer, and she’s going to talk about having her blood tested for PFAS. It’s very fascinating.
SPEAKER 13 :
This is what’s left of the last cow. Well, there’s some pig in here, too, but…
SPEAKER 16 :
So this is meat that you got from Grostick’s farm?
SPEAKER 13 :
Both the pork and the beef, yes.
SPEAKER 16 :
OK.
SPEAKER 13 :
And we’ve been eating his meat now for seven years, I believe.
SPEAKER 16 :
So what was it like to first learn that these chemicals were in it?
SPEAKER 13 :
What would it do to me was the first question, which I never really got an answer to. The other thing was, is it going to kill us to eat it?
SPEAKER 15 :
Are you guys still eating this meat?
SPEAKER 13 :
Yes, we are.
SPEAKER 15 :
How did you make that decision?
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, at this point, we’ve already eaten the worst. Why stop?
SPEAKER 16 :
Do you know what the levels of PFAS are in this meat?
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, yeah, the state had just sent me, I finally got the paperwork today showing the levels. These two are this cow in here.
SPEAKER 16 :
4.02 parts per billion, is that right?
SPEAKER 13 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 16 :
And so do you know what that means?
SPEAKER 13 :
No, not really.
SPEAKER 16 :
So the state sent you this, but they don’t tell you what it means?
SPEAKER 13 :
No, no, basically this is what they sent me.
SPEAKER 16 :
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture both have not set PFAS limits in food or livestock. But the European Union has. Based on their guidance, a person eating a pound of meat from John Tischer’s freezer would be exposed to about five times more than the weekly recommendation.
SPEAKER 15 :
I mean, the one thing that is clear is all this meat has PFAS in it.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 15 :
So what are you going to do?
SPEAKER 13 :
I’m not real sure what we’re going to do yet. We are talking about moving to a place where we can raise a couple cows and take care of it ourselves.
SPEAKER 16 :
Grostick’s case is not an isolated incident. Nationwide, about 20 million acres of U.S. cropland might be contaminated by biosolids, according to a recent estimate. But the real total is unknown, and experts say could be much higher. We’re in East China, Michigan, which is right on the Canadian border. And we’re here to meet a chemical engineer who worked with DuPont for more than 40 years. And since retiring, she’s switched teams. She now works with environmental groups to help them understand the impact of forever chemicals.
SPEAKER 08 :
Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof.
SPEAKER 03 :
I worked 42 years for DuPont. I worked the summer in 1976. That’s the summer I got pregnant with my oldest and then I worked in Teflon. They thought of it as the cleanest place in the plant, best place to work. Our site was the sole supplier of Teflon for food contact until 1985. It’s a great history, right?
SPEAKER 16 :
At this point. To better understand how many farms have been affected by PFAS contamination, Denise Trabek-Poynter started tracking where biosolids have been spread in Michigan. So far, she’s mapped hundreds of sites.
SPEAKER 03 :
We’re looking at lower Michigan right now. The red are wastewater treatment plants. Blue is where biosolids have been land applied. So I started adding things like tanneries. Paper mills are another. They use their residuals to land apply also. Over 2,100 locations likely to have PFAS. So this is Jason Grostick’s farm. What do these other surrounding dots represent? These are other farms. That have used biosolids? Yes. Very highly contaminated biosolids. They used it for years. It’s the same biosolids. Wow.
SPEAKER 16 :
So he’s really not an outlier. Obviously, the state of Michigan has tested Grostick’s farm.
SPEAKER 03 :
Have they tested other farms? As far as I know, they haven’t tested any of the other farms.
SPEAKER 16 :
MPART, the Michigan PFAS Action Response Team, confirmed that they have no plans of testing other farms unless the agency’s ongoing work identifies new toxic areas. So there’s Jack Pine’s property. Jack Pine is a pork farm in western Michigan in one of the sites tracked by Trabic Pointer. In the 1990s, they used waste coming from a leather tannery as fertilizer. More than 30 years later, testing of the farm’s soil showed levels of PFOS five times higher than those found on Jason Grostick’s land.
SPEAKER 03 :
PFOA and PFOS are two well-known PFAS. If you can detect it, it’s too much. They know it’s in the fields. They know it was in the pigs’ water. They know that it was probably in some of the food that they ate, but they never tested the animals’ manure or the pigs’. Way over there is some of the hog buildings. These are in operation.
SPEAKER 16 :
Because Michigan regulators didn’t test the hogs from Jack Pine, they could continue selling them. The impact this has had on America’s food supply is unknown. According to internal notes from Eagle, there might not be records of the animals after they were slaughtered and moved to the food chain. To date, the state has only tested animal products at Grostick’s farm. That’s unsurprising. Testing of any kind could show more contamination. During the 2019 National PFAS Conference, a state official admitted as much, saying that testing milk would put farmers out of business.
SPEAKER 04 :
The problem of trying to dig this up is once you dig it up, where are you going to put it? I don’t even dislike Ohio that much that I’d send it there. My husband Joel and I, we bought our first home. We thought it was our dream home. It was literally surrounded by Christmas trees. It turned out that Christmas tree farm was actually a place that dumped tannery waste for years and years and years. So it got into the water, and it’s contaminated 25 square miles of my community. Besides knowing what’s in my water, I wanted to know what’s in my blood. It costs $800 to test your blood. And I was hearing, don’t worry about it. It’s got minor health things. You don’t need to worry. I looked at them then and said, you know, my husband just died of liver cancer. My blood came back at 5 million parts per trillion. So I have some of the highest levels of PFAS, I guess, in the world. Though I don’t think it’s a contest. I went in for a thyroid ultrasound. I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer that had metastasized to my lymph nodes. I had to have 23 lymph nodes removed and a thyroidectomy. And I just had my blood tested again. And now I’m down to a measly 3.5 million parts per trillion. So at this point, if I live to be 240, I am good.
SPEAKER 11 :
Life has enough worries, and then you have to go home and go, oh, wow, you can’t drink the water. Is it really safe to take a shower? Is it really safe to water your dogs? Is it really safe? But what is somebody going to do? There’s nothing to get out of your system. Why didn’t somebody acknowledge or tell us? Because obviously they’ve known for a while.
SPEAKER 12 :
This field here probably has not been exposed to biosolids, I’m gonna say in probably 10 or 12 years. We no longer allowed to let our cattle be on this pasture because of this stupid PFAS in my soil. You don’t get to see it, you don’t smell it, you don’t know it, but it’s here.
SPEAKER 16 :
So you know of farmers who are still using biosolids?
SPEAKER 12 :
Yes. There’s several guys that are still using it that I know of locally.
SPEAKER 16 :
I mean, knowing the risks, why are people still using it?
SPEAKER 12 :
It’s free. It’s free nutrients. That is $30,000 that I saved not buying commercial fertilizer.
SPEAKER 16 :
And the government’s telling you it’s safe? Why not? Right.
SPEAKER 12 :
I mean, the EPA is the one that said that biosolids should be applied to farmland.
SPEAKER 16 :
In 2021, Michigan became one of the first states to regulate the concentration of PFOS in biosolids. Recently proposed federal regulations regarding PFAS in drinking water will limit only six types of forever chemicals. But advocates are pushing to regulate PFAS as a class because variations of the chemicals continue to show up in water testing reports.
SPEAKER 09 :
So let’s update that. There’s now 147,000 known chemicals that the EPA has now recognized to be regulated as a goal to be reduced out of drinking water, and it’s down to four part per trillion. So you heard the number that was in the lady’s blood, the contamination of her blood. It’s down for the drinking water down to four part per trillion. But the greater issue is the soil contamination and all the unknown agricultural land that’s still being used now and dairy cows. Unknown PFAS contamination. It’s something that we really need to look at on a grand scale. So agricultural communities could be unaware. You have dairy farms all over northern Colorado. You go northern Colorado outside of Greeley and you head east and there’s dairy farms all over the place. Do we know if that land’s been contaminated? And there’s another issue that we have with dairy farms, right? Dairy farms can, you know, have high nitrates, and then nitrogen is another issue that can contaminate water supplies as well. So if you live on well water, you definitely, you know, need to think about your contamination is just as… equal to somebody that lives in a municipal water supply. The problem that when you’re on well water, you don’t know what’s contaminated. You don’t know what you have. It’s a great idea to get tested. But now there’s a problem. The state of Colorado can no longer test water because their lab had scientists or lab techs that fudge numbers. The EPA came in and shut them down only because they had no choice because the EPA was coming to reaccreditate the lab and then they had to admit that, hey, we fudged results. And now they found a second individual that was fudging results. So now the state of Colorado no longer tests water. That’s sad, isn’t it? So you have to go to outside agencies or companies to get your water tested. And when you do that, I definitely recommend that you take your own sample into those companies. Do not hire somebody, a third party, to collect a sample for you. You do it yourself. You don’t want somebody using lab results to try to scare you into buying their water treatment equipment. That, I think, is unethical. Now, you can take your lab results and share them with somebody like us, and we’ll be more than happy to go over with you the results and discuss options how to treat the contaminations that you’re concerned about. So what you can do for your water is definitely do a point-of-use reverse osmosis. They mention activated carbon is absolutely another method, but you want to have a filter that’s designed to handle PFAS, but also it all starts with how hard is your water. Hard water absolutely will affect the quality of those water filters, meaning the longevity, how long they will last. Hard water will eat them up. Hardness is a liquid. that as it oxidizes, it converts to a scale, and then that scale is going to build up around that filter, and then the water will not absorb or go through the filter. The filter won’t absorb the water for the proper filtration. So that’s something that we definitely want to think about. You know, we’ll continue with this story next week. We have other stories I want to share with you. But, you know, in the few remaining minutes we have, it’s just amazing to recap the problems that we have with our water supply. So we definitely have the PFAS forever chemicals. This was a bigger issue than I thought. You know, I’ll share with you personally when I was listening last spring. you know, to the EPA webinar. So we had customers that contacted us from Adams County in Denver County. They received letters saying that, hey, the water tested higher than what was recommended on the PFAS contamination. However, They didn’t go in in depth on what the contamination concerns were, and nor did the EPA in the webinar share with us how we got to this contamination. Did they mention 3M and did they mention DuPont? No, they didn’t. They just said it was something that because of chemicals and manufacturing since World War II. But the greater story was this was a well-known contamination issue that was so what, and they kept on making and using these products. And to the point I just shared with you, they’re still making these products until the end of 2025. Isn’t that amazing? They’re going to still use a contamination that they know is cancer-causing, and they’re still going to produce products with this contaminant to 2025. Unbelievable. And we just heard the story of that lady. Can you imagine the numbers of the part per billion that she has contaminated the PFAS? And, you know, her husband dying of liver cancer, and then, you know, the surgeries that she had to have, and she still has high levels. It doesn’t go away. Do we know what our PFAS levels are in ourselves? No, we don’t, do we? Is this something that should we ask, you know, when we go to the doctor and they get blood work? You know, should we ask them, can we do a PFAS test on our blood to see where we’re at? I think that’s something that we should really think about. So remember… You know, clean water is up to us. You know, I definitely recommend, you know, give us a call at Water Pros or, you know, 303-862-5554. We definitely can help you out with, you know, PFAS mitigation, forever chemicals. We’ve got pharmaceuticals. That’s the other issue I’m concerned about. Hormones in the water. Antibiotics in the water. Puberty blockers in the water. Then these microplastics, and microplastics become nanoplastics. It’s just never-ending. So it really is up to us, isn’t it, to take seriously the quality of our drinking water. And then the next step, I think we probably should be responsible. And when you ask if your medical provider can do a blood work and blood test on PFAS, I think that’s the only right thing to do. Well, listen, thank you very much for joining us. I sure appreciate it. I hope you guys enjoy the rest of your day. Have a great weekend. Take care. God bless.
SPEAKER 02 :
Remember to reach out to Paul the Waterman with your questions and water filtration needs, and be sure to tune in to Water Talk Thursdays at 2 p.m. to talk with Paul. And for more information, find him on the programming page at klzradio.com. The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of Crawford Broadcasting, the station, management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting guide and country station.
