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If you live in the Mid-Ohio Valley and rely on public water, it is worth knowing whether your community is filtering for C8 and other forever chemicals.
The region is widely known for C8 contamination linked to DuPont Washington Works. What most people probably don't realize is that Parkersburg, the community most closely identified with this global crisis, has yet to implement a filtration system to deal with the problem.
Across the Mid-Ohio Valley, the pollution is widespread, yet some communities have filtration and others do not.
Some of us have benefited from filtration for years thanks to class-action litigation against DuPont, which resulted in the construction of granular activated carbon filtration systems for six public water systems in 2005: Lubeck and Mason County, West Virginia, and Belpre, Little Hocking, Pomeroy and Chester/Tuppers Plains in Ohio.
Independent of litigation, the city of Vienna installed a water treatment facility in 2017 to comply with the U.S. EPA's health advisories.
Parkersburg has never had dedicated C8 or PFAS filtration. And the water system has come up with some pretty creative ways of delaying the inevitable. Recently, the Parkersburg Utility Board has been developing plans for a granular activated carbon treatment system. So far, those are future plans.
Whether your water is currently being treated or not, here's what you need to understand about filtration.
Think of it as pollution management. Pollution, like your household garbage, needs to be collected, contained and removed so you can reduce your family's exposure.
Filtration doesn't make the pollution disappear, just like a garbage truck doesn't make your trash disappear. The garbage truck is the mechanism for collecting and removing. Likewise, granular activated carbon collects and captures these industrial chemicals so they can be removed from your water.
Filtration technology relies on a strength that is also its limitation. Carbon is remarkably good at capturing pollutants, but it can only hold so much. Overfill a garbage truck and that truck is going to be spilling your trash on the highway. Likewise, if you overburden the carbon material, it will become saturated and unable to contain the pollution. Filters have to be replaced on schedule to remain effective. And so filtration comes with ongoing maintenance and expense.
Filtration works. It can work extremely well. But it has to be managed.
Even if your community has municipal PFAS filtration, I believe people in the Mid-Ohio Valley should consider an additional layer of filtration for the water they actually consume. And if your public water system doesn't yet have dedicated PFAS treatment, there is even more reason to understand your options.
You don't necessarily need an elaborate or expensive whole-house system for effective management. A simple GAC (granular activated carbon) filtration pitcher used for drinking water can offer your family an additional layer of protection and one more way to reduce exposure.
The Mid-Ohio Valley has spent more than a quarter-century learning an extraordinarily difficult lesson about C8. It's time we learned more about protecting ourselves from this very real and ongoing health threat.
Municipal filtration is an important layer of protection. Household pollution management is another layer of protection -- and one you can control.
Remember: Exposure avoided today cannot become a health problem tomorrow.