Chemicals Should Be Addressed

July 10, 2023 Editor, The News-Gazette: With increasing frequency, the environment is being degraded by interest groups making money from products that have not been examined for the negative effects they might produce when in the hands of humans.

PFAS/PFOAs are a large family of industrial chemicals that have contaminated the blood of humans and are linked to cancer, endocrine and autoimmune disorders, abbreviated fertility, thyroid deficiencies, and vital organ failures, including a suspicious connection to gender dysplasia. Because there are some 12,000 possible permutations in the chemical structures of these substances, no reliable safe exposure levels are known. More frightening, can any biological organism tolerate even the smallest amount of these chemicals in their food, air and water?

PFAS/PFOAs are tagged as “forever chemicals” because for many decades they can resist Earth’s natural decomposition regime. These chemicals, found in thousands of products we use at home and work, exhibit the heaviest concentrations on some farmlands and in residues from fire-fighting operations. Some farmers spread these chemicals by accepting sewage sludge from municipal waste treatment plants. Rockbridge is reported to have several farms holding permits to apply sewage sludge to crop and grazing fields. For the past two decades, our own Maury Service Authority has been mixing landfill leachate possibly containing these chemicals with the sewage sludge that is then reapplied to farmland. When it rains, the PFAS/OS end up in the same waters that flow from every faucet and well in Rockbridge County.

Our public officials owe us a remedy to the problems of PFAS/ PFOAs. The first step should be instructing the Maury Service Authority to stop mixing sewage sludge with leachate from the landfill. The next step should be testing sewage sludge prior to release to permit holders, while requiring additional testing for the presence of these chemicals in Rockbridge County’s potable water assets. The third step is to require on-farm testing in order to properly target the spread of this scourge. So far, the Farm Bureau, our Board of Supervisors, the Rockbridge landfill and the Maury Service Authority have, repeatedly, resisted testing even though a qualified researcher at Virginia Tech has offered testing “for free.”

DON HENKE Goshen