How PFAS From A Military Base Has Sickened Nearby Residents

FLORA LICHTMAN: This is Science Friday. I’m Flora Lichtman. Later in the hour, why don’t we have a vaccine for Lyme disease? And we reflect on the 100th anniversary of the Scopes trial, which pitted evolution and science against religion.

But first, we’re headed to Newburgh, New York. It’s a small city about 70 miles north of New York City. And for decades, residents were unknowingly drinking water contaminated with toxic PFAS, a.k.a. forever chemicals. Now the CDC is studying the health effects of PFAS exposure in Newburgh, along with nine other sites. Preliminary data from city residents links PFAS with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and heart disease.

Here to tell us more are Dr. Erin Bell, Environmental Epidemiologist at the University at Albany in New York, who led the Newburgh study. And Shantal Riley, a health and science reporter who’s been covering PFAS for years. Welcome to Science Friday.

ERIN BELL: Thank you very much.

SHANTAL RILEY: Thanks for having us.

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK, let’s start with some definitions. When we talk about PFAS, what are we talking about?

ERIN BELL: Sure. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS for short, is a family of chemicals that includes anywhere from 9,000 to 12,000 separate chemicals used in manufacturing and in firefighting foam. Historically, they’ve been used as nonstick coating– Teflon, for example, in our cookware– also in rain or water-resistant clothing, and certainly in the firefighting foam, as I mentioned. They’re a concern, because they tend to stay in our bodies and in the environment for a very long time, so we refer to them as persistent chemicals. And they can interrupt or interfere with our hormonal processes in our bodies.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I’ve also heard of PFOA and PFOS, P-F-O-S. Do those fall under the umbrella of PFAS chemicals?

SHANTAL RILEY: Yes, they do. And the PFOA was, in fact, the first chemical that was highlighted as a chemical of concern in the early 2000s as we started to understand the health effects related to these chemicals.

ERIN BELL: PFAS are incredibly tough. They’re dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not break down in the environment. So they’re made up of a chain of carbon atoms that are surrounded by fluorine atoms. And so they have this carbon fluorine bond, and it’s one of the strongest bonds known in chemistry.

And so this makes them resistant to heat, water, oil, grease. It makes them slippery. It makes them resistant to stains and corrosion.

They’re also very persistent. Researchers think they might take anywhere in the range of hundreds to thousands of years to break down in the environment. And some of them take years to be eliminated from the human body.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Shantal, let’s talk about Newburgh. When did the PFAS contamination come to light there?

SHANTAL RILEY: The PFAS water crisis in Newburgh was made public in and around 2016. I was a newspaper reporter covering Newburgh at the time. And like most people, I had no clue what PFAS were.

They were quickly traced back to the Stewart Air Base, which is about a mile outside of the city. Like other air bases and military bases around the country, PFAS were being used there in a specific kind of fire foam called AFFF. And it was used to fight fires, but it was also used to train firefighters.

So there was very little information at the time about the possible health impacts of PFAS. The EPA, however, had set an advisory level of 70 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS, P-F-O-S, combined at the time. It was not an enforceable rule. It was just a safety level.

FLORA LICHTMAN: A warning.

SHANTAL RILEY: Right. And so the city’s main drinking water reservoir had about double that amount of PFAS. And just so you understand how toxic this stuff is, one part per trillion is equal to one drop in 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wow. One drop in 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools is one part per trillion, right?

SHANTAL RILEY: Correct.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And the EPA advisory was like 70 drops in 20 Olympic swimming pools.

SHANTAL RILEY: Correct. And so the state stepped in and built a filtration system at the city’s water plant. And then later, it paid for clean water from the Catskill aqueduct to supply the city’s drinking water.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hm. Erin, you’ve studied this community. What have you found?

ERIN BELL: Back in 2016, when the New York State Department of Health began doing the bio monitoring, we found higher than average levels of PFOS and PFHXS, in particular. Both of those are components of firefighting foams.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And you found them in people’s bodies?

ERIN BELL: That’s right. We found them in the blood testing in both adults and children at levels higher than what we were seeing at the national levels. When we did that biomonitoring, there was a brief survey, a health survey, also administered. And we saw higher rates of high blood pressure, as well as suggested higher rates of coronary artery disease, and potentially also cholesterol with the higher levels of PFOS. So this information is important, because it will help us better plan and understand the data analysis we are currently conducting in the much larger study sponsored and paid for by the Centers for Disease Control.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do we have any sense of a possible mechanism of action– how some of these chemicals might cause cardiovascular disease, for example?

ERIN BELL: With these, particularly the long-lasting, or highly persistent chemicals like PFOA and PFOS, we refer to them as endocrine disruptors, meaning they interfere with our hormonal systems. And that is why we often see and examine health outcomes related to things like the functioning of the thyroid, the immunology system, the digestive system, some cancers. It’s also neurodevelopment in children are all very much correlated with the functions of our hormonal systems, and so we’re always concerned about that. So there’s been a number of studies that does show that these chemicals have the ability to interfere with our body’s normal functioning.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Shantal, you’ve interviewed residents of Newburgh. What do you hear from them?

SHANTAL RILEY: Well, they’re scared. They’re worried for their own health. They’re worried for the health of their families.

They’re also very angry. This has been dragged on for so long. Nine years later, the Air Force, unbelievably, is still in the planning phases–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Of cleanup?

SHANTAL RILEY: Yes. They have still not conducted a full cleanup at the air base, and there are still PFAS chemicals circulating within Newburgh’s watershed. And so it’s been a very long and painful wait.

FLORA LICHTMAN: A couple of years ago, the EPA set limits for six different PFAS chemicals in drinking water. I think it was the very first law to do that. Does that law still stand?

SHANTAL RILEY: The short answer is no. Under the Biden EPA, they set a limit, what’s known as a maximum contaminant level. But in May, the Trump EPA rescinded the rule for four of those chemicals, but left it in place for PFOS and PFOA. But they delayed that rule until 2031.

So a lot can happen in six years. A lot of people can be exposed in six years. There’s a lot of contamination that can go on.

A few days after the Trump administration took over, the EPA reversed another rule that would have curbed PFAS in industrial wastewater. A plan to designate PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances has also fallen by the wayside. You add this to the severe cuts that are taking place at the EPA right now, the agency has ended many grants for research on PFAS. And so it’s not at all good in terms of clean water.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So it seems like we can’t rely on the federal government to regulate them, at least right now. What about states? Are states regulating these chemicals?

SHANTAL RILEY: They absolutely are. Each state is different, so it’s a big mixed bag in terms of regulations state to state. New York currently has a limit of 10 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS. It also bans the sales of carpets and toys with PFAS, food packaging with PFAS, clothing and outdoor gear, and fire foam with PFAS.

California bans PFAS in menstrual products. Maine bans the spreading of PFAS in biosludge, or biosolids, which is a type of fertilizer. So the states, in short, are very, very key in helping to manage the spread of PFAS. And it’s really filling a void that the federal government has left behind.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So the CDC study is focusing on these 10 communities where we know there’s contamination. Do we understand the scale of exposure across the United States?

SHANTAL RILEY: There is some data on the number of public water systems that have been affected by PFAS. So the Environmental Working Group currently estimates that 165 million people, approximately, are now exposed to PFAS through polluted drinking water systems across the country.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So you both have such deep expertise on this. Do you personally try to limit your exposure to PFAS chemicals?

SHANTAL RILEY: Yes. I have a reverse osmosis filtration system under my sink. There are also pitchers and point-of-use filters that you can put on your faucets, or you can add to your home plumbing system to filter out PFAS coming into your home. There are some positive things happening, too, in terms of PFAS prevention or PFAS pollution prevention. There’s growing awareness of the dangers of PFAS in drinking water and PFAS exposure.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hard to call that a positive, exactly.

SHANTAL RILEY: Well, awareness matters, because it can lead to the kind of organization that we’re seeing in communities like Newburgh, where people are advocating for themselves. People can also go to their public water utilities to find out if there are PFAS in the public water, in their tap water. So that information is available publicly. But what we really, really need are strong laws that protect us from PFAS exposure at the state and federal level. And it seems like every time there’s some progress at the federal level, we then have a change of administration and then we take two steps back.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I want to thank you both for joining me today.

ERIN BELL: Thank you very much.

SHANTAL RILEY: Thanks for having us.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Shantal Riley is a Health and Science Writer based in New York. And Dr. Erin bell is an Environmental Epidemiologist at the University at Albany in New York. To learn more about this research, head to sciencefriday.com/PFAS, P-F-A-S.

Copyright © 2025 Science Friday Initiative. All rights reserved. Science Friday transcripts are produced on a tight deadline by 3Play Media. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. For the authoritative record of Science Friday’s programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/