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Californias’ Legacy-Underwater Dump Site of Toxic Waste
Americas' Water Crisis - ‘Forever Chemicals’ Pollute Water From Alaska to Florida
Whichever state you are in, there could be harmful PFAS chemicals in water near you
The Guardian UK, 12 JAN 2021.
Tom Kennedy learned about the long-term contamination of his family’s drinking water about two months after he was told that his breast cancer had metastasized to his brain and was terminal.
The troubles tainting his tap: per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a broad category of chemicals invented in the mid-1900s to add desirable properties such as stain-proofing and anti-sticking to shoes, cookware and other everyday objects.
Manufacturers in Fayetteville, North Carolina, had been discharging them into the Cape Fear River – a regional drinking water source – for decades.
“I was furious,” says Kennedy, who lives in nearby Wilmington. “I made the connection pretty quickly that PFAS likely contributed to my condition. Although it’s nothing that I can prove.”
The double whammy of bad news came more than three years ago. Kennedy, who has outlived his prognosis, is now an active advocate for stiffer regulation of PFAS.
“PFAS is everywhere,” he says. “It’s really hard to get any change.”
Indeed, various forms of PFAS are still used in a spectrum of industrial and consumer products – from nonstick frying pans and stain-resistant carpets to food wrappers and firefighting foam – and have become ubiquitous. The chemicals enter the environment anywhere they are made, spilled, discharged or used. Rain can flush them into surface sources of drinking water such as lakes, or PFAS may gradually migrate through the soil to reach the groundwater – another key source of public water systems and private wells.
For the same reasons the chemicals are prized by manufacturers – they resist heat, oil and water – PFAS also persist in the soil, the water and our bodies.
More than 200 million Americans may be drinking PFAS-contaminated water, suggests research by the nonprofit Environmental Working group (EWG), an advocacy group which is collaborating with Ensia on its Troubled Waters reporting project.
As studies continue to link exposures to a lengthening list of potential health consequences, scientists and advocates are calling for urgent action from both regulators and industry to curtail PFAS use and to take steps to ensure the chemicals already in the environment stay out of drinking water.
Thousands of Chemicals
PFAS dates back to the 1930s and 1940s, when Dupont and Manhattan Project scientists each accidentally discovered the chemicals. The Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, now 3M, soon began manufacturing PFAS as a key ingredient in Scotchgard and other non-stick, waterproof and stain-resistant products.
Thousands of different PFAS chemicals emerged over the following decades, including the two most-studied versions: PFOS and PFOA. Oral-B began using PFAS in dental floss. Gore-Tex used it to make waterproof fabrics. Hush Puppies used it to waterproof leather for shoes. And DuPont, along with its spin-off company Chemours, used the chemicals to make its popular Teflon coatings.
Science suggests links between PFAS exposure and a range of health consequences, including possible increased risks of cancer, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, liver damage, kidney disease, low birth-weight babies, immune suppression, ulcerative colitis and pregnancy-induced hypertension.
“PFAS really seem to interact with the full range of biological functions in our body,” says David Andrews, a senior scientist with EWG. “Even at the levels that the average person has in this country, these chemicals are likely having an impact.”
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has even issued a warning that exposure to high levels of PFAS might raise the risk of infection with Covid-19 and noted evidence from human and animal studies that PFAS could lower vaccine efficacy.
Once PFAS gets into the environment, the chemicals are likely to stick around a long time because they are not easily broken down by sunlight or other natural processes.
Legacy and ongoing PFAS contamination is present across the US, especially at or near sites associated with fire training, industry, landfills and wastewater treatment. Near Parkersburg, West Virginia, PFAS seeped into drinking water supplies from a Dupont plant. In Decatur, Alabama, a 3M manufacturing facility is suspected of discharging PFAS, polluting residents’ drinking water. And in Hyannis, Massachusetts, firefighting foam from a firefighter training academy is the likely source of well-water contamination, according to the state. Use of PFAS-containing materials such as firefighting foam at hundreds of military sites around the country, including one on Whidbey Island in Washington state, has also contaminated many drinking water supplies.
“It works great for fires. It’s just that it’s toxic,” says Donald (Matt) Reeves, an associate professor of hydrogeology at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo who studies how PFAS moves around, and sticks around, in the environment. It can be a near-endless loop, he explains. Industry might discharge the chemicals into a waste stream that ends up at a wastewater treatment plant. If that facility is not outfitted with filters that can trap PFAS, the chemicals may go directly into a drinking water source. Or a wastewater treatment facility might produce PFAS-laced sludge that is applied to land or put into a landfill. Either way, PFAS could leach out and find its way back in a wastewater treatment plant, repeating the cycle. The chemicals can be released into the air as well, resulting in some cases in PFAS getting deposited on land where it can seep back into drinking water supplies.
His research in Michigan, he says, echoes a broader trend across the US: “The more you test, the more you find.”
In fact, a study by scientists from EWG, published in October 2020, used state testing data to estimate that more than 200 million Americans could have PFAS in their drinking water at concentrations of 1 part per trillion (ppt) or higher. That is the recommended safe limit, according to some scientists and health advocates, and is equivalent to one drop in 500,000 barrels of water.
“This really highlights the extent that these contaminants are in the drinking water across the country,” says EWG’s Andrews, who co-authored the paper. “And, in some ways, it’s not a huge surprise. It’s nearly impossible to escape contamination of drinking water.” He references research from the CDC that found the chemicals in the blood of 98% of Americans surveyed.
Inconsistent regulation
US chemical makers have voluntarily phased out their use and emission of PFOS and PFOA, and industry efforts are underway to reduce ongoing contamination and clean up past contamination – even if the companies do not always agree with scientists on the associated health risks.
“The weight of scientific evidence from decades of research does not show that PFOS or PFOA causes harm in people at current or historical levels,” states Sean Lynch, a spokesperson for 3M. Still, he says that his company has invested more than US$200m globally to clean up the chemicals: “As our scientific and technological capabilities advance, we will continue to invest in cutting-edge cleanup and control technology and work with communities to identify where this technology can make a difference.”
Thom Sueta, a company spokesperson for Chemours, notes similar efforts to address historic and current emissions and discharges.
Environmental officials fined the company after its Fayetteville plant in NC dumped large quantities of the PFAS compound GenX, contaminating the drinking water used by Kennedy and some 250,000 of his neighbors.
Sueta said in an email: “We continue to decrease PFAS loading to the Cape Fear River and began operation this fall of a capture and treatment system of a significant groundwater source at the site.”
Most of the ongoing PFOS and PFOA contamination appear to come from previous uses cycling back into the environment and into people, Andrews says.
A big part of the challenge is that PFAS is considered an emerging contaminant and is, therefore, not regulated by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In 2016, the EPA set a non-binding health advisory limit of 70 ppt for PFOA and PFOS in drinking water. The agency proposed developing federal regulations for the contaminants in February 2020 and is currently reviewing comments with plans to issue a final decision this winter.
Several US states have set drinking water limits for PFAS, including California, Minnesota and New York. Michigan’s regulations, which cover seven different PFAS chemicals, are some of the most stringent. Western Michigan University’s Reeves says that the 2014 lead contamination crisis in Flint elevated the state’s focus on safe drinking water.
Still, the inconsistency across the country has created confusion. “The regulation of PFAS remains varied. States are all having different ideas, and that’s not necessarily a good thing,” says David Sedlak, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. “People are uncertain what to do.”
The Interstate Technology and Regulatory Council, or ITRC, a coalition of states that promotes the use of novel technologies and processes for environmental remediation, is working to pull together evidence-based recommendations for PFAS regulation in the absence of federal action.
University of Southern Denmark and Harvard professor Philip Grandjean suggests a safe level of PFAS in drinking water is probably about 1 ppt or below. The European Union’s latest risk assessment, which Grandjean says corresponds to a recommended limit of about 2 ppt for four common PFAS chemicals, is “probably close”, he says. “It’s not a precautionary limit, but it’s certainly a lot closer than EPA’s.”
GenX, introduced in 2009 by DuPont to replace PFOA, is among a newer generation of short-chain PFAS designed to have fewer carbon molecules than the original long-chain PFAS. These were initially believed to be less toxic and more quickly excreted from the body. But some evidence is proving otherwise: studies suggest that these relatives may pose many of the same risks as their predecessors.
“The family of PFAS chemicals being used in commerce is a lot broader than the small set of compounds that the EPA is considering regulating,” says Sedlak. “Up until now, the focus of discussion related to regulation has centered around PFOS and PFOA with some discussion of GenX. But the deeper we dig, the more we see lots and lots of PFAS out there.”
Andrews notes that the ongoing pattern of replacing one toxic chemical with another is a problem that the federal government urgently needs to fix. “This entire family of chemicals shares many of the same characteristics,” he says.
Environmental health advocates express hope that 2021 will bring greater progress on PFAS regulation.
President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to set enforceable limits for PFAS in drinking water and to designate PFAS as a hazardous substance – which would accelerate the cleanup of contaminated sites under the EPA’s Superfund program.
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re: Californias’ Legacy-Underwater Dump Site of Toxic Waste
US Water Crisis / We Sampled US Tap Water – and Found ARSENIC, Lead and Toxic Chemicals
Substances found in samples taken for Consumer Reports and the Guardian
We sampled tap water across the US – and found arsenic, lead and toxic chemicals
In a nine-month investigation by the Guardian and Consumer Reports we found forever chemicals, arsenic and lead in samples taken across the US
The Guardian, 31 MAR 2021.
In Connecticut, a condo had lead in its drinking water at levels more than double what the federal government deems acceptable. At a church in North Carolina, the water was contaminated with extremely high levels of potentially toxic PFAS chemicals ( a group of compounds found in hundreds of household products). The water flowing into a Texas home had both – and concerning amounts of arsenic too.
All three were among locations that had water tested as part of a nine-month investigation by Consumer Reports (CR) and the Guardian into the US’s drinking water.
Since the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972, access to safe water for all Americans has been a US government goal. Yet millions of people continue to face serious water quality problems because of contamination, deteriorating infrastructure, and inadequate treatment at water plants.
CR and the Guardian selected 120 people from around the US, out of a pool of more than 6,000 volunteers, to test for arsenic, lead, PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), and other contaminants. The samples came from water systems that together service more than 19 million people.
A total of 118 of the 120 samples had concerning levels of PFAS or arsenic above CR’s recommended maximum, or detectable amounts of lead. Testing of the samples showed:
More than 35% of the samples had PFAS, potentially toxic “forever chemicals”, at levels above CR’s recommended maximum.
About 8% of samples had arsenic, at levels above CR’s recommended maximum.
In total, 118 out of 120 samples had detectable levels of lead.
The study has some limitations: the quality of the water at one location on a single day doesn’t necessarily reflect the quality of the water supplied by an entire system or at other times. But the ambitious undertaking, with community water systems chosen by CR’s statisticians from a representative mix of systems across the country, provides a unique view into some of the most significant challenges in America’s ongoing drinking water crisis.
Almost every sample tested had measurable levels of PFAS, a group of compounds found in hundreds of household products. These chemicals are linked to learning delays in children, cancer, and other health problems. More than 35 percent exceeded a safety threshold that CR scientists and other health experts believe should be the maximum.
Yet many consumers have never heard of PFAS.
Hung Ng, a resident of Florida, New York, says he has long used home water filters, in part to remove lead. But the 69-year-old says he didn’t know anything about PFAS until he had his water tested as part of this investigation, which found comparatively high levels of the chemicals in his water. “Now I’ve got to find something to filter out the PFAS,” Ng says.
The tests revealed other problems as well. About 8% of samples had levels of arsenic – which gets into drinking water through natural deposits or industrial or agricultural pollution – above CR’s recommended maximum for drinking water. And almost every sample had measurable amounts of lead, a heavy metal that leaches from corroding water lines and home plumbing fixtures. It is unsafe at any level.
In response to the findings, Environmental Protection Agency spokesperson Andrea Drinkard says that 93% of the population supplied by community water systems gets water that meets “all health-based standards all of the time” and that the agency has set standards for more than 90 contaminants. That includes arsenic and lead but does not include PFAS.
America’s water crisis, while widespread, affects some communities more than others, according to an analysis of more than 140,000 public water systems published by the Guardian in February. It found that access to clean drinking water is highly unequal in the US, with water systems that service poorer and rural counties far more likely to have violations than those that provide water to wealthier or urban ones. Water systems in counties with large Latino populations were particularly likely to have violations, the Guardian found.
PFAS: The ‘Forever Chemical’ Problem
The PFAS results from CR’s tests are particularly troubling.
Manufacturers use PFAS to make stain-resistant fabrics and carpets, water-repellent clothing, nonstick cookware, and hundreds of other common products. The compounds can seep into water from factories, landfills, and other sources. And because they don’t easily break down in the environment, they’re often called “forever chemicals”.
Investigation into the health effects of PFAS exposure is ongoing, but some of the strongest evidence about their potential risks comes from research of about 69,000 people in and around Parkersburg, W Va. The research – part of a settlement between DuPont, which makes some PFAS, and residents of the community – was depicted in the 2019 movie Dark Waters.
It found a “probable link” between exposure to a type of PFAS and six health problems: high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, pregnancy-induced hypertension, and testicular and kidney cancers. Research has also linked some PFAS to learning delays in children.
At least 2,337 communities in 49 states have drinking water known to be contaminated with PFAS, according to a January analysis by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), an advocacy organization.
CR’s tests results confirm the ubiquity of the chemicals: We found PFAS in 117 of the 120 samples we tested, from locations across the country.
Despite mounting evidence of widespread contamination and health risks, the EPA has still not set an enforceable legal limit for PFAS in drinking water. Instead, it has established only voluntary limits, which apply to just two of the better-studied forever chemicals–PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid, and PFOS, or perfluorooctanesulfonic acid–at 70 parts per trillion combined.
Harvard environmental health professor Philippe Grandjean has suggested that the limit should be just 1 ppt for PFOA and PFOS, citing his 2013 research– partly funded by the EPA – showing decreased vaccine response in children exposed to the chemicals.
CR’s scientists say the maximum allowed amount should be 5 ppt for a single PFAS chemical and 10 ppt for two or more.Among the 120 samples CR tested, more than a third had PFAS levels above 10 ppt, and more than a quarter exceeded 5 ppt for a single PFAS chemical.
Two samples had PFAS levels above the federal advisory level of 70 ppt, with the highest amount – 80.2 ppt–coming from a sample that Jim Vaughn, a 76-year-old retired electrical equipment salesman, collected at his church in Pittsboro, NC.
Arsenic: a Toxin in The Water
More than 1,200 miles away from Pittsboro, Sandy and Scott Phillips sat around their kitchen table in Texas on a weekday in February reflecting on the test results for their water samples.
Last year, looking to downsize, they built the custom home of their dreams in a new development in Round Rock, 20 miles north of Austin.
But soon after moving in, they began to notice the water had an unusual odor, prompting them to invest thousands in a water softening and reverse osmosis water filtration system.
Not long after, the couple got their water tested as part of CR’s project, taking samples from water before it was filtered. The results were concerning: high not just in PFAS (32.8 ppt) but also in arsenic, at 3.3 parts per billion. “We get this gorgeous house,” Sandy Phillips says, “and then the water is terrible.”
Bill Brown, general manager of the Jonah Water Special Utility District, the couple’s water supplier, says it “has complied with all federal and state minimum contaminant level standards for arsenic and lead for many years”. He says that while CR’s results conflicted with its records, the water district will investigate. He did not comment on the PFAS found in the Phillipses’ water.
In the early 2000s, the EPA considered a drinking water limit for arsenic of 3 ppb, before settling on 10 ppb as an amount that balances the costs for water system operators while reducing health risks. CR scientists have long said the EPA should set a limit of 3 ppb or lower, in line with what other health experts and environmental advocacy groups, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), have called for.
Almost every sample CR tested had measurable levels of arsenic, including 10–or about 8 percent–with levels between 3 and 10 ppb. Previous tests from CR and others have shown elevated levels in juices and baby foods.
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Re: Californias’ Legacy-Underwater Dump Site of Toxic Waste
Californias’ Legacy of DDT Waste: Underwater Dump Site Uncovers a Toxic History
Thousands of barrels of suspected toxic DDT found dumped in California ocean
A team of scientists discovered tens of thousands of barrels containing what is believed to be chemical waste
The Guardian UK, 30 APR 2021.
Scientists detected as many as 25,000 barrels on the seafloor. Photograph: David Valentine/AP
The discovery of tens of thousands of underwater barrels containing what scientists believe to be chemical waste has raised alarm and reopened scrutiny into a history of toxic dumping that persisted off the California coast into the 1970s.
A team of scientists announced this week that they had found more than 25,000 containers, many of which they believe to be DDT waste, which has been linked to cancer and disease in humans and mass die off events in the natural world. The barrels cover a seafloor area double the size of Manhattan off the coast of the Santa Catalina Island, near Los Angeles.
The expedition was the first of its kind to lay bare the scale of the offshore dumping that occurred for decades, and its size “was a surprise to everyone who has worked with the data and sailed at sea”, said Eric Terrill, the chief scientist of the expedition and director of the Marine Physical Laboratory at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at a press conference about the findings. “As we started to run the survey and realized what we were beginning to observe on the seafloor, it was staggering to see the spatial extent.”
Scientists who spoke with the Guardian expressed shock at the extent of the dump ground. And hopes about the innovative technology used to map out the area is tempered by looming questions about what to do about the waste – not just off the coast of Los Angeles, but in sea waters across the country that various industries treated as a cheap alternative to landfills for decades.
“It’s frustrating, it’s shocking, but probably isn’t that surprising at the end of the day,” said Rainer Lohmann, a professor of oceanography at the University of Connecticut who studies persistent organic pollutants in the environment and who was not part of the survey team. “I think if we had the money and sense of purpose, we’d find a lot more of these sites, but the question is what do you do with these corroded waste dumps?”
Researchers aboard the Sally Ride recover an autonomous underwater vehicle after a search for discarded barrels near Santa Catalina Island, California. Photograph: AP
For David Valentine, a professor of Earth science and biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who stumbled upon the presence of dozens of barrels leaking toxic waste in this region a decade ago, the discovery raises a host of new questions about the role of scientists in remediating ocean damage from industrial waste.
“I see steps to take to get us to a point where we can make informed decisions, but we’re nowhere near the ability to make informed decisions because we don’t know what’s there, we don’t know what’s in these barrels, these are what I call operationally important uncertainties – we need to figure that out.”
Decades of dumping
While the recent expedition did not sample sediment around the barrels, their location tracks with historical records from a 20th century chemical company reported to have dumped DDT waste in the region for decades
A plane spraying alfalfa fields with DDT in California’s Imperial Valley in 1947. Photograph: Loomis Dean/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image
Throughout the life of the plant, Montrose contracted with the California Salvage Company to dispose of up to 2,000 barrels a month of acid sludge waste containing DDT by dumping it in the waters off the coast in the San Pedro Basin, between the Palos Verdes shelf and the Santa Catalina island region, before modern environmental laws banning such dumping were passed by Congress. Workers sometimes took an axe to the barrels so they would fall to the seafloor faster, likely causing them to leak chemicals as they sank.
Interest in the matter has ebbed and flowed since. The latest mission was prompted in part by a story in the Los Angeles Times last year about the presence of up to half a million barrels of DDT that had been dumped off the coast.
The two-week survey was conducted by a team from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego, in collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The mission was the first of its kind to use seafloor robots, sonar acoustic imagery and data analytics to map out in fine detail the tens of thousands of barrels thrown into the ocean by workers decades ago.
In total, the scientists detected 27,345 objects they classified “with a high degree of confidence” as barrels and identified more than 100,000 items of man-made debris across the survey area. The robots, which scientists pre-programmed from the ship before placing them in the water, fanned out autonomously across the seafloor that reached depths of 3,000 feet. The robots had sensors on both sides that scanned the seafloor at lengths of between 150 and 200 meters.
The imagery produced by the robots’ sonar detection looks like thousands of tiny white dots that appear mostly in linear track lines, a sign that the barrels may have been dumped from moving ships. Some of the track lines were as long as 11 miles and appeared to extend from the port of Long Beach, according to Terrill. The barrels also appeared to extend beyond the boundaries recorded by the Montrose Chemical Corporation.
“It’s these linear patterns that splay out from [Long Beach] port area that tell us about the actual behavior they were engaging in,” said Valentine, “towing a barge, going in a straight line, and just dump, dump, dump, dumping it off the back, so you end up with these long lines of waste barrels on the seafloor.”
Representatives for the Montrose Chemical Corporation did not respond to a request for comment about the scientists’ findings before publication.
The survey, conducted by a team of 31 scientists aboard a research vessel owned by the US Navy, is by far the most expansive investigation in the US of industrial waste dumping in a single area. While high volumes of DDT are known to have been dumped here, Terrill said that a number of other waste chemicals were also disposed of in the region, including acid sludge waste from the oil and gas industry, according to historical records.
Generations of toxic impact
The US banned DDT’s application in 1972, one of the earliest and most consequential decisions taken by the nascent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Yet the evidence of its toxic impact and long lasting effects is still coming into full view.
A recent study by scientists at UC Davis and the Public Health Institute in Oakland found that the granddaughters of women poisoned by DDT are still suffering from its effects, including a higher likelihood of obesity and very early onset of menstrual periods. Other health effects continue coming to light, including links to Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s.
The effects of DDT on animals are also devastating, and not exclusive to marine life in California. By the 1970s, scientists were already aware that the highly stable chemical was affecting animals up the marine food chain, from zooplankton to pelicans to sea lions, and leading to a mass die-offs of bees and insects. Near the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia, DDT has been found in the tissues of snubfin dolphins and humpback dolphins. DDT has also been found in the blubber of bottlenose dolphins in southern California.
Off the coast of central California, another area known to have been a dumping ground for DDT and other industrial chemicals, a 20-year-long study that examined tissue samples of 394 living sea lions discovered a link between exposure to contaminants and high rates of herpes and cancer among the animals.
Dr Francis Gulland, a research associate at UC Davis who helped conduct the research while working as a veterinarian at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, says that sea lions that had both herpes and exposure to contaminants were most likely to develop cancer.
“Given that the sea lions are exposed in the uterus to the contaminates, they could be altering the surface of the reproductive tract so it’s easier for the herpes virus to bind and re-infect them, or it could be a marker of an unknown carcinogen.”
Harbor seals laze at the base of the breakwater in San Pedro Bay, off the coast of Long Beach. Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, ocean dumping in southern California had mostly escaped the scrutiny that officials directed at the former Montrose Chemical Corporation plant, which was designated a federal Superfund site in 1989. The plant discharged wastewater containing significant concentrations of DDT to local sewers that emptied into the Pacific Ocean from the Palos Verdes peninsula.
But when Valentine’s team at UC Santa Barbara collected sediment from the ocean floor in 2011 and again in 2013, they found concentrations of DDT that was 40 times higher than the maximum quantities measured at the Superfund site.
The Santa Barbara team’s initial survey of 60 barrels formed the basis of the algorithm that the UC San Diego Scripps team used last month to model the potential size of individual barrels, which were only about three feet high and too small to detect without recent technological advances, according to Sophia Merrifield, an assistant researcher at Scripps who led the data science portion of the mission.
In order to detect the barrels, “we needed to be able to pump hundreds of gigabytes into an algorithm to detect these very small, very bright targets”, Merrifield said.
Terrill, the scientist who led the barrel detection effort, said that he hoped other scientists would now have a firmer idea of where to collect sediment to test for DDT and other chemicals in order to gauge the extent of contamination. The research team is also in discussions with public officials to publicly disseminate all of the data the team collected, Terrill said.
“Our motivation … was to help inform the scientific community, and management community, really, to develop a strategy for how to respond to what potentially might be there,” Terrill said.
The solution? ‘We just don’t know’
Some theoretical solutions to the waste, such as removing the barrels or containing them with cement structures, would be astronomically expensive and perhaps not even feasible. Mitigation of future harm may be among the few options available, according to Lohmann, the scientist at the University of Connecticut.
“One thing to do would be to limit commercial activity in that region, to not disturb the site anymore and cause additional damage or break open the barrels,” Lohmann said, “and to stop producing chemicals that are harmful and don’t go away any time soon.”
For Valentine, the next logical step for scientists is to understand all the ways DDT and other toxic waste dumped into the ocean are altering the marine environment.
“We don’t know how much of this material is being naturally decomposed in micro organisms in the sediment, we don’t know how quickly it might be buried in the geological strata,” Valentine said. “We just don’t know enough to answer those questions, and I think we need concerted effort from the scientific community with support from the federal and state government to address those things and help build our knowledge base and define those goals.”
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Californias’ Legacy-Underwater Dump Site of Toxic Waste
PUTIN TRUMP & Netanyahu Will Meet in HELL
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Re: Californias’ Legacy-Underwater Dump Site of Toxic Waste
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