PFAS in the News

Home Depot to Phase Out Products Containing PFAS and Major Movie on PFAS Released This Month.

Home improvement giant, The Home Depot, in partnership with its suppliers, recently announced they are working diligently to phase out perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in their carpets and rugs sold in U.S. and Canadian stores by December 31, 2019. 

The Home Depot, the largest home improvement chain in the U.S., announced it would no longer purchase carpeting or rugs treated with PFAS chemicals. Studies have shown PFAS pose a potential risk for a variety of conditions including altered immune function in children, altered sperm quality, pregnancy-induced hypertension, asthma, ulcerative colitis, and testicular and kidney cancers. 

https://corporate.homedepot.com/newsroom/phasing-out-products-containing-pfas

“Excluding PFAS from the carpets and rugs we sell is another example of our shared commitment to building a better future for our customers and the planet,” says Ron Jarvis, Vice President of Environmental Innovation. 
Home Depot is the first national retailer to take action on PFAS. Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, a national advocacy group, welcomed the Home Depot announcement.

Jeff Gearhart, Research Director of the nonprofit Ecology Center states "Taking PFAS chemicals out of carpet eliminates one important source of PFAS in the indoor environment."

PFAS include a broad range of per- and poly-fluorinated substances used in stain repellent for carpets, in non-stick surfaces for cookware, some firefighting foams, and fire retardants for a variety of home products. PFAS molecules are comprised of a chain of strongly bonded carbon and fluorine atoms that do not break down in the environment. Scientists have been unable to determine an environmental half-life for PFAS - the amount of time it takes 50% of the chemical to disappear.

These manmade chemicals are ubiquitous in the environment and have leached into our soil, air, and water. A 2015 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) found PFAS in the blood of 97% of Americans studied.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4483690/pdf/ijerph-12-06098.pdf

People are most likely exposed to these chemicals by using products made with PFAS, living in environments where non-stick, non-stain compounds are used (like carpeting), consuming PFAS-contaminated water or food, or breathing air containing PFAS.  

https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/pfc/index.cfm

3M, a major producer of PFAS chemicals, acknowledges a human health risk from banned PFOA chemicals (a type of PFAS), but denies “other PFAS substances currently in use pose any risk for humans”. 

From 1951- 2003, DuPont disposed of more than 1.7 million pounds of PFOA from its Washington Works plant into the Ohio River.  In 1998, a farm near the Washington Works plant noticed cattle dying and sued DuPont. 
After the suit became public, residents started asking about common illnesses among them, from thyroid disease to cancer and public health officials began to investigate. They found that the mean blood PFOA level of residents from the mid-Ohio Valley samples was 83 parts per billion, compared to 4 parts per billion in the overall U.S. population. This led to a more in depth investigation that uncovered decades-long widespread contamination. A class action suit was filed and successfully won for the 70,000 people who had potential exposure to PFOA.  Funds from the lawsuit were directed to an epidemiological study to understand the health effects of this exposure. The results can be viewed at: http://www.c8sciencepanel.org. 

“Dark Waters”, a feature-length movie, is based on this environmental lawsuit and the health effects of this exposure. The film will be released November 2019.  https://www.focusfeatures.com/dark-waters.

More than 1500 drinking water systems, serving approximately 100 million Americans are contaminated with PFAS. A nationwide mapping system for identifying communities exposed to PFAS has been created by Northeastern University’s Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute: https://www.northeastern.edu/environmentalhealth/poly-and-perfluorinated-chemicals-the-social-discovery-of-a-class-of-emerging-contaminants-pfas/

To learn more about PFOA, watch Dr. Ami Zota’s presentation “PFOAs-Action Plan for Healthcare Providers” from the EHS 2019 Conference: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ehs2019    (#14 in Lecture Series)