52 Vt. Wells Test Positive For PFOA

VtDigger

Bennington, Vt. — Test results released on Monday show dozens more wells near a former industrial site in North Bennington are contaminated with a suspected carcinogen, state officials said.



The state found perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, in 52 of 61 residential wells near the former Chemfab factory, officials said Tuesday.



Most of the wells with the highest concentrations of the contaminant are nearest the Chemfab facility, according to officials. Three separate tests of North Bennington’s municipal water supply came back clean.



State officials said the factory has been established as the source of the chemical, although they don’t know by what route PFOA reached residents’ water supplies. Additional results are expected in the next few days from the rest of the roughly 185 wells that were sampled within 1.5 miles of the plant.



The Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation has also initiated testing for the same class of chemicals around the former Warren Wire factory in Pownal, Vt., which, like Chemfab, manufactured products containing the polymer trademarked as Teflon. PFOA was used in the manufacture of non-stick coating but was to be phased out nationwide by 2015 under an agreement with the EPA.



The Pownal tests focus on a water supply that serves 450 residents and is about 1,000 feet from the factory.



DEC officials say these tests are being undertaken purely as a precaution and no evidence has shown PFOA contamination in the vicinity. Results are expected within two weeks.



At other PFOA-contaminated sites in the United States, the chemical was introduced into the environment through factories’ smokestacks, according to DuPont documents released in the course of a successful lawsuit against that company over pollution in West Virginia.



Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics purchased Chemfab in 2000 and closed the plant in North Bennington two years later. Alyssa Schuren, commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation, said the company moved its operations to New Hampshire at least in part to escape Vermont’s air pollution standards. The Union Leader has reported that PFOA has been found in tap water at the company’s plant in Merrimack, N.H.



“When the company closed, they said part of the reason they left was because the state was requiring them to put on air pollution control devices they wouldn’t have to have in New Hampshire, so that’s why they were moving to New Hampshire,” Schuren said in an interview.



Saint-Gobain spokeswoman Dina Silver Pokedoff did not give a reason for the move.



Nearby residents submitted more than 30 air quality complaints against the plant to the DEC over the span of about a decade before it closed, leading to three enforcement actions, Schuren said.



Schuren said her department will require Saint-Gobain to remediate any sites polluted by PFOA. The company is reviewing hundreds of boxes of documents from the former factory in search of information that might assist the state in its investigation, officials said.



PFOA is believed to cause cancer and disrupt endocrine systems, affecting the liver, kidneys, testes and bladder. It is also thought to cause hypertension and high cholesterol.



Blood testing is available for residents whose water was contaminated, state toxicologist Sarah Vose said. The state has asked Saint-Gobain to pay for the testing, but the company has not yet responded. The federal Centers for Disease Control has said it would pay for the tests, Schuren said.





