Residents had for years been drinking water contaminated by dangerous PFAS chemicals – and the impact has been brutal

In the years before 2017, Sandy Wynn-Stelt and her husband had suspicions about the water they drew from a well on their House Street property in the Michigan town of Belmont. She attributed the bad taste to it being well water, but the “weird film” on their morning coffee was difficult to explain.

By June 2017, state officials alerted her that PFAS from a nearby, decades-old dump belonging to Wolverine World Wide, a shoe giant best known for the Hush Puppy brand, had contaminated their well.

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Tests found shocking levels. The Environmental Protection Agency’s PFAS advisory water limit is 70 parts per trillion (ppt). Health officials found levels in the well as high as 90,000 ppt.

Wynn-Stelt told the Guardian she now suspects the PFAS-laden product Wolverine uses to make its shoes water and stain resistant was behind that weird film.

“I now know it was probably Scotchgard,” she said.

Wynn-Stelt and her neighbors in this small west Michigan community are among the PFAS crisis’s human toll – those suffering the horrors that await humans with too much of the toxic chemical in their bodies.

PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of about 5,000 fluorinated compounds dubbed “forever chemicals” because they don’t naturally break down and there’s no known way to destroy them. They’re found in everything from food packaging to clothing to eyeliner to firefighting foam. The chemicals are also strongly linked to cancer, low birth weight, autoimmune disorders, thyroid issues, and a range of other serious diseases.

By the time Wynn-Stelt learned of the contamination, it was too late. She and her husband, Joe Stelt, had been drinking dangerous levels of PFAS for years, and Stelt had died from liver cancer in March 2016. The level of PFAS in Wynn-Stelt’s blood soared to 750 times that of the national average. She now suffers from recurrent thyroid problems and developed gout, and more serious issues are likely. She has been left “scared to death” and overwhelmed.

“I’m sitting here full of this stuff and not knowing what it’s going to do to me five years, 10 years from now,” she said. “I lost my husband, my home is worth nothing. I couldn’t give it away this close to a toxic dump … or after they dumped toxic waste on my land.”

As the chemicals gather around the planet, public health officials have found more than 700 contaminated sites and waterways around the country, and the PFAS crisis’s breadth is coming into focus. Researchers recently identified dangerous levels in rain, and areas around military bases are regularly contaminated. By some estimates, 21 million Americans are drinking PFAS-contaminated water – in the fall, an environmental group found the chemicals in California and Kentucky’s water supplies.

I’m sitting here full of this stuff and not knowing what it’s going to do to me five years, 10 years from now Sandy Wynn-Stelt

However, no state has more contaminated sites than Michigan, although officials say that’s because the state is conducting more tests to look for PFAS. Biosolids contaminated with it were discovered two years ago in Lapeer, where a chrome plating facility discharged the chemicals into the Flint River. A few hours north in Oscoda, the air force is refusing to clean up contamination from a shuttered base, while officials have found contaminated wells at schools and daycare centers across the state.

Still, PFAS production and use is unabated in the state as Republicans in Michigan, Congress and the White House have successfully blocked stricter regulations.

Meanwhile, those living with the contamination call life an “absolute nightmare”. Wynn-Stelt said neighbors have faced cancer, miscarriages, autoimmune disorders and other health issues. That includes Jen Carney, whose children, ages 15 and 11, are among 22 kids living near the House Street dump.

The family’s well tested as high as 600 ppt while a neighbors’ hit 11,000 ppt. The Carneys all have elevated PFAS levels in their blood, and in the years before the revelation, Carney and neighbors suffered from unexplained twitching, eye pain, migraines, distorted vision and numb arms and legs.

“I was, at the time, 38, and I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to be in a wheelchair soon,’” Carney said.

Once the family switched from PFAS-contaminated water to clean water, the issues vanished. Carney’s son, however, hasn’t been so fortunate. He endures severe gastrointestinal problems that forced him to miss so much school that Carney now homeschools him. She said she hopes time will alleviate his symptoms.

Though it’s evident to families in the area that PFAS are behind their ailments, the chemicals haven’t been medically proven to cause them, so their illnesses can’t be used in the lawsuit that local families have filed against Wolverine.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest PFAS-laden animal hides camouflaged with moss near Meaghan Schweinzger’s home. Photograph: Courtesy Meaghan Schweinzger

“I know in my heart that it’s connected, and my primary care doctor believes it’s connected, but we have to have it scientifically connected,” Carney said. “Unfortunately, until we do that, we can’t hold the polluters accountable.”

The 76-acre House Street landfill most recently served as a Christmas tree farm, and neighborhood residents didn’t know Wolverine had previously used it to dump toxic animal hides treated with 3M’s Scotchgard at its tannery in nearby Rockford.

The chemicals not only flowed a few hundred feet to House Street’s wells, but far beyond. That plume and six others from nearby Wolverine landfills now stretch 25 miles and have carried PFAS to the state’s waterways. The EPA, state and Wolverine are undertaking a massive cleanup effort. So far, the company has installed about 700 whole-home filters and excavated tons of soil in the area. As part of a settlement in a lawsuit stemming from the pollution, Wolverine will pay $69.5m to extend municipal water service to those around House Street who have private wells.

“Wolverine will also continue the cleanup and remediation efforts it began [last] fall around its former tannery and House Street sites in cooperation with the EPA,” the company said in a statement. It’s also suing 3M for allegedly concealing Scotchgard’s dangers from it and other customers.

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The cleanup effort extends to areas outside Wolverine’s former landfill where residents say it was also dumped. House Street resident Meaghan Schweinzger’s kids used to camp out, sled, and have bonfires in a clearing at the edge of the woods behind their home. In 2017, Schweinzger was horrified to discover that Wolverine had also left barrels full of toxic waste and PFAS-laden animal hides now camouflaged with moss in the brush just a few feet from where her kids played.

Schweinzger, Wynn-Stelt, and others aren’t taking it lying down. They’ve appeared in front of the Michigan legislature, Congress, and spoken at a number of conferences and events to help put a face on the crisis and share the distressing uncertainty. Wynn-Stelt said she thinks at night about Joel Stelt’s bout with cancer, and how she faces what could be a difficult illness without him.

“To know how painful that was for him, and how I literally had to carry him to the bathroom, and how I couldn’t leave his side – it was horrible to watch, and now I think, ‘Who’s going to do that for me’”? she said.

* This article was amended on 22 January 2020 to clarify a reference to dumping and to include Wolverine’s stance on no deaths being proven to be linked to PFAS from the site.