Reflecting growing worldwide alarm in the scientific community, a pollution researcher at the U.K.’s Liverpool John Moores University, Patrick Byrne, said PFAS are “probably the greatest chemical threat the human race is facing in the 21st century.”
Earlier this year, the CDC made an unprecedented recommendation that physicians consider testing their patients’ blood for PFAS or “forever” chemicals. In 2022, EPA made stunningly strict drinking water guidelines for forever chemicals. For the two main categories, it was .02 and .004 ppt (parts per trillion). To give that visual context, .02 ppt is the equivalent of one drop of water in a lake the size of six Rose Bowls, .004 ppt is one drop of water in a lake the size of 30 Rose Bowls. That’s as close as you can get to no safe level of these compounds.
Global contamination with PFAS now intersects with pesticide use because the evidence is overwhelming: There is wholesale contamination of pesticides with PFAS chemicals, and many pesticides breakdown into still toxic, short chain PFAS type chemicals. As a former EPA scientist, Kyla Bennett said, “If the intent was to spread PFAS contamination across the globe there would be few more effective methods than lacing pesticides with PFAS.”
This is a particularly acute issue in the Great Salt Lake ecosystem because of the use of herbicides and insecticides along its shores.
The 1962 publishing of Rachael Carson’s book, “Silent Spring,” put the lie to the idea that widely distributing biological poisons could leave beneficial plants, animals and humans unharmed. But now the danger of pesticides is exponentially greater than Rachael Carson knew.
In the 1990s, new research showed many pesticides are endocrine disruptors, i.e. they mimicked or antagonized critical human hormones at extremely low concentrations, adding an entirely new dimension of harm to human health. Endocrine disruptors have been identified as causing a wide spectrum of harm, especially at the earliest, most critical stages of human development; in utero, infancy and childhood. Clinical consequences include developmental disorders, reproductive toxicity, multiple cancers, immunosuppression and damage to the brain and nervous system.
In response, in 1996, Congress mandated EPA test all pesticides for endocrine disruption potential. Twenty-eight years later, that still has not happened, and the EPA largely ignores the issue.
A third dimension of public health harm from pesticides emerged in the last few years that almost certainly dwarfs the previous two. Scientists from throughout the world are finding PFAS in many of the most commonly used pesticides.
PFAS can be intentionally incorporated into the active ingredient, can be inactive ingredients added to enhance efficacy or inadvertently leach from storage containers.
There is already widespread PFAS pesticide contamination, including in drinking water and the food supply. European scientists said, “The extent of this contamination is shocking. It is a result of political failure at many levels.” Nearly 100% of humans carry PFAS in their blood in very disturbing amounts, including newborns, and pesticides are a major reason. Women, fetuses, infants and children are more susceptible to the health hazards of pesticides and PFAS.
Despite EPA’s recently adopted, extremely strict drinking water standards, federal agencies like the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, USAid, and EPA continue to act as handmaidens to pesticide manufacturers. A complete disconnect with those standards has emerged within the EPA chemical division with their claim that their pesticide testing did not reveal any PFAS compounds, contradicting independent research which has found nearly one-third of active ingredients approved by EPA in the last 10 years are PFAS. There is a complete disconnect within the agency itself, and it even raises the possibility of deliberate fraud on the part of EPA chemical division, long criticized by agency whistleblowers for protecting pesticide manufacturers.
All this undermines excuses by users that pesticides “approved by EPA” are safe. EPA granting permission to sell a pesticide is no more proof of safety than the FDA granting permission to sell cigarettes is proof of smoking’s safety.
Twenty-nine states have adopted at least some laws to protect their residents from PFAS in consumer products and more are being planned. So far, two states, Maine and Minnesota, have taken action where it is needed most, to prohibit PFAS in pesticides. But Utah has taken no state level action, including no laws to prohibit the use of PFAS pesticides.
It is not a scientifically rational response to wait until the evidence of irreversible harm is even more overwhelming and irrefutable. Our Legislature and our governor should follow Maine’s and Minnesota’s example and ban all PFAS pesticides in Utah.
(Brian Moench)
Brian Moench is the president of Utah Physicians for Healthy Environment, a former adjunct faculty member at the University of Utah Honors College and is working to teach the public health consequences of environmental degradation.
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