The full West Virginia House of Delegates will consider a bill designed to lay groundwork for stronger protections against industrial chemicals linked to increased cancer incidence with a toxic legacy in the state.
The House Judiciary Committee advanced House Bill 3189 to the full House on Monday.
The bill targets PFAS, man-made chemicals ubiquitous in our food packaging, clothes and blood.
“It’s in everything, folks,” Delegate Rick Hillenbrand, R-Hampshire, a cosponsor of HB 3189, said at Monday’s committee meeting. PFAS is an acronym for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
Studies have found links between exposure to some of the most common PFAS and adverse cardiovascular and immune system effects, reduced birth weight and cancer.
Interim health advisories released last year by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency suggest the chemicals are much more dangerous than previously thought.
HB 3189 would require the Department of Environmental Protection to write an action plan to identify and address sources of PFAS by July 1, 2024, for each of the 37 raw water sources for which a U.S. Geological Survey study published last year measured prominent PFAS above the EPA’s applicable drinking water human health advisories and above practical quantitation limits.
A practical quantitation limit is the minimum concentration of a substance that can be measured with confidence the substance is present at or above that concentration level.
The Geological Survey report, referenced by DEP Deputy Secretary Scott Mandirola before the committee, suggests the Ohio River Valley is the region most vulnerable to PFAS contamination in West Virginia.
For each raw water source for which the Geological Survey study measured four common types of PFAS above method detection levels and the EPA’s applicable drinking water human health advisories as well as below practical quantitation limits, the DEP would have to sample the treated water of the associated public water system by the end of this year under HB 3189.
For each public water system for which measured PFAS in treated water is above detection levels and above the EPA’s applicable drinking water human health advisories, the DEP would have to write a PFAS action plan to address PFAS sources for the public water system’s raw water sources. The first 50 such plans must be completed by the end of 2025, and the remaining plans must be done by the end of 2026.
HB 3189 would require all facilities that discharge to surface water under a water pollution control permit and that discharge to a publicly owned treatment works under an industrial pretreatment program to report use since 2017 of any PFAS chemical found in any public water system’s raw water source in the Geological Survey study to the DEP.
Many lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee and the Energy and Manufacturing Committee that previously signed off on HB 3189 have expressed distrust of the EPA and its interim health advisories, dismissing them as unachievable.
But the committees have been receptive to Mandirola’s presentation of the bill as a fact-finding measure.
“My reading of the bill is, what it allows us to do is gather information, to try to better understand the issue, what’s out there,” Mandirola told the Energy and Manufacturing Committee earlier this month.
For every facility that reports use of one or more PFAS targeted by HB 3189, at least quarterly monitoring of the self-reported PFAS would be required within six months of notification by the facility.
The PFAS targeted by HB 3189 are PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid), PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonic acid), PFBS (perfluorobutane sulfonic acid) and HFPO-DA (hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer 26 acid and its ammonium salt).
The EPA is developing a proposed national drinking water standard for PFOA and PFOS that it plans to release by March and finalize by September 2024.
The new interim health advisory limits are 0.004 parts per trillion for PFOA and 0.02 parts per trillion for PFOS. The EPA’s previous health advisory levels for PFOA and PFOS were 70 parts per trillion.
The EPA’s interim PFOA and PFOS health advisory levels aren’t regulations or enforceable. The EPA intends for them to be in place until a national drinking water regulation takes effect.
“[T]here may be regulatory circumstances or new regulations coming down, but that’s not what we’re doing at this point,” Mandirola said earlier this month.
The EPA has said that 1 part per billion can be thought of as one grain of salt in a swimming pool.
PFAS long have been used in everyday products because they repel water, grease and stains. They can be ingested through air, drinking water, food packaged in PFAS-containing material, use of PFAS-made products and eating fish caught from water contaminated by the chemicals.
In 1951, DuPont began using perfluorooctanoic acid, one of the most common PFAS, known as PFOA, to make Teflon-related products at its Washington Works facility near Parkersburg. The chemical discharged into drinking water supplies.
People living in the area experienced increased rates of testicular and kidney cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis and pregnancy-induced hypertension.
Of the raw water samples collected at 279 public water systems throughout West Virginia from June 2019 to May 2021, nearly a quarter had at least one PFAS detected, 47 of which were in groundwater sources and 20 in surface water sources.
Eighteen of 37 sites with detections for PFOA or PFOS were in counties that border Ohio, according to the study.
PFAS concerns in the Ohio River Valley and the Eastern Panhandle have intensified in recent years.
Five sites yielded combined concentrations of PFOA and PFOS above the EPA’s previous health advisory level of 70 parts per trillion: Glen Dale Water Works in Marshall County; Vienna, the Lubeck Public Service District and the Parkersburg Utility Board, all in Wood County; and the city of Martinsburg, in Berkeley County.
Mandirola has attributed Martinsburg’s elevated PFAS detection to firefighting foam containing PFAS used by the Shepherd Field Air National Guard Base.
Most uses of PFOA and PFOS have been phased out by American manufacturers, but because they persist in the environment, they’re not going away.
Chemours’ Washington Works facility had the fourth-largest amount of PFAS discharge to waterbodies not meeting water quality standards nationwide in a June 2022 Gazette-Mail analysis of EPA data.
Environmental groups, led by the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, have urged the Legislature to act to strengthen PFAS protections.
