Legislators grapple with science, scope, of industrial chemicals in NC water

The governor and anyone else who's made GenX a political issue "needs a spanking and needs to be sent to timeout," a legislator suggests during a committee meeting.

Posted 9:25 p.m. Oct 26, 2017 — Updated 5:58 p.m. Apr 9, 2018

Travis Fain

and

Tyler Dukes

RALEIGH, N.C. — There are times when more than half of the water flowing in the Haw River is actually treated wastewater, a top state water scientist told a legislative committee Thursday.

"So then the question becomes, of course, 'What is in this wastewater?'" North Carolina State University professor Detlef Knappe said.

The answer: We often don't know.

GenX got the headlines after the public realized a chemical company named Chemours had been dumping it into the Cape Fear River for decades, but there are 80,000 chemical substances registered for commercial use in the United States, Knappe said.

About 6,700 of those are either manufactured or imported in quantities above 25,000 pounds a year, he said. Of those, there are about 200 that scientists have tested for their effect on human health.

Legislative and other reviews of the GenX controversy have widened into a broader discussion on water policy, partly because so little is known about the "emerging contaminants" used in modern manufacturing. Cape Fear River Keeper Kemp Burdette suggested to legislators Thursday that state and federal regulations are backwards, allowing poorly understood compounds to be discharged into public waters.

Industry should have to prove compounds are safe first, he said, likening his proposal to one of the first rules of gun safety: Assume it's loaded.

"We allow industry to discharge chemicals we don't know very much about, and we hope they are not harmful," Burdette said.

Any broad policy changes out of the GenX controversy are at least months away. State Rep. Ted Davis, R-New Hanover, who chairs the House study committee, said he plans another meeting in November just to gather information. It will be January before his group discusses potential new policies for the legislature to consider next year.

"The thing that has impressed me every time we have one of these meetings," Davis said Thursday, "is just how little we know."

A similar effort is underway in the state Senate, and Gov. Roy Cooper recently appointed a team of scientists to review the issue. The House committee has a dozen appointed members, but only seven attended Thursday's meeting.

Reps. Bill Brisson, R-Bladen, and Jimmy Dixon, R-Duplin, complained that concerns along the Cape Fear River, the primary drinking source for Brunswick, Bladen, New Hanover and Pender counties, have been overblown. Dixon blasted the Cooper administration and other Democrats for suggesting that Department of Environmental Quality budget cuts handed down by the General Assembly's Republican majority in recent years made water monitoring more difficult.

Anyone who's made an issue of funding or otherwise tried to make GenX a political issue, "needs a spanking and needs to be sent to timeout," Dixon said.

State officials have said repeatedly the municipal water coming form the Cape Fear River is safe to drink, but that's based on limited study. Chemours stopped discharging GenX and other chemicals into the river after an expose this summer in The Wilmington StarNews pushed regulators to flag several compounds. The state announced earlier this week that the company would keep its discharge permit, allowing it to continue operations.

Potential class-action lawsuits have been filed. Subpoenas indicate a federal investigation is underway. The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, which draws from the river, filed its own lawsuit against Chemours in part to keep customers from bearing the cost of expensive, complicated and perhaps imperfect efforts to remove GenX from the water. Tests show a precipitous drop in river pollutants since discharges stopped, but GenX has also shown up in groundwater near the Chemours plant.

DEQ Assistant Secretary Sheila Holman said Thursday that water tests from schools near the site may be complete as soon as Friday. The question before the state now, Dixon said, is how to respond "without scaring the pudding out of Mr. and Mrs. Public."

Thursday's meeting focused largely on science. Among the information presented:

The state's current suggested safe threshold for GenX, 140 parts per trillion, was based on a 28-day Chemours study of mice. The GenX dosage that produced no adverse effect in the livers of male mice became a baseline that was then lowered to account for various uncertainty factors. Scientists translated that to human consumption based on what is believed to be the safe amount for bottle-fed infants. The measure applies only to GenX, not related chemicals, and it's far lower than the state's initial suggestion of 71,000 parts per trillion because that earlier figure was keyed to a different study, state epidemiologist Dr. Zach Moore said.
One measure of risk detailed Thursday is called "excess cancer risk," an attempt to measure the increase in cancer risks presented by certain chemicals. That measurement, Knappe said, is based on the assumption that a person drinks 2 liters of contaminated water each day for 70 years
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's list of priority pollutants hasn't changed since 1981, Knappe said. That list, which includes regulated chemicals the EPA has also published testing methodologies for, doesn't include a single perfluorinated chemical, Knappe said. He said there has been "great reluctance to regulate man-made chemicals" because of the potential economic impact.
Humans have a hard time expelling perfluorocarbons, such as GenX, from their bodies, Knappe said. Mice process them quicker, making health studies more difficult, he said.
These perfluorocarbons are used to create substances such as Teflon, as well as Scotchgard and foams used to fight fires. Beyond Chemours, it's possible some chemicals have reached North Carolina rivers because firefighters used these foams near a stream, Knappe said. Others may have leached in from a landfill, he said.
One challenge in regulating these chemicals is that some may be byproducts that industrial companies don't even know they're creating, Knappe said. Also, substances that are not necessarily toxic when they leave a factory can combine with other compounds in river water and create cancer-causing agents, he said.

After the meeting, Davis said the complexity of these issues seem to grow with each meeting. He said he's been drinking water from the Cape Fear River his whole life without apparent ill effect, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't be concerned.

"I want so hard to get a grasp on it, and it just gets bigger and bigger," Davis said.

Data shows extent of private well contamination

Meanwhile, data released Thursday by DEQ show that almost 20 private wells tested near Chemours' Fayetteville Works plant in Bladen County reported concentrations of GenX two to nine times the state's health threshold for the unregulated contaminant.

The highest concentration of GenX sampled, at a home north of the plant, saw levels of 1,300 parts per trillion.

The data released Thursday, which reflect results as of the end of September, show that 25 wells tested above the health threshold. But that does not include users of several more wells tested in October. State officials say they'll release more up-to-date data as soon as residents are properly notified.

Environmental regulators said Thursday that they've so far directed Chemours to supply users of 40 private wells with bottled water after test results found elevated levels of GenX.

"Certainly, we're making sure that anyone whose even a little bit above the state's provisional health goal is provided with bottled water by Chemours as a short term measure," DEQ spokesman Jamie Kritzer said. "We're also working with the counties as well as the company to come up with more long-term measures."

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