The negative health impacts from contamination by so called “forever chemicals” found in drinking water costs the U.S. at least $8 billion a year in social costs. This is according to a University of Arizona-led study.
The study builds on previous research into how PFAS – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances –negatively impact health when such chemicals contaminate drinking water. The research team studied all births in New Hampshire from 2010-2019, focusing on mothers living near PFAS-contaminated sites.
The research indicates that mothers receiving water from wells that are “downstream” (in groundwater terms) of PFAS-contaminated sites, as opposed to comparable mothers receiving water from “upstream” wells, had higher first-year infant mortality, more preterm births (including more births before even 28 weeks), and more births with infants weighing less than 5.5 pounds (including more births with weights less than even 2.2 pounds).
These findings build on earlier laboratory and public health research but offer new evidence from real-world exposure across a large population.
Extrapolating to the contiguous U.S., PFAS contamination imposes costs of at least $8 billion on the babies born each year, which encompasses medical care, long-term health impacts and reduced lifetime earnings. The results indicate that the potential health benefits of PFAS cleanup and regulation may be substantial.
Hence the data suggests that removing PFAS from drinking water not only results in drastically improved health outcomes. It also produces a significant long-term economic benefit.
PFAS were originally developed to make protective coatings for goods to resist heat, oil and water, and are used in a range of products and in firefighting activities. They earned the label “forever chemicals” because they take much longer to break down naturally in the environment.
The study focuses on two “long-chain” PFAS – PFOA and PFOS – that are no longer manufactured in the U.S. but remain in soils and therefore are still percolating into groundwater.
Researchers have long suspected that exposure to PFAS poses health risks, especially to infants, who can suffer from low birth weight or even die from PFAS exposure via their pregnant mothers. But prior work had not found a way to make PFAS exposure effectively random.
This latest research finds substantial impacts on infant health, which expanded on what others before us had found. However, what is new to the research are the calculations about how these negative birth outcomes follow these children throughout their lives.
The research appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and it is titled “PFAS-contaminated drinking water harms infants.”
