At an April 15 Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) meeting, the Madison Water Utility admitted that it kept PFAS test data from the public, and the committee agreed with the approach, saying the public “wouldn’t understand” the data. Madison, Wisconsin has among the highest rates of college graduates and advanced degree holders of any city in the nation.
The utility publicly released new March PFAS data from five Madison wells on April 9. The results listed many compounds detected as simply being “present,” with no actual data and a footnote stating that these compounds were “detected at levels too low to accurately quantify.”
The PFAS levels labelled as “present” were above the detection limits but below the reporting limits. The standard protocol is to report numbers in this range, but put a “J” next to them indicating that the numbers are estimates (called “J-flags”). The Water Utility reported February results from Well 15 this way—and even included J-flags in adding up total PFAS levels.
But for the March data, utility officials clearly made an explicit decision to be much less transparent with the public about the actual PFAS results, reporting only “present” for J-flag numbers and not sharing full data and/or actual lab reports on their website.[1]
Full PFAS data shared with Technical Advisory Committee but not with public
At the April 15 Water Utility Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) meeting, water quality manager Joe Grande shared the complete March data from the five wells, including the J-flagged data and levels found below detection limits (marked with < ).[2]
Though TAC meetings are public, copies of documents (with data being discussed) are typically not provided to citizen attendees, so we have to take photos of them during meetings; this is how we obtained the full March data linked above.[3] Citizen attendees are also not allowed to speak or raise questions at TAC meetings.
Committee members advised Grande on how he should share this data—or not—with the public in the future. They agreed that though they understand these numbers—because “we’re insiders,” one said—the public “wouldn’t understand.” So this data shouldn’t be shared with them lest it cause undue public alarm. (Ironically, MEJO members—the public—are the ones who recommended that the Water Utility gather expanded PFAS data from all Madison wells in the first place, even though we “wouldn’t understand” the data resulting from these tests.)
TAC member Dr. Henry Anderson (retired former Chief Medical Officer at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services) worried that people might add all these low numbers together, come up with a total that looks like a lot (but isn’t of concern in his opinion), and become inappropriately alarmed. He advised Grande not to publicly share combined PFAS levels (which Grande had listed at the bottom of the table)—and, further, not to combine PFAS at all but only consider individual levels.[4]
Several other states have made regulatory decisions to combine more than one PFAS compound in their official standards, and have chosen to be transparent and precautionary when reporting PFAS data.
The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, for instance, adds together J-flagged and other estimated and uncertain data for a total that estimates the maximum possible combined levels of five PFAS compounds. This is an explicit choice to err on the side of precaution—as opposed to reporting only the lowest estimates or, as the Water Utility did, reporting no numbers at all.
Supporting the summing together of PFAS compounds, many high-level experts, as well as health and environmental organizations, argue that PFAS should be regulated as a class of chemicals, not one at a time. In her testimony before a Senate Committee and Subcommittee on Sept. 26, 2018, Dr. Linda Birnbaum (Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Toxicology Program of the National Institutes of Health) stated that “Approaching PFAS as a class for assessing exposure and biological impact is the best way to protect public health.”[5]
Madison should not adopt Vermont’s crazy standard, committee members advise
At the meeting, Grande presented a table comparing other states’ PFAS standards—including Vermont’s 20 ppt standard for five PFAS compounds. One committee member asked “what’s with Vermont?” Committee members laughed and ridiculed Vermont for developing such an extreme and ill-informed standard.
A retired DNR official on the committee asked—did they base this standard on any toxicological studies? Dr. Anderson said they considered “two animal studies” and some information “from the three utilities in the state” (Was he being facetious?). Committee members again laughed—those hysterical ignoramuses in Vermont!—and agreed that the Madison Water Utility absolutely should not adopt a wacko standard like those country-bumpkins in Vermont did.
Apparently these highly educated committee members—charged with advising the Water Utility on important technical matters such as how to address PFAS and other toxic contamination in our drinking water—haven’t even bothered to read Vermont’s very clear document on how they came up with their standard.
In fact, Vermont’s 20 ppt standard is based on exactly the same assumptions and formula EPA used (same reference dose, same studies considered, relative source contribution, etc) to develop the current federal 70 ppt “health advisory” level—except for one number: Vermont used a higher “body weight adjusted water intake rate” to account for infants’ higher water ingestion per body weight.[6] Vermont erred on the side of protecting infants. That’s crazy!
Other states are also ill-informed, committee members lament…
Dr. Anderson also whined that “unfortunately, other states felt pressured to do something sooner” instead of waiting for EPA to develop standards (all who understand the EPA process predict this will take about 10 years). Further, he lamented, “now other things are getting mixed in” that are outside of the drinking water regulatory process—for instance, some states are developing restrictive PFAS fish advisories. “If you go with what low levels others are using,” he complained, “you can’t eat any fish. That makes no sense.”
Apparently Dr. Anderson, who (in his former role at DHS) led research on PFAS in Great Lakes region fish for many years, doesn’t think we should tell people not to eat fish even if it has PFAS levels dangerous to their health—as several others states, like Michigan, have done.
Anderson also noted with dismay that Michigan “has no problem saying people can’t eat commercial fish,” indicating that he disagrees with this approach for Wisconsin. Apparently he is perfectly fine allowing Wisconsinites to eat highly PFAS contaminated fish rather than potentially damaging a commercial fishery that brings in a lot of money to the state?
At the end of the meeting, after the committee had finished its trashing of Vermont, Grande noted that Michigan has also just issued PFAS screening levels of 9 ppt for PFOA and 8 ppt for PFOS.
The committee was awkwardly silent for a few moments. Someone asked—“Screening levels? What does that mean?” Grande said these could eventually develop into actual drinking water standards. This was also met with uncomfortable silence.
Trying to downplay Michigan’s new low screening levels, Dr. Anderson explained that Michigan has been looking at “hazardous waste sites” in developing PFAS standards—implying that their PFAS standards are based only on extremely PFAS-contaminated sites (and therefore not representative and overly protective). This is incorrect. Michigan’s standards are based on years of testing of a wide range of media for PFAS, including groundwater, drinking water, surface water, fish, influents/effluents to sewage treatment plants, and even deer.
Perhaps TAC members should talk to officials in other states, and (Gasp! No!) even some of the ignorant public who “wouldn’t understand” the full PFAS data? They might learn something.
[1] I requested the full lab reports from MWU earlier on the day of the meeting, but to date have received no response.
[2] Well 9 data is partial because the lab didn’t have the capacity to test all the compounds.
[3] Citizen attendees at TAC meetings have had to do this for many years now. After we complained years ago about the meeting documents not being handed out to attendees, MWU agreed to place one binder (with a single copy of each relevant meeting document) out at the meeting. Citizens have to pass around the binder and photograph documents they would like to have copies of. Sometimes critical documents discussed at meetings are not in the binder.
[4] TAC members also noted that some of the compounds had very high detection limits (such as 8.8 ppt) that we wouldn’t want the ignorant public to see and include in the sum totals of PFAS levels. Because they’re “insiders,” they know that these high detection limits are problematic and indicate that those compounds might very well be present at significant levels but we don’t know because the detection limits are too high.
[5] In October 2018 the Conservation Law Foundation sent a petition to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) asking the state to adopt a summed-total PFAS standard and as an interim step (while waiting for such a standard to be developed) to adopt Vermont’s 20 ppt PFAS standard for five PFAS compounds totaled (see link above). Here in Wisconsin, in August 2018 Citizens for Safe Water Around Badger (CSWAB) petitioned the DHS to develop a summed-total PFAS standard. In November 2018, Wisconsin’s Senator Hansen wrote a letter to DNR and DHS to develop such a standard as well.
[6] I contacted a Vermont toxicologist involved in developing their standard (Dr. Sara Vose) to confirm that this is the only difference between the Vermont and EPA numbers (she confirmed). I have also spoken with Dr. David Carpenter, a medical expert and researcher at SUNY-Albany, about the Vermont PFAS standards and he said he thinks they are sound and appropriate. Dr. Carpenter is a highly reputable expert and has published papers on PFAS.
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