PFAS expert: Regulators could have detected forever chemicals in Athens wells 15 years ago

ATHENS, Ga. - An Athens neighborhood’s long search for the truth about contaminated well water didn’t have to take so long.

The backstory: The FOX 5 I-Team reported last week how independent testing, ordered by the Southern Environmental Law Center, found forever chemicals at unsafe levels in several wells in the low-income community, not far from a former DuPont carpet fibers plant.

The discovery prompted the city to connect 15 homes to public water lines, to stop the poisoning. Forever chemicals have been linked to liver damage, thyroid problems, reproductive problems and various forms of cancer.

For decades, residents off Pittard Road and Star Drive had cried out for help, claiming every home in the neighborhood had been struck with some form of cancer. But government report after government report said there was nothing to fear.

A report by Georgia Public Health in 2006 stated in bold lettering: "No apparent public health hazard."

That report was produced in cooperation with the Atlanta-based Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It also stated, "No cancer cluster exists in the area."

What we know: The state’s Health department and Environmental Protection Division tested those wells chemicals and metals back in 2003, during a time of intense media coverage of illnesses in the community.

Government agencies say the hazards of forever chemicals – colloquial for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS – weren’t known back then, so they weren’t looking for them. The federal Environmental Protection Agency didn’t develop standards to test for unsafe levels of PFAS in water until earlier this year.

The 2003 test results were incorporated into the 2006 ATSDR report.

"Testing for PFAs was not done in 2006 – the analytical testing was not as developed as it is today," a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Public Health told the I-Team by email. Without EPA standards, "the results would not have been reliable or definitive," she said.

Asked why regulators didn’t return to Pittard Road and check again, as the science on forever chemicals evolved during the late 2000s and 2010s, EPA Acting Water Division Deputy Director Brian Smith said, "The old analytical methods that were established over a decade ago – much of what's been discovered along Pittard Road, we would not have been able to get to that small level of contamination."

After 2003, there were apparently no new tests done until this year, and only because Athens Mayor Kelly Girtz sought outside help from the Southern Environmental Law Center. The nonprofit commissioned tests that found some wells with PFAS chemicals at five times the EPA’s limits, according to SELC attorney April Lipscomb.

EPA told the I-Team it later confirmed those results.

Big picture view: Even with older testing methods, if someone had checked sooner, residents could have at least been told the problem wasn’t all in their heads, according to a PFAS expert who spoke with the I-Team.

Dr. Dana Boyd Barr, an environmental health professor at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, said tests existed in 2009 that could have detected forever chemicals.

"You could have said that they were present," she said, "but you wouldn't have been able to say whether they were present at a level that could cause disease, or even present at a level that's higher than anybody else in Georgia."

Barr, a former supervisory research chemist for the CDC, said there have been tests that can determine whether PFAS levels are unsafe for "probably, I would say, the last 5 to 6 years."

Why you should care: So why didn’t any regulators ever re-check, especially given the well-documented, much-litigated connection between DuPont and forever chemicals? And what does the Pittard Road story say about those charged with protecting Georgians from hazardous pollution?

The FOX 5 I-Team has learned an environmental activist in Athens, Jill McElheney of Micah’s Mission, implored the EPA for years to reopen its investigation into Pittard Road and check for forever chemicals, back when they were referred as PFCs.

Emails show in 2010, an EPA environmental engineer told her, "We concluded that PFCs have not been discharged at this site," adding that runoff from the plant would probably not flow toward Pittard Road.

McElheney kept trying, emails show.

"I am requesting intervention from EPA Region IV in light of the current perfluorochemical drinking water crisis around the country," McElheney wrote in a 2017 email to EPA. "As you are aware the residents of Pittard Road, an environmental justice community adjacent to Dupont, reported high rates of cancer."

McElheney told the I-Team in an email that all she got back was "CYA response from everyone! No agency wanted to touch DuPont."

By that time, DuPont had sold the Athens plant to spinoff company, Invista, which ran the plant until 2019. It’s now owned by a completely different company that doesn’t make carpet fibers.

The I-Team asked EPA for comment on its past communications with McElheney. The agency provided a statement that didn’t address the subject.

What they’re saying: The I-Team spoke with another environmental justice advocate who traces much of the regulatory breakdown on Pittard Road to that 2006 report by ATSDR.

Stephen Lester, science director for the Virginia-based Center for Health, Environment & Justice, faults the federal agency for relying on the work of state regulators, not doing more of its own work, and never returning to Pittard Road to investigate again.

"They didn't really come in and add anything new or different," Lester said.

The agency has come under fire this year. An investigation by Reuters news agency charged ATSDR "regularly downplays and disregards neighbors' health concerns," with its "faulty reports," used as cover by polluters.

"ATSDR is kind of a final word," Lester said, "and if ATSDR says there's nothing to be concerned about here, then no government agency is going to take action."

"It's sort of the death knell for the community," he said, "in terms of any government response or action."

The I-Team reached out to ATSDR, which referred questions to the Georgia Department of Health. ATSDR later sent a statement describing its efforts working with state and local agencies to investigate PFAS exposures.

"While ATSDR is not conducting public health assessment activities at Pittard Road," the statement said, "our Region 4 Office has been in communication with the Georgia Department of Health and with EPA regarding the latest test results from the well water."

Local perspective: Neffy Davis grew up along Pittard Road, among her mother’s extended Dowdy family, and said the long delay in finding the truth has been devastating.

The family had four cases of cancer – her late grandmother, who died with breast cancer; two uncles with prostate cancer; and her aunt, Glenda Crumbly, who died of breast cancer in 2007.

Fears about the water and the soil led the family to abandon two homes, which are now hidden from the road on an overgrown lot.

"To say twenty years later that, ‘Yeah, there’s high levels of contamination" – twenty years later, when there was nothing twenty years before – it’s just devastating," Davis said. "A lot of this could have been prevented years ago."

What we don’t know: While residents have long blamed the former carpet fibers plant for contamination, the exact source of PFAS in the community hasn’t been confirmed.

What’s next: The EPA tells the I-Team it’s now investigating the source, a spokesman adding that in the past, both DuPont and Invista told the agency they didn’t use forever chemicals at the Athens plant.

Invista told the I-Team in a written statement, "Our operations did not involve the application of PFAS chemicals." A DuPont spokesman said after a series of mergers, sales and rebrandings, it’s not the same company anymore that once operated the Athens plant.

Some property owners along Pittard Road have hired an attorney, Chris Bowers, of Stacy Evans Law, formerly with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

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