Clear consuming water is falling from the spout of a giant blue steel pipe about 5 toes tall.
Philip Matthews, a area technician, is accumulating samples from exterior of a Tampa Bay Water remedy plant in northern Hillsborough County.
The company is conducting quarterly checks for PFAS, or “ceaselessly chemical compounds” as a part of a year-long examine for the Environmental Safety Company.
Water utilities throughout the higher Tampa Bay area are collaborating within the nationwide examine of PFAS in consuming water.
It will assist to formally set federal limits in consuming water for the primary time.
PFAS stands for a big household of poisonous artifical chemical compounds which have been utilized in shopper and trade merchandise for the reason that Nineteen Forties — from clothes, upholstery, and carpet to microwave popcorn luggage, pizza containers, and sweet wrappers.
Publicity to sure ranges of PFAS can impression the physique’s skill to struggle infections and result in reproductive results or an elevated danger of most cancers, amongst different well being impacts.
Tampa Bay Water, which offers consuming water to Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties, is among the examine contributors.
Out of 15 of its sampled places, solely two examined barely above proposed federal limits for considered one of six PFAS compounds.
As a result of PFAS is all over the place, Matthews must be further cautious when dealing with the samples.
“Particularly with it being ubiquitous, and in soaps and lots of different issues, clearly, I’ve to clean it out of my garments a number of instances, you recognize, previous to bringing them out and carrying them. I’ve to don gloves earlier than I pattern,” mentioned Matthews.
Even this interview may result in contamination, so that is only a simulation and will not be part of the official examine.
After letting the faucet flush out for about 5 minutes, Matthews fills a few plastic bottles.
“Seal ’em again up with luggage and put them on ice and again to the laboratory,” he mentioned, stashing the baggage in a cooler.
About 20 minutes away is Tampa Bay Water’s lab in Land O’ Lakes the place technicians search for 29 completely different PFAS compounds.
“As soon as the samples are introduced in right here and introduced again to temperature, the PFAS samples bear fairly intensive preparation steps,” mentioned Steve Fleischacker, who’s answerable for water high quality for the company.
After being prepped for various strategies of testing, the samples get injected right into a machine with eight little tubes.
“It can separate out the completely different PFAS compounds utilizing detection capabilities. After which what occurs is the alerts from these detectors will end result within the era of what you see on the display screen right here,” he mentioned.
A pc monitor reveals a curving reddish line that peaks up.
“Every PFAS compound would have its personal separate curve with its personal separate peak,” mentioned Fleischacker.
For utilities like Tampa Bay Water, it takes some time to interrupt the info down and ship its findings to the EPA.
The primary samples have been taken in July, and it lastly got here again in September that two water remedy crops in Hillsborough have been simply barely above the EPA’s proposed restrict of 4 elements per trillion for one PFAS chemical, PFOS.
The Central Water Therapy Plant had 4.1 ppt, and the Lithia Water Therapy Plant had 4.3 ppt.
Fleischacker defined why this may increasingly have occurred throughout a current Tampa Bay Water board assembly.
“It is extra probably that PFAS sources would come from floor water than groundwater in our area, and that is due to… on a regular basis use of PFAS compounds,” he mentioned to the board.
These decrease ranges are probably coming from individuals’s wastewater and septic tanks, Fleischacker mentioned.
The company’s 13 different examined websites have been both under the EPA recommended limits or not detected.
The area’s particular person municipalities are conducting their very own consuming water research separate from Tampa Bay Water, utilizing exterior contractors.
Listed here are the minor discrepancies:
- Central Water Therapy Plant with Hillsborough County – Tampa Bay Water outcomes have been 4.3 ppt and the county’s contract lab was 5.4 ppt.
- Lithia Water Therapy with Hillsborough County – Tampa Bay Water outcomes have been 4.1 ppt and the County’s contract lab was lower than 4 ppt.
- Lake Bridge Water Therapy Plant with Pasco County – Tampa Bay Water outcomes have been 2.9 ppt and the County’s contract lab was 4.4 ppt.
Again in August,WUSF reported on “alarming ranges” of PFAS compounds within the consuming water popping out of the Orangewood Water System in Vacation and within the metropolis of Pembroke Pines.
The Orangewood Water System had eight completely different PFAS compounds at 185.4 ppt, and water popping out of Pembroke Pines had 9 completely different PFAS compounds at 171.6 ppt.
And in 2018, the advocacy group Environmental Working Group discovered that MacDill Air Power Base had a PFAS focus within the atmosphere of 523,710 ppt, whereas the “secure” restrict is taken into account 70 ppt.
In contrast to Florida, some extra industrial states have set limits on PFAS in consuming water, and have gotten their ranges to round 10 to twenty ppt, Fleischacker advised the Tampa Bay Water board.
Greater than 10,000 water programs throughout the nation are collaborating on this monitoring mission.
“We’ll be importing the info because it’s reported to us into our Nationwide Contaminant Prevalence Database on a quarterly foundation, from now till nicely into 2026,” mentioned Eric Burneson, with the EPA’s workplace of groundwater and consuming water.
“After we’re accomplished, we’re gonna have over two million data on the degrees of PFAS and lithium which are present in consuming water.”
Again in March, the EPA proposed limits for six PFAS chemical compounds in consuming water, but it surely’s utilizing this monitoring course of to assemble information on the frequency and stage at which the chemical compounds happen.
Burneson mentioned his company intends to finalize these guidelines by the top of this 12 months.
“And when absolutely carried out, we expect it may stop 1000’s of deaths and tens of 1000’s of avoidable diseases,” he mentioned.
As soon as the EPA units official limits, then Tampa Bay Water and different utilities can give you remedy plans.
For now, samples will proceed to be taken this month, then once more in January, and lastly in April.
