The Thursday, May 23 issue of The Guardian, a large British news organization, includes a story on contamination by poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) on and around some US military bases. Titled "A Trail of Toxicity," the piece features Mines professor Chris Higgins, who was recently awarded an EPA grant to continue his research on the subject.
From The Guardian:
Chris Higgins, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines, is co-conducting research into the effects of PFAS exposure via drinking water in El Paso county. Preliminary results of blood tests on residents served by the affected water systems indicate levels of a compound associated with firefighting foam that are about 10 times higher than the national median, he said.
"The stuff that's in your carpets is different [to the foam] but it's still part of this PFAS family," he said. "There's these questions of how important are the different routes of exposure, how important is drinking water versus your consumer product use versus if it's coming from your milk or the eggs or the fish that you eat? Those are the questions that we're grappling with."
Read the full story online: