WARRINGTON, Pa.—Jessica Watson has cooked with bottled water in her spacious kitchen, with its granite countertops, ever since she became afraid to drink her tap water four years ago.
About 80,000 people in three townships outside Philadelphia live in an area where the groundwater has been contaminated by chemicals used for decades in firefighting foam at two nearby decommissioned military bases.
The Defense Department has cited 401 bases in the U.S. with a known or suspected release of the firefighting foam containing chemicals known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. In addition to the towns near the two Pennsylvania bases, the Navy is assisting communities near an active base in Virginia and another in New Jersey where high levels of PFAS in drinking water have been recorded.
PFAS are a class of nearly 5,000 chemicals. Often called “forever chemicals” because they take so long to break down, PFAS can accumulate in the body and several forms have been linked to health issues including increased cholesterol, thyroid and immune system problems and several cancers.
There is no national database on the extent of PFAS contamination from military bases, or from sites where the chemicals were manufactured or used in products from nonstick cookware to carpets and waterproof jackets. After the Environmental Protection Agency required water systems to test for the chemicals starting in 2013, Harvard University researchers said the findings indicated that the chemicals were in the drinking water of six million people.
The Pennsylvania communities of Warrington, Warminster and Horsham, where the contamination has been thoroughly documented through testing by the townships and the Navy, show what others could face as PFAS are found around the country.
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The townships, a mix of suburban sprawl and more rural areas, include homes with decades-old private wells as well as homes served by the municipal water systems, which use their own wells to tap the same groundwater. The water authorities serving most residents have spent millions of dollars to filter out PFAS since they first found them at high levels in 2014.
Greg Preston, director of the Navy’s Base Realignment and Closure Program East, said the Navy “is taking a coordinated, aggressive, and holistic approach to proactively address the myriad PFAS issues.”
The Navy has spent $63 million to investigate and clean up PFAS at the two former bases outside Philadelphia: Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Willow Grove and Naval Air Warfare Center Warminster. It has paid to connect more than 130 households and businesses to municipal water systems in the area.
Some families have been able to connect their homes to the municipal systems, but dozens of others like the Watsons still draw water into their homes through their wells.
“I don’t even give it to my dog,” Ms. Watson said. She and her husband, who works for Lockheed Martin, have spent about $45 a week on bottled water for themselves and their three children for the past four years. If she runs out, she borrows from a neighbor.
Some residents said they are now concerned that showering in their well water could also pose health risks.
Residents from the three townships will be part of a $7 million study looking at the health effects of PFAS in seven states announced in September by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Pennsylvania health department said in April last year it found PFAS blood levels above the national average when it tested 235 community members, with levels increasing the longer people had lived there. It said residents could have been exposed to elevated PFAS levels in drinking water for nearly 50 years.
As with many chemicals, there are no federal standards governing PFAS in drinking water or other products.
Since the early 2000s, chemical companies have agreed to phase out two common forms of the chemicals, perfluorooctanoic acid and perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOA and PFOS.
In 2009, the agency set health-advisory levels for drinking water of PFOA at 400 parts per trillion (ppt) and for PFOS of 200 ppt. In 2016, it tightened the level to a combined 70 ppt. The EPA has said it would propose a drinking water standard, typically a lengthy process.
The 2019 film “Dark Waters,” starring Mark Ruffalo, about a landmark lawsuit in West Virginia involving the chemicals and DuPont Co., has raised awareness of the issue.
“It’s an unusual contaminant in that it really packs a punch not only in lower-income and industrialized urban areas, but in a lot of rural and well-to-do areas,” said Erik Olson, senior director for health and food at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.
Meanwhile, states are sampling water systems and taking legal action. Last month, M ichigan sued 17 chemical companies to try to recover money to pay for cleanup costs. The state has so far identified 74 sites where PFAS have contaminated the drinking water of 1.9 million people. 3M Co., which has used PFAS in products such as Scotchgard, previously reached an $850 million settlement with Minnesota.
States are also setting their own limits for PFAS in drinking water, resulting in a patchwork of standards that has fueled some anxiety among residents. Pennsylvania, for example, uses the EPA’s 70 ppt advisory level, while neighboring New Jersey proposed enforceable maximum levels for water systems of 13 ppt for PFOS and 14 ppt for PFOA.
“I don’t think there’s a water supplier in the United States that’s not thinking about this,” said Chris Crockett, chief environmental officer for Aqua America, which provides water in eight states, including to communities outside Philadelphia. “You name the state and every one of them has a PFAS story.”
Tim Hagey, general manager of the water and sewer authority in Warminster which serves 38,000 people, said he had never heard of PFAS before the EPA required testing in 2013.
On the same day he got results of high PFAS levels in 2014, he shut two wells the authority had used for decades. The authority tests its well water, which now provides just 10% of the water it supplies, before and after treatment twice a month.
In Warrington, resident Kim Bell said she also hasn’t been able to get connected to the township’s municipal water. Her private well has tested at 26 ppt for PFOA and PFOS combined. She said that after she informed the Navy that she had breast cancer in 2016, it agreed to deliver bottled water to her house weekly. She bought a $140 countertop ice maker to avoid using ice from her refrigerator. The Navy said it doesn’t comment on transactions with residents.
Others are concerned that they were likely drinking water with PFAS for years, including Shane La Rosa, a neighbor of Ms. Bell. He had served as a Naval aircrewman at one of the nearby military bases until 2010, when it was decommissioned.
Mr. La Rosa said he recalls training exercises when a steel fuselage was filled with fuel, ignited and then put out with firefighting foam. Another time, an alarm triggered the release of foam throughout a hangar, he said.
Pennsylvania is developing its own standards for what level of PFAS it considers allowable, the first time it hasn’t followed the federal standard for a drinking water contaminant. Meanwhile, it has approved $20 million in grants to address PFAS groundwater contamination.
Some worry the contamination outside Philadelphia is spreading. As the townships rely more on other sources and draw less water with PFAS from the aquifer, what remains underground could travel to other areas, said Robert Bender, executive director of the North Wales Water Authority, which now supplies some water to the area.
“It’s a real concern that the contamination is going to follow the path of least resistance and migrate,” he said.
Write to Kris Maher at kris.maher@wsj.com
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