Mount Holly Elementary School issued a “do not drink” notice this week after tests found the school’s water contains PFAS contamination at more than 16 times the state limit.
The school is providing staff and students with bottled water until a treatment system is installed.
The school received test results Tuesday showing the water system had a combined 323 parts per trillion for five per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a class of toxic chemicals known as “PFAS.” The state’s interim drinking water standard is a combined 20 ppt for PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS, PFHpA and PFNA.
“Drinking water is obviously really important to us and we’re doing everything we can to resolve the situation,” Craig Hutt Vater, principal of Mount Holly Elementary School, said Thursday.
Bryan Redmond, director of the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s drinking water and groundwater protection division, said the state does not yet know why Mount Holly’s drinking water has elevated PFAS levels. The DEC’s waste management and prevention division has started investigating the cause and extent of contamination, he said.
Last session, lawmakers passed Act 21, which required managers of public drinking water supplies that serve more than 25 people for at least six months per year to test for PFAS compounds. To date, 70% of the 591 public drinking water supplies that are required to test for PFAS have done so, according to Redmond.
If initial testing shows a system to have PFAS levels above 40 ppt, the manager has to issue an immediate “do not drink” notice. If a drinking water system tests above 20 ppt for the five compounds, the system manager is required to take a second, confirmation sample; averages above 20 ppt would require a “do not drink” notice.
This first round of statewide drinking water testing has shown that two other systems have elevated PFAS levels: Killington Mountain School has 25 ppt and Fiddlehead Condominiums in Fayston has 29 ppt. Both systems have also issued do not drink notices, said Redmond.
While lawmakers passed a bill last session requiring drinking water supply managers to test for PFAS by Dec. 1, they did not set aside money for that testing or to clean up potential PFAS contamination. But Vermont schools dealing with contaminated drinking water can receive subsidized loans from the state’s clean water revolving loan program.
Sarah Vose, state toxicologist with the Department of Health, said that PFAS exposure at Mount Holly would vary depending on how much water someone drank at school — since some people may primarily drink bottled water or water from home — and how long they had been consuming it.
Concerned parents or staff should talk to their health care provider about their PFAS exposure concerns, said Vose, pointing to a CDC factsheet on that topic. But the Health Department does not recommend people test for PFAS levels in their blood because that testing cannot determine if existing conditions are linked to PFAS exposure or whether an individual will develop future conditions, she added.
“It’s not a very useful number,” she said. “It’s not the same as getting, for instance, a cholesterol reading.”
The Department of Environmental Conservation is in the process of finalizing drinking water standards for PFAS.
PFAS do not break down in the environment and are used in a wide array of manufactured products, from rain jackets to cookware to firefighting foam. Scientists have linked certain PFAS chemicals to testicular cancer, kidney cancer, thyroid disease and immune system effects, among other medical conditions.
PFAS gained notoriety in Vermont in 2016 after the state discovered that a particularly toxic chemical in that group, PFOA, contaminated hundreds of wells in Bennington. The state also found PFAS contamination in drinking water near a former wire coating facility in Pownal, by the Rutland Southern Vermont Regional Airport in Clarendon, and at the Grafton Elementary School, among other sites. DEC also has begun widespread PFAS sampling to better understand possible sources of contamination.
