15 NC Water Samples Exceed EPA's Proposed PFAS Drinking Water Standards

Yesterday the U.S. EPA released results from the first round of required PFAS testing for public water systems across the nation. This data included samples from 24 locations in North Carolina. Of those 24 locations, 15 samples would exceed EPA’s proposed PFAS drinking water standards. Here are the 15 locations:

Data Source: U.S. EPA’s UCMR5 Summary Results, Round 1

The top five NC locations with the highest levels of total PFAS from EPA’s sample results are:

Robeson County Water System: 122.4 ppt

Ft. Liberty #1: 58 ppt

Lillington Water System: 56.7 ppt

Ft. Liberty #2: 56.5 ppt

Brunswick County Water System: 45.7 ppt

These results are vastly underreporting the true scope of PFAS contamination in drinking water because the EPA is only requiring public water systems to test for 24 PFAS when the EPA admits there are over 14,000 different PFAS in existence. Currently, commercial labs are capable of testing for 70 or more PFAS.

Clean Cape Fear partnered with NRDC and the National PFAS Contamination Coalition to publish a peer-reviewed study illustrating how communities are being left in the dark and overexposed to these dangerous “forever chemicals” in their tap water. Almost half of the different PFAS detected in the study would never be found by EPA’s current monitoring requirements. For example, the North Carolina samples had the highest levels of unmonitored PFAS. Those samples came from Oak Island and Ocean Isle.