On average, eating one wild fish or drinking a month's worth of tainted water is equally risky, national study finds

Photo by Michal Dziekonski, Unsplash

PFAS, dubbed "forever chemicals" for their apparently everlasting nature, keep showing up in America's water supply and food chains. New research found that "Eating one freshwater fish caught in a river or lake in the United States is the equivalent of drinking a month's worth of water contaminated with toxic 'forever chemicals,'" reports Daniel Lawler on Physics.org. The study was published in the journal Environmental Research.

Lawler explains: "To find out PFAS contamination in locally caught fish, a team of researchers analyzed more than 500 samples from rivers and lakes across the United States between 2013 and 2015. The median level of PFAS in the fish was 9,500 nanograms per kilogram. . . . Nearly three-quarters of the detected 'forever chemicals' was PFOS, one of the most common and hazardous of the thousands of PFAS. Eating just one freshwater fish equaled drinking water with PFOS at 48 parts per trillion for a month."

"I can no longer look at a fish without thinking about PFAS contamination," David Andrews, a senior scientist at the non-profit Environmental Working Group, a lobby that led the research, told Lawler. Andrews noted that the study's outcome was "particularly concerning due to the impact on disadvantaged communities that consume fish as a source protein or for social or cultural reasons. . . . This research makes me incredibly angry because companies that made and used PFAS contaminated the globe and have not been held responsible."

Patrick Byrne, a pollution researcher at Liverpool John Moores University, who was not involved in the research, told Lawler that PFAS are "probably the greatest chemical threat the human race is facing in the 21st century."

The harm PFAS do to humans is well documented, Lawler writes: "There have been growing calls for stricter regulation for PFAS, which have been linked to a range of serious health issues including liver damage, high cholesterol, reduced immune responses and several kinds of cancer . . . Andrews called for much more stringent regulation to bring an end to all non-essential uses of PFAS."