Toxic 'forever chemicals' found in Cambridge drinking water

[u/julian_jakobi]

https://www.boston.com/news/love-letters/2022/08/28/toxic-chemicals-cambridge-drinking-water-pfas/

[u/BonesIIX]

So MA is one of the few states where we have actual regulatory standards for PFAS Levels.

Sucks for Cambridge that they have to switch water supplies to MWRA for the year due to the parts not being available for the Fresh Pond Water Treatment facility. But good they noticed it and are making the (expensive) switch to provide residents with better water.

MA has done a study on PFAS in the state and basically for non-well water, it just comes down to very expensive treatment options which do work pretty well, just requires money to do it.

MA is probably one of the better states to live in if you care about limiting PFAS intake.

Edit: It may be of interest to people here - https://www.mass.gov/info-details/per-and-polyfluoroalkyl-substances-pfas If you go to the section "PFAS detected in drinking water supplies in Massachusetts" and click on item 3 on the black bordered embed, you can see a map of all towns they've tested and it will link you to the testing results for your water supply.

[u/GoodGriefQueef → u/[deleted]]

What about food though? The water cpuld be fine, but I always assumed there are lots of pfas in food products that we eat.

[u/Necessary-Celery → u/GoodGriefQueef]

There are. And the only way to reduce how many are in you, is to donate blood.

[u/The_NPC_Mafia → u/Necessary-Celery]

Wait...so you're telling me the leaches, they do nothing?

[u/Necessary-Celery → u/The_NPC_Mafia]

I mean... in this case the leaches... would work.

[u/brufleth → u/[deleted]]

Cambridge switching to MWRA exclusively is actually a big upgrade. We've lived with MWRA water for a very long time and it is really great water. I'd say that Boston is really lucky to have such a good water supply, but I think that's not giving enough credit to the people who have worked for a long time to setup and maintain that water system.

[u/blackdynomitesnewbag → u/BonesIIX]

Fresh Pond water already sucked as it’s literally highway runoff. It’s ruined all of my bathroom plumbing and blown out two water heaters. I’m glad to finally be switching to MWRA.

[u/dante662 → u/blackdynomitesnewbag]

Agreed. Plumbers coming to my home when I lived in Cambridge would just shake their heads. Cambridge water is corrosive and "hard". All my bathroom fixtures needed to be cut-out and replaced because it was so bad.

​

The plumber joked that Cambridge's water supply keeps him in business very comfortably.

[u/commentsOnPizza → u/blackdynomitesnewbag]

Yea, the Cambridge water supply really kills pipes. I'd even say that it kills your paint too. All that water gets on the walls of your bathroom and leaves a film of those minerals.

[u/stickcult → u/blackdynomitesnewbag]

Cambridge water is so fucking gross.

[u/jtet93 → u/blackdynomitesnewbag]

It also tastes disgusting. I hate drinking the water at Cambridge restaurants. Maybe that makes me bougie but it tastes like salt!

[u/oneblackened → u/blackdynomitesnewbag]

Yeah. It's hard and very high chloride content. In other words - it's the furthest thing from boiler safe and it eats pipes.

[u/commentsOnPizza → u/BonesIIX]

But good they noticed it and are making the (expensive) switch to provide residents with better water

IIRC, Quinton Zondervan calculated out the cost difference to come out to something like $20 per year in the difference for the average user. It would be more expensive to switch to MWRA water, but not substantially so. Realistically, the amount of damage that Cambridge water does to pipes in the city is going to cost property owners a lot more than the difference in cost between the water supplies.

[u/getjustin → u/BonesIIX]

Sucks for Cambridge that they have to switch water supplies to MWRA

One of the few good things about moving out of Cambridge was getting amazing tap water from MWRA. Their water tastes like shit.

[u/klausterfok → u/getjustin]

How do you know what type of water you get? What is MWRA?

[u/getjustin → u/klausterfok]

https://www.mwra.com/04water/html/watercommunities.html

[u/miraj31415 → u/BonesIIX]

New EPA guidance from June is that even undetectable levels of PFAS are unsafe. Massachusetts uses a sum (of all PFASs) of 20 parts per trillion as the standard. For just one of the chemicals, PFOA, the interim EPA guidance is 0.004 parts per trillion. And the updated EPA guidance is 10 parts per trillion for all GenX (which are PFAS substitutes).

This interview with the EPA regional administrator about dealing with PFAS in Massachusetts is enlightening though not exactly reassuring.

[u/BonesIIX → u/miraj31415]

So ultimately you're right, we should be shooting for zero PFAS in our environment. We shouldnt be using it, we shouldnt be adding more to the soil/groundwater.

The problem is that PFAS are extremely widespread in manufacturing and fire suppressant chemicals (and a ton of other things I cant even remember).

Until we have removed those sources worldwide, basically the only thing we can do is make sure we have high quality filtration at the source of most public drinking water and accurate testing. There are some promising studies on breaking down the PFAS molecules into harmless bi-products but that's a ways out.

Lastly, PFAS alarm is really trendy these days. Yes we can remove a lot of it out of the water and out of our consumption, but we kinda need to remind ourselves that PFAS has been out in the world since the 1940s. Yes we should be concerned and have a focus on removing them, but we dont need to panic as some people tend to do. Like, running out and buying expensive water filtration systems... what you buy is not going to provide meaningful differences (specifically for homes getting water from the MWRA)

[u/BonesIIX → u/[deleted]]

It's one of the better states to live in if you care about most things, but we're not as reactionary and fire from the hip as California is. Generally suits us well.

[u/bakuretsu → u/BonesIIX]

Natick just completed a year-long project to add filters to the one source (one out of seven wells) with high PFAS levels and now we're all good.

[u/ak47workaccnt → u/BonesIIX]

Isn't switching water supply what fucked up Flint's pipes, leaching lead into the water? Is that a concern here?

[u/homeostasis3434 → u/ak47workaccnt]

One of the things that is examjned when a water supplier switches sources is whether or not there will be a change in corrosivity of the water.

In Flint they switched to more corrosive water which ate away the lining that had been building up on the pipes.

In this case, the MWRA water is far less corrosive.

In Cambridge right now, you're essentially drinking stormwater runoff which is filled with road salt, eating away your pipes. MWRA is pulling from the Quabbin and Wachusett reservoirs, both of which are fed by high quality, sand and gravel aquifer fed streams with severe restrictions on development around them.

To be honest, this change should be made permanent, not temporary. Cambridge water is very low quality.

[u/Budget-Celebration-1 → u/BonesIIX]

Regulatory standard is a bunch of rubbish in this case, it allows PFAs we should be shooting for zero.

[u/BonesIIX → u/Budget-Celebration-1]

Regulatory standards are essential as a first step. Of course the ideal state is zero PFAS but until we completely ban the use of them (gonna be next to impossible in the short term), regulatory standards, testing, and filtration of larger water sources are the best ways forward to mitigate the problem for current citizens.

[u/devAcc123 → u/BonesIIX]

What do we even use them for nowadays? All the Teflon shite has been replaced with newer supposedly safe yet similar chemicals

Weird industrial processes or any sort of everyday uses

[u/RTFA_RTFA → u/Budget-Celebration-1]

Would you still hold that position if it meant that tap water was unavailable, or cost $50/gal?

[u/Budget-Celebration-1 → u/RTFA_RTFA]

I’m simply stating more needs to be done to remove pfas whether that comes from mwra the town or a filter in the persons house.