Toxic Inaction: Ann Arbor Residents Have Been Ingesting Carcinogens in our Drinking Water for Far Too Long

by Dr. Mozghan Savabieasfahani

Hexavalent chromium, a dreadful carcinogen, was just added to a long list of water contaminants in Ann Arbor (1,4-dioxane, PFOS, PFOA, PFBA, PFPeA, PFBS, PFHxA and PFHpA). Yet Michigan’s health and environmental regulatory departments, city staff, as well as local elected officials and even the Huron River Watershed Council continue to assure us the tap water is still safe to drink — and that there is no need to stockpile water or use filtration. Most recently, we were told that the carcinogen hexavalent chromium that was released into the Huron River watershed (47 miles from Barton Pond) by Tribar Manufacturing on July 30, 2022 is under control. To calm the public, Ann Arbor officials keep saying it [the carcinogen] will take weeks to reach our faucets. This is absurd.

The hexavalent chromium contamination of the Huron River watershed is just a small symptom of a much bigger disease. We really don’t know how long we have been drinking this toxic metal; the local water utility has not been testing for it, as posted testing results show.

In Wixom, local government is holding public meetings about protecting that city’s water supply. In Ann Arbor, current Council members post ridiculously ignorant Tweets that the toxicity can be abated by letting the hexavalent chromium “settle” into the mud of the Huron.

Science tells is there is no practical or comprehensive way to remove large amounts of hexavalent chromium — or any other metal — as well as PFAS substances, from the environment once they have been released. You can filter these contaminants (but not 1,4 dioxane) out of your immediate drinking water, but once in the environment, these contaminants will persist forever. For instance, the toxic chemicals leach out of your reverse osmosis water filter which you tossed into the landfill, then seep into the water table and back into the natural water cycles.

Tribar Manufacturing is the same company that was releasing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in our drinking water source. Ann Arbor residents were kept in the dark about PFAS substances in our drinking water for years. The City disclosed only the levels of PFOS and PFOA. They made sure not to tell us about the levels of all 7 PFAS substances that had been detected in our drinking water. It took an MLive article (December 2018) to force the City into full disclosure. By then, Christopher Taylor had been re-elected mayor on his “environmental” credentials.

How long have we been drinking these “forever chemicals?” And why have we not been alerted to high levels of PFAS chemicals in our drinking? Dirty politics and dirty politicians.

In May 2016, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) issued a lifetime health advisory for PFOS and PFOA for drinking water, advising municipalities that they should notify their customers of the presence of levels over 70 parts per trillion (ppt) in community water supplies. US EPA recommended that customer notifications include information on the increased risk to health, especially for susceptible populations.

In June 2022, the EPA sharply reduced its limits.

The new advisories decrease that by more than a thousandfold. The new limit for PFOS is 0.02 ppt; for PFOA, it’s 0.004 ppt. Essentially, the EPA wants the limits to be as close as possible to zero as a growing body of research has shown how toxic these compounds are.

PFAS exposure has been linked with health issues such as kidney and testicular cancer, weakened immunity, endocrine disruption, fertility problems, and decreased birth weight.

The City has posted testing data for our drinking water that go back to 2016. The data are presented without comparison or context, just numbers. For example, in August of 2021, the sum of all PFAS in our drinking water was measured at 44.4 ppt (parts per trillion). PFOS and PFOA levels in October 2018 were 22 ppt. Not bad, right? Wrong. In California, the Water Board instituted a policy in 2019 that required water customers to be notified (drinking water response) when PFOS ppt exceed 5.1 ppt in drinking water and PFOA levels exceed 6.5 ppt. New York State has a maximum contaminant level of 10 ppt for PFOS and also for PFOA.

What has been Ann Arbor city officials’ excuse for letting us drink those toxicants and lying to us about what actual substances are in our drinking water? Get ready for it: Their excuse is that there were no EPA standards (see above) for these toxicants. It was an excuse for, literally, toxic inaction by city staff and elected officials.

In point of fact, humans mustn’t be exposed to any amount of these PFAS substances, or any amount of 1,4-dioxane, or any amount of hexavalent chromium. Most terrifying is the fact that this rising background level of anthropogenic contaminants has already caused a massive global neurological pandemic among humans (see Only One Chance: How Environmental Pollution Impairs Brain Development — and How to Protect the Brains of the Next Generation, by Philippe Grandjean, 2013.) This global pandemic is more simply known to many parents as autism spectrum disorder. Increasing levels of pollution are chipping away at the young human brain.

Tribar’s July 2022 release of hexavalent chromium directly into the Huron River watershed is a devastating assault on our public health and our environment. It could have been prevented. In 2019, the Mayor and Council members were urged by members of the public to push for the shutdown of of Tribar permanently after a PFAS spill. Instead, the Mayor and Council did nothing.

If people’s health, and the restoration of our environment, were priorities to the power structure in this city and this state, then the Gelman 1,4 dioxane contamination would have been cleaned up long ago; Tribar would have been shut down in 2019, and the hexavalent chromium now headed toward Barton Pond would never have been released into our waters.

The public’s health doesn’t matter to Ann Arbor’s officialdom. Power and property values do. Dollars should not control elections, people should.

For now, the Drinking Water Directive of the European Parliament – which is historically much more protective of public health than its U.S. counterparts — has chosen a grouping approach (lumping together all PFAS substances) to set standards for all these forever chemicals with the limit of 0.5 µg/l for all PFAS substances.

The United States lacks the protection and clarity of that grouping approach. This makes any regulation of toxic compounds much more haphazard.

In Ann Arbor, let’s start by demanding the State shut down Tribar now. Let’s finally clean up the decades old Gelman 1,4 dioxane contamination. We, the people, must stop allowing our officials to turn their backs on the environment as they exercise petty power and reap rewards from their money-and-buildings campaign contributors. We must turn things around, and quickly, if we are to survive the public health disasters foisted on us by our own elected officials.

Dr. Savabieasfahani is an environmental toxicologist. In 2018 and 2022, she ran in the Democratic primaries to serve on City Council.