In 2014, residents of Hoosick Falls, New York, my hometown, noticed something weird. Residents were experiencing unusually high rates of kidney and testicular cancer. Mr. Hickey, a resident, decided to investigate the trend after losing his father to kidney cancer. He tested the water supply and brought the results to the local doctor, Dr. Martinez.
What Dr. Martinez found was shocking. The water supply was tainted with high levels of PFOAs, a forever chemical that has been linked to testicular cancer, thyroid disease, and kidney cancer. Once PFOAs are released into nature, they will never break down, tainting the water supply forever. The public water supply in Hoosick Falls tested at about 600 parts per trillion of PFOA — the federal safety recommendation for human consumption is 70 parts per trillion.
The contamination was found to be caused by facilities using Teflon non-stick materials, such as DuPont, 3M, Saint-Gobain, and Honeywell. Hickey’s father worked at one of these factories for three decades. The forever chemical made its way from factories into the groundwater wells, Hoosick Falls’ main water source. Meaning, people had been drinking poison for decades, and no one knew.Â
Mr. Hickey formed Healthy Hoosick Water LLC with Dr. Martinez to advocate for clean water. Despite the glaring results of the water test, the State Health Department told village officials that testing would not be necessary and the water supply “does not constitute an immediate health hazard”. After pressure from Hoosick residents, local officials decided to test the water for PFOA anyway, and they found the same results as Hickey. In December of 2015, EPA Regional Administrator Judith Enck appeared to warn residents not to drink the tainted water. But an official warning from the government took a year and a half.Â
Bottled water was distributed at the local Tops grocery store. Residents’ lives revolved around bottled water. Brushing our teeth with it and drinking from it. Being extra careful not to get water in our mouths when showering.Â
People were scared, including my family. It is a hard idea for a child to grasp, that the water they drink after soccer practice and during dinner is actively poisoning them. Parents did not know how to protect their children. The chance of cancer and disease loomed. The long-term effects of PFOAs were not fully understood, and our bodies were full of them.Â
Filled with anger at a lack of government action and hearings, residents, including kids in my grade, protested at the state capitol, displaying posters with their PFOA levels written on them. When interviewed by the New York Times, Ms. Hackett stated that Hoosick Falls was Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Flint, Michigan.Â
Eventually, water filters, paid for by Saint-Gobain, were installed in the local school and community centers. Individual houses had them installed afterward. Residents were allowed to join a ten-year medical testing study and learn their PFOA levels. The study found that resident blood levels were over 30 times higher than the national average. Levels were highest for residents sixty and over.Â
Since 2016, Hoosick Falls has switched to a safer long-term water source and continued medical testing for participating residents. Settlements from class-action lawsuits have also been distributed. Most recently, DuPont paid out a 27-million-dollar settlement, a decade after the discovery of tainted water, which brought the total settlement in the Hoosick Falls PFOAs case to 92 million dollars. Portions of the settlement were divided amongst residents to compensate for property value loss.Â
The contamination issues in Hoosick Falls led to necessary changes in the environmental health realm. The EPA lowered advisory levels for PFOA, PFAS testing was expanded in public water systems, and new regulations were put in place at the state level.Â
There will never be enough money to make up for the physical and mental damage these companies of PFOA have done to the community. Corporations and governments need to be held responsible for failing their communities. Environmental health should never be put on the back burner. Cases like Hoosick Falls, NY, and Flint, Michigan, should never happen again.