Kyle Bagenstose reports for the Bucks County Courier Times:
Local residents affected by water contamination from area military bases were exposed to unregulated chemicals at as much as 15 times the recommended safety limit before contaminated wells were taken off line over the past several years.
That’s according to a draft report released Wednesday by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, an arm of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings were included in a small section of a much larger report released by the ATSDR to a community panel in Pease, New Hampshire.
As in Bucks and Montgomery counties, Pease residents are dealing with the fallout of learning that the chemicals PFOS and PFOA contaminated local water supplies after being used in firefighting foams at area military bases for decades. Pease residents have organized a community action group — “Testing for Pease” — to demand action from regulators and the federal government. No such group exists locally, however.
The highest estimated contamination was in the central part of the Warminster system, near the former Naval Air Warfare Center. Four public wells were located in the vicinity, leading the ATSDR to conclude that some residents in the central part of the water system “received water containing concentrations at level up to 15 times (the EPA’s limit).”
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