126 US Military Bases Water Contaminated with Carcinogens - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/04/26/dod-126-bases-report-water-contaminants-harmful-to-infant-development-tied-to-cancers/\ The water at or around 126 military installations contains potentially harmful levels of perfluorinated compounds, which have been linked to cancers and developmental delays for fetuses and infants, the Pentagon has found. In a March report provided to the House Armed Services Committee, the Pentagon for the first time publicly listed the full scope of the known contamination. The Defense Department identified 401 active and Base Closure and Realignment installations in the United States with at least one area where there was a known or suspected release of perfluorinated compounds. These included 36 sites with drinking water contamination on-base, and more than 90 sites that reported either on-base or off-base drinking water or groundwater contamination, in which the water source tested above the Environmental Protection Agency’s acceptable levels of perfluorooctane sulfonate or perfluorooctanoic acid, also known as PFOS and PFOAs. The man-made chemicals, which can be used to make items heat or water resistant, are found in everyday household, food and clothing items, even take-out food wrappers. Here's the Pentagon report, list of all contaminated bases

Well shit, I was born on one.

IIRC they did some tests on the ground water here, and found chemicals related to rocket/missile fuel in it. Joy... Operation: Keep Cannon Cancer

Oh joy, Twentynine Palms and Yuma are on there. The two bases that I've spent the most time at. Not to mention having worked with AFFF because of my MOS.

I'm surprised none of the bases I was stationed at and even the one I was born on are not on that list.

Wouldn't be the first time. I Spent two years in Twenty-nine Palms. As much as I hated the place, I wouldn't actually expect it to literally give me cancer...

Looks like I lucked out. None of the places I've been are on the list.

Really? Fort Hood didn't get slapped by this? Praise be, superior fort. Also, did a bit of math and it turns out nearly a quarter (22.44%) of installations exceeded EPA LHA in testing and over half (60.76%) of the groundwater wells did as well. This shit got pretty far (or the standards are pretty strict, but still )

glad ft. huachuca isn't on the list. when i was working there two summers ago i prolly drank 1-2 liters of their water every day

wtf you have the largest defence budget in the world, how can you not spend money on your military installations water supply????

I worked on the remediation of these perflourinated compounds at the USGS, these things aren't leaving the water supplies for approx 600 years at the site I was at in Trenton, NJ. They are cool when they pollute an aquifer, because you can breed bacteria to eat them up and break them down into less harmful more easily broken down compounds. Still barely makes an impact though.

Oh look, Norfolk is on there, and I'm not surprised.

Is that actually possible though? Most of the literature I've come across suggests that they're pretty much inert to biodegradation.

Most of those bases have airfields or helipads, which is why not all are on the list.

PFAS chemicles are suspected, not proven to be carcinogens? All i could find was hormone problems with mice given high doses. Also if it is cancer causing we're all fucked because these chemicles have been used for 70 years but we are only starting to see effects of it now. Also they have only been tested for in the wild for 5 ish years. My lab only just picked up PFAS capabilities 2 years ago.

PFOA is a known carcinogen, and PFAS is suspect. Most of their uses hasn't involved ingestion by the user. Both are found to remain in the body and do not easily process out.

Can you link the sudy for the PFOA cancer link, all i can find is a "probable link" study. But yeah the PFAS is suspect but theres yet no proof yet, but it probably will have similar effects to PFOA, hence the recent pickup of testing.

PFOA and Cancer in a Highly Exposed Community It also references past studies in regards to causing cancers in rodents.

Yeah this was the one I saw, hopefully they nail it down with more evidence. There really needs to be more of a focus on PFAS, since its really made its way into a lot of water sources. PFOA especially though since theres already evidence, and we need more studies on PFOS. Its a huge issue here, with a lot of contaminated areas.

I scrolled through the list, I lived on a lot of different military bases and visited dozens more. Only one base I actually visited was on the list, but I didn't think their water.

oh cool my base is on there and the area i'm normally in thanks dod

This is the research done on our site. https://toxics.usgs.gov/highlights/2017-08-02-tce_biodegradation.html sorry this one was specifically for perchlorinated compounds, but I believe you can do the same for perflourinated ones aswell. Biodegradation of Perfluorinated Compounds | Research Pro..

Fort McCoy's on there. Great. I spend half of my ATs there. I didn't see Marseilles Training Center on there, which is mildly surprising. The water there is fucking horrible. Leaves a film all over you when you shower, and has this horrible chemical taste that makes you want to gag.

I've been drinking the water at Eglin for the last two years I've been stationed here

I worked for monitoring of old US bases here in Germany once. We had borehole logging at a site where they washed their cars and the site is basically a no-go area for the next hundreds of years because of this shit. Thx US army.

The literature I've come across on biodegradation of perfluorinated substances has been rather spotty, unfortunately. This study reported depletion of PFOS in the culture medium of a P. aeruginosa strain, but this letter points out several glaring flaws in their study. Another study describes a PFOA-degrading strain, but their follow-up study has this in their methods and materials: Different concentration of PFOA in methanol solution was added as sole carbon after autoclaving. Somehow I don't really trust the results of a study that uses a methanol solution of something as the "sole carbon" source. Another report from Russia is equally dodgy, with no controls, weird diagrams, and overall poor writing quality. These two rather more comprehensive studies (1, 2) found no evidence of microbial degradation of perfluorinated substances even after very long incubation periods (hundreds of days). Nothing else notable has come up on my (admittedly limited) radar so far. While the thermodynamics of reductive defluorination suggest that it's feasible, the C-F bond is outstandingly inert, even more so in perfluorinated compounds due to steric shielding of the carbon backbone. Bacteria are incredibly adaptable, but this is one hell of a metabolic challenge even for them. If a strain is conclusively shown to utilise perfluorinated substances as the sole carbon source, I'd be very interested to know more about its biochemistry.