PFOS/PFAS contaminants in fish, info about poss. problems in area

[Flukes]

NOTE: This information is NOT from me. I am merely passing on information from someone who is hoping to make the information more publicly available to people around Ontario that are likely facing a similar problems but are not being informed by our gov't agency(ies). If you would like more info., please contact the person through e-mail shown below. He's been involved in the Hamilton Airport issue for years now and is concerned (as I am) that the available contaminants information that the gov't has obtained using tax payers money is not being released to all that maybe affected (but only to local land owners and leaving it up to them to decide if they want to warn people, esp. fisher people, about the risks of eating fish from the watershed)

The Neebing River, near and downstream of the Thunder Bay Airport, has a similar situation as you will see below but of course is not getting the same attention (and funding to study) that the Hamilton Airport has received.


************************
Attention: People fishing in the Neebing River, near and downstream of the Thunder Bay Airport

How much have you been told about the PFAS/PFCs/PFOS contamination in this area, and what is being done about it?

I live in Hamilton, and I am writing you because we share a common problem. We both have one of our local waterways so badly contaminated with PFAS/PFCs/PFOS that there are restrictions on how much fish should be eaten. Some of the fish are so highly contaminated that they are deemed to be “do not eat” fish.

The PFAS contaminated waterway in Thunder Bay is the Neebing River, from the area of the airport and presumably downstream. According to the “current” Guide to Eating Ontario Fish: The rock bass in the Neebing River are so highly contaminated with PFAS that they are deemed “do not eat” fish. Children and women of childbearing years should not eat any of these fish. Adventurous men could consider eating 2 meals a month (or less) of rock bass, as long as they are less than 8” long. As bad as this PFAS contamination is, recent scientific studies have indicated that the amounts of PFAS/PFCs/PFOS that were deemed “advisable” to eat in the Guide were set too high (see below).

In Hamilton, the highly contaminated areas are downstream from the former fire-fighting practice pad at the Hamilton International Airport. In order to comply with directives from Transport Canada, fire fighters sprayed large amounts of AFFF (aqueous film-forming foam) on practice fires in order to train with the use of AFFF. A popular type of AFFF had PFAS/PFCs/PFOS as a major ingredient, and the PFAS/PFCs/PFOS ran off the airport site and contaminated many kilometers of waterway downstream in the upper Welland River. The zone of high contamination is so long that it extends across Hamilton and on into Niagara. Even the Binbrook Conservation Area has highly contaminated fish and wildlife.

In Hamilton, Transport Canada has funded a million dollar, seven year (and ongoing) study called the “Hamilton International Airport - Offsite Risk Assessment”. Because some of the results of this study are relevant to all PFAS/PFC/PFOS contaminated waterways, I will attempt to send the three pdf’s that have been released as attachments in following eMAILs. (If you did not get them, please eMAIL me if you would like me to send them to another eMAIL address.)

One of the key findings of the study is that it is likely that the spraying of PFOS ended in 1989, and the spraying of all PFAS ended in 1994. Despite this, high levels of environmental contamination (including tainted fish) persist for many kilometres downstream to this day (33 years later). It is likely that this PFAS pollution will remain a significant problem for the foreseeable future.

An important part of the study was to evaluate whether or not the levels of PFAS/PFCs/PFOS currently used in the Guide to Eating Ontario Fish are consistent with the current state of scientific knowledge. The short answer is not even close. Adult men should eat no more than 30% of the amounts recommended in the Guide, and children and women of childbearing age should eat no more than 14% of the amounts recommended in the Guide. This means that the amounts listed in the Guide for men need to be decreased by more than 3.3-fold, and the amounts listed for children and women of childbearing age need to be decreased by more than 7.1-fold.

To see what applying this correction looks like for the fish in the upper Welland River, please see the pdf labelled “ERRATA_Tables”. As can be seen, the result is many more fish with decreased amounts of consumption.

I do not know when the Guide to Eating Ontario Fish will be corrected to bring it in line with current scientific knowledge.

The main thing to remember is that these correction factors (e.g., children and women of childbearing age need to decrease their consumption by more than 7.1-fold) should also be applied to the fish in the contaminated area of the Neebing River (near the Thunder Bay Airport). The result will be decreased consumption levels, with more fish deemed to be highly contaminated “do not eat” fish.

Have you been told about these findings?
Transport Canada and the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks believe that their public notification regarding these results is “adequate”.
I am interested in learning what part of the public notification process is working. If you have heard about these findings, how were you informed?
If you have not been officially informed (e.g. by somebody other than me), please let me know when the results of this major federally funded study are made public in Thunder Bay.

Joe Minor
jminor942@gmail.com

[kenster]

not an isolated problem as this has been done at other airports with similar results. Almost all other bodies of water have mercury with most people not realizing they need to check the amounts.

[Flukes]

agree and I have posted some of the other areas that are almost certainly facing the same problem. But the issue is that the gov't has this information and not updating the eating guide with these PFOS/PFAS issues or has not made it a priority to test the fish in the other water bodies that are likely facing the same problem. Not all airports train with fire-fighting sprays that include this kind of contaminants - they do so at these airports regularly because Transport Canada requires them to do so because of licensing requirements to use these kinds of sprays (they are toxic so they need to train but they get washed into our waters)...even worse, is that the gov't knows but do not think it's important to make the public aware and continue to recommend much higher amounts of fish that can be eaten "safely" when they know it's wrong. Mercury (esp. natural) mercury tends to change less frequently so it's not as urgent an issue with regards to testing more frequently so that information on mercury is relatively up-to-date. It's the PFOS/PFAS that has been introduced in a large pulse that is not getting updated...that's one of the major issues.

[kenster]

We just had the same issue discovered in a local stream that runs by the airport and flows into our lake where we get our drinking water.Just discovered decades later, news for a day and haven't heard any more about it.Probably because there's not much they can do now.

[Flukes]

If willing, maybe you are okay with sharing which lake/airport with me (you can PM - although not sure who would flock to that fishing spot after what you had said or e-mail that information to Joe Minor, for who I had posted the information on this board). For sure, not much they can do now to clean it up but they can warn people about eating the fish from that body of water to avoid even larger problems for others, esp. the kids as they may have to live a life time with the issues.

[kenster]

No problem sharing as it made the local paper. Sounds like it happened awhile back but samples taken recently in 4 mile creek showed those contaminants.Couldn't have been too extreme i guess as we still get water from near the outflow of creek in Trout Lake, North Bay
https://www.baytoday.ca/local-news/nine-pro...stances-3665493

[Flukes]

Thanks. I wouldn't assume it is safe to use the water. The problem with these chemicals is that they don't break down easily and even if it happened a while ago, it's always going to be present...and slowly work up the food chain and accumulate in long living predators over time. I think they haven't raised alarms about drinking the water only because there hasn't been too many studies on it...it's the same as around the Hamilton Airport - the report says more information is needed on the livestock in the area that are ingesting water and plant grown from the watershed affected (it wasn't part of the study's scope so they couldn't say anything about it).
I will forward that link to Joe.