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)

North Bay area 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.




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Attention: People fishing in Lees Creek and Trout Lake, east of North Bay

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 contaminated waterway east of North Bay starts at Lees Creek, and continues downstream into Trout Lake. According to the “current” Guide to Eating Ontario Fish: The brook trout in Lees Creek are so highly contaminated with PFAS that they are deemed “do not eat” fish. Nobody (man, woman, or child) should be eating these fish. Downstream in Trout Lake, children and women of childbearing age should not be eating any lake trout or smallmouth bass because even the smallest ones tested were too highly contaminated with PFAS. High levels of PFAS contamination mean children and women of childbearing age should not be eating any burbot over 18” long. The situation regarding rock bass and pike is a bit more complicated, because they are co-contaminated with significant levels of both PFAS and mercury. Children and women of childbearing age should not be eating rock bass over 8” long or pike over 22” long. As bad as this 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 continuing) 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. It is likely that this 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 Lees Creek and Trout Lake (east of North Bay). 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 North Bay.

Joe Minor
jminor942@gmail.com

[Budley]

Well that’s some scary crap

[Flukes]

Scary is an understatement (to me at least withe these chemicals - may not be to some folks). And looking into these chemicals and more recent research on these chemicals being found in rain water almost everywhere and scientists who are studying them warning about the levels in water that are "safe" for drinking, some of the levels found in fish in the Hamilton Airport watershed (esp. at Binbrook CA) are on the order of millions of times higher than what the US EPA considers to be safe in drinking water....that scares the crap out of me. What is also means is that all of our lakes will be getting increasingly contaminated (due to rain) with these "forever" chemicals because they never disappear and our fish will continually bioaccumulate them with newer generations becoming more and more contaminated. And of course the worse part is that our gov't has this information and does not see it is necessary to make that information public. Unless, people know, they can't be concerned. And unless they are concerned, there is no pressure to change gov't (and global)policies in reducing the use of this family of chemicals.