About 80 miles northwest of Birmingham, 3M was hit with a similar class action case in March brought by customers of the city of Guin’s water department. There, attorney Anthony Ifediba said he has evidence the company has spoiled the water supply with PFAS for decades, even after conducting research indicating the forever chemicals bioaccumulate in fish, humans and other mammals.
“This factory has been there since 1955, even before the EPA was founded,” Ifediba said. “At one time, all the wastewater from the facility ran out into Purgatory Creek, which is also the city’s water supply. We know that PFAS is very difficult to remove from water and you’d be shocked to see some of the test results.”
In December 2020, based on testing recommended by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM), the Guin Water Board sent letters to its 4,000-plus customers regarding PFOA and PFOS, noting it was detected above the 70ppt lifetime health advisory level established by the EPA in 2016.
Documents filed with ADEM reveal that just prior to the lawsuit, the city’s treated water tested between 91.8 ppt and 73.4 ppt, but raw water surrounding the plant exhibited much higher amounts. At the plant’s outfall pipe on Purgatory Creek, the level of PFOS was 3,200 ppt. A manhole in close proximity was tested and revealed combined levels of PFOA/PFOS of 9,200 ppt.
Ifediba said the settlement agreement was never made public, but the water board agreed to take remedial measures.
“It’s my understanding they are going through the process of installing different filtration, but some of my clients for the last several years have been buying bottled water, or they have installed additional filters of their own,” Ifediba said. “But that means they are spending all this money they don’t have to drink clean water.”
Ifediba also said several of his clients have underlying health conditions that can be linked back to PFAS exposure.
In a written statement, 3M didn’t respond directly to inquiries about either lawsuit, other than to provide press releases about the settlement agreement in Decatur, but spokesman Sean Lynch said the company “has and continues to support science-based federal regulation of PFAS.”
“We note that EPA’s action has been met with pushback from affected parties who have questioned the scientific basis for the action,” Lynch wrote. “We also have questions relating to the scientific basis for the action and look forward to contributing to the ongoing scientific debate. We want to work collaboratively with EPA and other interested stakeholders to find a science-based path forward to achieve our shared goal of protecting public health.”
In 2019, 3M recorded $762 million in PFAS-related litigation charges, according to its 2021 annual report.
Both before and after the EPA issued its new guidance, consumers in Alabama and northwest Florida have been alerted to test results exceeding the limits, old and new. In early June, the U.S. Navy held a pair of public meetings to discuss the results of groundwater testing around NAS Whiting Field and 11 outlying landing fields in south Alabama and northwest Florida. The fields support approximately 60% of the Navy’s fixed-wing flight training program and 100% of its initial helicopter training program in a partnership with the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Coast Guard.
Since 1949, military pilots have used the fields to master the elements of flight, while auxiliary staff have remained on the ground, training on various support missions including firefighting. In the 1960s, the Navy and chemical manufacturer 3M began to develop a new tool to combat fires known as Aqueous Film-Forming Foam, which incorporated two key chemicals manufactured by 3M.
At all 12 flight training facilities on the Gulf Coast, the Navy collected a total of 683 samples from water wells and of those, roughly 57% were classified as “non-detect” under the previous EPA guidelines. Another 279 samples had detectable levels of PFAS below the previous EPA health advisory and only 18 exceeded the previous health advisory. But under the new guidance, all of the detectable levels exceed the health advisory.
In Mobile, Alabama, this week, the Mobile Area Water and Sewer Service (MAWSS) sent a consumer drinking water notice to its 91,000 accounts, noting testing of finished water between January and June of this year revealed PFOS levels as high as 1.6 ppt and PFOA levels as high as 2.2 ppt. Little other information was provided in the notices, other than an assurance that routine monitoring will be implemented and test levels will be updated in 2023.
For customers concerned about PFAS, the utility recommended speaking to a doctor or health care professional and considering actions that can reduce exposure “while steps are being taken to further understand levels of concern and potentially regulated PFAS at the national level.”
A class action lawsuit was filed against MAWSS for the PFAS contamination July 7.
Representatives for environmental agencies in Alabama, Florida and North Carolina – all of which published their own updated PFAS guidance in the weeks or months before the EPA changed the health advisory levels – said they were reviewing the material for compliance. ADEM external affairs chief Lynn Battle said the state’s guidance is based on the EPA’s, as the Legislature has not implemented any more stringent requirements.
“As with any regulations that come forth, [PFAS is considered] an emerging contaminant,” she said. “Then you move forward down the line to see if you need regulations and that sort of thing. It happens a lot where things that are regulated now were not regulated five or 10 years ago, so when we saw [PFAS] starting to get attention, we just started gathering information to help the public understand what was going on. But most of it comes from EPA.”
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