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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Mayor de Blasio coming up at the top of the hour, the band, they might be giants coming up at the bottom of next hour with a new book called Book, and a new set of songs. They might be giants coming up after the mayor today. Right now, why some New Jersey residents are worried about the safety of their water. Last month, residents of several towns in Middlesex and union counties received an alarming notice from the Middlesex Water Company.

It warned that a contaminant called PFOA short for, I won't even try to say it, was detected in groundwater samples from a treatment plant in South Plainfield. This contaminant is part of a whole class of compounds known as forever chemicals. Middlesex Water Company says it's not the water quality that's changed, but rather state environmental protection regulations.

Still, mayors of a handful of affected towns in these counties have threatened to sue the company because of the elevated levels of PFOA.

This includes South Plainfield, Edison, Metuchen, Woodbridge, Clark and Rahway right here in north Jersey, north central Jersey, where so many people in our listening area live.

Why are PFOAs and the whole class of chemical compounds that include PFOAs, why are they known as forever chemicals and why has their presence in these New Jersey towns caused such alarms? Some people are not drinking their tap water.

With me now is Sharon Lerner, investigative reporter at the Intercept who has reported on these chemicals for years. Hi Sharon. Welcome back to WNYC.

Sharon Lerner: Hi Brian. Thank you so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: New Jersey listeners, wait a minute. I just want to get the caller invite out here. New Jersey listeners in the affected towns, we invite you to call in and help us report this story. If you received that notice from Middlesex Water Company about high levels of PFOA, what are you doing? Are you not drinking the tap water? Are you trying to find the least objectionable kind of bottled water? Have you installed some kind of a filter that's actually effective against PFOA?

What are you doing folks or what question do you want to ask Sharon Lerner who again has covered this chemical group at length over the years? 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer. Sharon, go ahead. You were going to jump in before I even asked you an opening question. I'm all ears.

Sharon Lerner: Sorry. No, I was just going to start by saying thank you for having me. I think I've even been on this show to talk about these chemicals before. PFOA, and there is no PFOAs, I'm going to try and say the whole chemical name, perfluorooctanoic acid. It is one member of a class of industrial compounds that we call PFAS, which is PFAS. They're also known as forever chemicals.

The reason they're called that is because all the chemicals in this class persist indefinitely in nature. That means that left on their own, they don't break down and will be on the planet long after we're gone, so forever. PFOA is probably the best known in the class of PFAS at this point. What we're seeing now in New Jersey is, you said earlier that this is not about a change with the level of water but a change in the regulatory levels. That is absolutely right.

What happened is New Jersey put into effect a drinking water level that is lower than actually almost anywhere in the country and perhaps anywhere in the country. It's 14 parts per trillion. To put this in a little historical context, what's happening is that the number is going down as scientists learn more and more about the health effects of the chemicals. Back in 2009, the EPA set the number at 400 parts per trillion. 2016, they lowered it to 70 parts per trillion. That's the federal agency, the EPA.

New Jersey, is really out ahead here. I know for a lot of people who get these notices, it probably feels terrible and it's alarming and I understand that, but what I can say from watching this process over the years is that this is also the sign of this is regulation working. What we are having here is a new level and people being alerted to this new level that is being set based on the best science.

Brian Lehrer: Talk about how these levels get set because people's eyes can glaze over when they hear about this number of parts per trillion versus that number of parts per trillion, but there must be studies, animal studies or human disease studies or something that indicates that, "Oh, we used to think that X parts per trillion in the water wouldn't cause health effects, but really now we see that it's X minus 10 parts per trillion." What's new on this that has changed the regulatory level?

Sharon Lerner: In terms of health effects, let's talk just generally first. We know there is actually quite a bit known about PFOA at this point. There is a big class action suit that put this chemical on the map in West Virginia that began around 2000. As a result of that, they did a bunch of research from people who were exposed in West Virginia and they linked the chemical PFOA to six health effects, including kidney cancer, testicular cancer and elevated cholesterol levels.

What we know now is that there are definite clear causal relationships with PFOA causing elevated cholesterol level, causing kidney cancer, and reduced immune response. That means that when there are studies of how people respond to vaccines, the response correlates with the amount, and these studies were actually done in kids, they correlate with the amount of PFOA in the blood. Higher levels, less response.

That's actually just a very truncated list in terms of the associations. Not like block down causal, but just associations we know. Low birth weight, thyroid effects, preeclampsia actually I would put in the causal [unintelligible 00:07:52], but obesity, preterm birth, these are chemicals that have very low levels affect all sorts of bodily systems.

New Jersey set its level based on two things. One is the increased liver weight. These are animal experiments. Rats, mice, I think, and they based it on an increased liver weight and also delayed memory glam development. One of the things you see in both animal and human experiments is that these chemicals affect hormonal systems. The delayed mammary gland development isn't keeping with that.

Brian Lehrer: We take those and hopefully not wait until humans develop or don't develop those same kinds of health effects, but take the precautions that are take-ble. Now I mentioned Union and Middlesex county as the places where people have gotten these water notices. Our callers are letting us know that also in some other north Jersey counties, Essex, Bergen, people are getting these too. Let's take a phone call from Amy in Bergen county you are on WNYC. Hi Amy, what town?

Amy: Hi. I'm from Waldwick, New Jersey, which is in Bergen County. Yes. I just wanted to point out we did get those messages. We have our own wells in Waldwick there's six or eight of them. Some of the wells had higher numbers than others, but people in our town have started putting expensive filtration systems in their home, which all of us can't afford while we're waiting.

They did actually shut down a few of the well pumps because the levels were so high and they are working on putting systems in those pumps to help us, but in the meantime, people are starting to pay for expensive filtration systems.

Brian Lehrer: Amy, thank you very much. Sharon, what about filtration? I'm sure people hearing this for the first time or have gotten those notices are starting to ask around, will a Brita filter take care of this and a pitcher of water or installed on my faucet or some other kind of thing.

Sharon Lerner: A Brita filter will not granule, a system called GAC. I'm not going to get it right, granular activated carbon. I think I'm mangling that. Filters do work. It's not boilable away and people are right to think about finding alternate sources. I think they're right too, to be seeking, it's not the responsibility at all. It shouldn't be their responsibility to pay for it.

The problem to step back a bit is the water utilities are very much the middleman or the middle people here. I think in these cases, we don't know who the exact polluter is, who put the PFOA into the water, but we know who made it. That's because PFOA can be traceable and I believe in, I think in Middlesex and perhaps other places that we're talking about now, they have traced it to 3M the company that has been named in several of the lawsuits around this.

Brian Lehrer: Does that mean PFOA contaminating New Jersey made in New Jersey?

Sharon Lerner: Well, yes, there is a long history of PFOA in New Jersey. Some of it comes from firefighting [unintelligible 00:12:04]. Some of it comes from other products potentially, but there's also former DuPont plant called Chambers Works in deep water, which made PFOA for many years. There is a big PFOA contamination there, and that was DuPont and then [unintelligible 00:12:26], who they transferred to.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another call Mooc in Edison, you're on WNYC. Hi Mooc.

Mooc: Hi, Brian, I love the show and thank you to your guest Sharon for covering this issue. My parents live in Edison and we installed a filtration system last year, and I noticed that the carbon filter part of the system, it needs to be replaced despite the fact that it last 24 months. That was the first indicator to me that something was going wrong. Then I got this note in the mail that says that on the timeline they received a sample on August 2nd, that there was elevated levels.

On September 7th is when they actually found out about the sample. On the October 22nd, almost six months later is when they actually sent around the notice. I'm just really confused on this timeline of how it takes almost three months from a sample to be reported to actually being communicated to the people who drink the water. That's just my question on the timeline. Thank you so much for all the work, I appreciate the segment.

Brian Lehrer: Mooc, thank you very much. What do you want to say to that, Sharon?

Sharon Lerner: Honestly, I'm not familiar with the inner workings of why every step of this took so long. I hate to keep pulling back to the long view, but I began covering these chemicals in 2015 and came on your show to talk in part about New Jersey in 2015. The litigation that began in West Virginia was more than 20 years ago. It's like, which is to say that it's moving slowly and yet it's finally moving is the other way of looking at it.

I don't think it's helpful to the color, but in terms of the country, New Jersey is actually the leader. New Jersey has set this regulation, set it low at a protective level, did the science, so they're not relying on anyone else for the science, but they have actually on staff at NJDEP some scientists who are leading the country in terms of setting these things.

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Brian Lehrer: Then as a matter of response to Mooc's question, as a matter of response, what do you think the state of New Jersey or the particular towns or the particular counties or water company owes the public?

Sharon Lerner: Well, the public has the right to expect water that isn't going to poison them, that doesn't contain toxic chemicals. That is just the bottom line. Unfortunately, it keeps coming down and this responsibility keeps being dumped on the public. That is overarchingly the problem here, for sure. I guess for me the responsibility does, I have some sympathy for the water purveyors, the utilities, because this problem has been dumped on them.

Because I've spent a lot of time going through the documents of DuPont and 3M, the companies that originally made these chemicals, I just think it's worth noting, even though it's not going to be of any comfort, probably, to the caller or anyone else who has this chemical in their water-

Brian Lehrer: In the short run anyway.

Sharon Lerner: Let me just mention that 3M and DuPont, the major manufacturers of these chemicals were aware that they were getting out into the public and had been found in the blood of people, humans in the 1970s. That's more than 40 years ago. Of course one of the options would have been to stop making them, which is not the road that either company took at the time.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. They should have taken that road so they should be held accountable.

Sharon Lerner: It's like decades later and now, at that time you can see there was very low levels in the general public, but still in the general public. They were tracking the levels in their workers. If you had stopped at that time, you wouldn't have what we have now, which is massive contamination around the country.

Brian Lehrer: One more call. Let me get him one more call before we run out of time. Ryan in Woodbridge got the notice. Hi, Ryan. You're on WNYC.

Ryan: Hi, good hearing from you and this is a topic that's on our minds. We were using the regular tap water, running it through a Brita, figuring that makes it clean as it already was clean for coffee and everything. Since we got the notice, we started using bottled water because we don't want to wait a year and a half and keep taking in these PFOA for that period of time for them to fix the problem, which I think is about how long they said it would take.

Lastly, South Plainfield has a history of contamination. I'm not saying in a water, I'm sure, they try to separate it, but I know a guy who grew up there and about 25 years ago he had testicular cancer. I attributed [unintelligible 00:18:09] but now, maybe this is what it is.

Brian Lehrer: Ryan, thank you very much. Of course, it's hard to attribute one individual case of cancer to something in particular, but Sharon, if the activated carbon filter. I can say this, I really can, granular activated carbon is a type of filter that apparently people can buy and obviously check with your experts, folks, that might work on a household by household basis. Is there something in the short term, like a gigantic granular activated carbon filter that they can put on the water systems?

Sharon Lerner: Yes, there is and I assume that that or something close to it would be in the work. I assume that that's what they're saying when they talk about the year and a half timelines. I think that involves putting together that system on that level. That's my understanding.

Brian Lehrer: There we have to leave it with Sharon Lerner, investigative reporter at The Intercept. We will come back to the local ramifications of this story. Sharon, thank you very, very much.

Sharon Lerner: Thanks for having me.

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