The negative health impacts from contamination by so called “forever chemicals” in drinking water costs the contiguous U.S. at least $8 billion a year in social costs, a University of Arizona-led study has found.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, builds on previous research into how PFAS – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – can negatively impact health when the chemicals contaminate drinking water. The research team studied all births in New Hampshire from 2010-2019, focusing on mothers living near PFAS-contaminated sites.
The research shows that mothers receiving water from wells that are “downstream” (in groundwater terms) of PFAS-contaminated sites, as opposed to comparable mothers receiving water from “upstream” wells, had higher first-year infant mortality, more preterm births (including more births before even 28 weeks), and more births with infants weighing less than 5.5 pounds (including more births with weights less than even 2.2 pounds). These findings build on earlier laboratory and public health research but offer new evidence from real-world exposure across a large population.
Extrapolating to the contiguous U.S., PFAS contamination imposes costs of at least $8 billion on the babies born each year, which encompasses medical care, long-term health impacts and reduced lifetime earnings. The results indicate that the potential health benefits of PFAS cleanup and regulation may be substantial.
“If we compare costs we’re finding versus the cost of cleaning up PFAS, the answers are obvious,” said study coauthor Derek Lemoine, a professor of economics and director of graduate studies in the U of A Eller College of Management. “Removing PFAS from drinking water not only results in drastically improved health outcomes. It also produces a significant long-term economic benefit.”
Lemoine and fellow Eller economics professor Ashley Langer collaborated on the research with Bo Guo, an associate professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences, in the College of Science, after meeting at an event hosted by the Arizona Institute for Resilience to foster collaborative research across disparate fields of study. Lemoine and Langer took an immediate interest in Guo’s years-long research into PFAS, while Guo was fascinated by the economists’ research into long-term health and economic impacts.
Eller economics alumnus Robert Baluja and former AIR-funded postdoctoral researcher Wesley Howden also contributed to the study.
PFAS were originally developed to make protective coatings for goods to resist heat, oil and water, and are used in a range of products and in firefighting activities. They earned the label “forever chemicals” because they take much longer to break down naturally in the environment. Researchers have long suspected that exposure to PFAS poses health risks, especially to infants, who can suffer from low birth weight or even die from PFAS exposure via their pregnant mothers. But prior work had not found a way to make PFAS exposure effectively random.
“We found really substantial impacts on infant health, which expanded on what others before us had found,” Langer said. “What we then do is calculate how these negative birth outcomes follow these children throughout their lives. The numbers we found represent the lowest end of the economic impact – we suspect it is even more.”
The U of A study focuses on two “long-chain” PFAS – PFOA and PFOS – that are no longer manufactured in the U.S. but remain in soils and therefore are still percolating into groundwater.
“Whatever PFAS we see in groundwater is only a tiny fraction of the PFAS that has been dumped in the environment,” Guo said. “The majority of PFAS is still in the soil and migrating downward.”
The authors highlight opportunities for future research, including understanding the effects of newer PFAS and the role of long-term exposure. They also note that activated carbon filters, whether used by water utilities or installed in homes, can remove these long-chain PFAS from drinking water.
“These chemicals may be everywhere, but we still find that drinking water matters for pregnant women. Installing and maintaining home water filters could be prudent for them,” Lemoine said.
