Soil & PFAS
“Forever chemicals” are being found in pesticides.
Soil, like air and water are truly CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE to all living creatures, including we the humans. I am making this Topics post to alert constituents, council colleagues and staff about the importance of Cottonwood Heights policies and educational outreach to protect a precious resource — soil, the microbes that live in soil and the roll it plays in Nature’s holistic scheme.
According to the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment (UPHE), PFAS (Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), also known as forever chemicals, are being found in pesticides:
“Pesticides are widely used in our state and across the nation. While they are a health concern in and of themselves, here’s our concern about the recent findings of PFAS in pesticides. A few months ago, the CDC made an unprecedented national recommendation that physicians consider testing their patients’ blood for PFAS or “forever” chemicals. That they have never made any such recommendation for any other toxic chemicals speaks volumes about their unprecedented danger.
Because of the extreme health hazard they represent, we call on the state of Utah to follow the examples of the states of Maine and Minnesota, and require testing of all pesticides in the state for PFAS compounds and prohibit the use of any pesticides that are contaminated with these chemicals.
Despite the EPA’s adopted, extremely strict drinking water standards on forever chemicals, a complete disconnect with those standards has emerged within the EPA chemical division with their recent claim that their pesticide testing did not reveal any PFAS compounds. This contradicts independent research which has found nearly one third of active ingredients approved by EPA in the last ten years are PFAS. Other research has found that 70% of pesticides introduced to the marketplace since 2015 quality as forever chemicals.
Virtually all of us have PFAS in our blood, including newborns, and they have been linked to 55 different diseases,including cancer and a long list of other diseases that involve immunosuppression, endocrine disruption, impaired fetal development, developmental delays in children, and reproductive toxicity. They are probably the most toxic industrial chemicals produced, and should be phased out entirely.”