feature
Protecting Communities from
Chemicals of Concern
by Nancy Maddox, MPH, writer
Hoosick Falls (population 3,600) is a rural river-bend
village in upstate New York, about five miles from
Vermont. Norman Rockwell and Grandma Moses both
lived nearby, in a landscape adorned with rolling hills
and the flowing waters of the Walloom and Hoosic rivers.
Once upon a time, children flew down snowy village
slopes on cast-off sheets of Teflon TM from the old, local
Honeywell plant, according to the New York Times.
But that was years ago. Long before Michael Hickey’s
father died of kidney cancer in 2013. Before Hickey tested
his widowed mother’s tap water for the perfluorinated
compounds (PFCs) once used to make Teflon TM here.
Before the test results came back positive, with levels
of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) spiked above the US
Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) “health advisory
level” for drinking water—now set at 70 parts per trillion
(ppt) PFOA and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) combined.
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Fall 2017 LAB MATTERS
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