FRESHWATER FISH

nation’s first PFAS drinking water standards, which would limit contamination from six types of chemicals, with levels for the two most common compounds, PFOA and PFOS, set at 4 parts per trillion.

But the EWG researchers found that one serving of fish can be equivalent to a month’s worth of drinking water contaminated with 48 parts per trillion of PFOS.

Store-bought fish caught in the ocean, like imported Atlantic salmon and canned chunk tuna, appear to have lower PFAS levels, according to FDA research.

A biomonitoring project focused on the San Francisco Bay Area’s Asian and Pacific Islander community measured PFAS levels in the blood and found higher amounts of the compounds compared with national levels. The researchers also surveyed participants about their fish consumption and found that 56% of those who ate locally caught fish did so at least once a month.

Eating a fish’s fillet is often recommended, as it accumulates fewer chemicals than organs or eggs, but many participants reported eating other parts of the fish, too.

California is one of many states with no fish consumption advisories in place for PFAS. Jay Davis, senior scientist at the San Francisco Estuary Institute, said that’s in part because of “limited monitoring dollars” and a priority on legacy chemicals like PCBs as well as mercury left over in particularly high concentrations from gold and mercury mining.

Wesley Smith, a senior toxicologist with California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, said the state is reviewing the latest scientific literature but needs more data to develop an advisory that is “neither too restrictive nor too permissive.”

States like New Hampshire, Washington, Maine, and New Jersey have some of the most protective guidance, while other states, such as Maryland and Michigan, lag when it comes to designating fish unsafe to eat.

Advisory levels for atrisk groups – such as children and women of childbearing age – are usually lower, while “do not eat” thresholds for the general population range from

25.7 parts per billion in New Hampshire to 300 ppb in Michigan, 408 ppb in Maryland, and 800 ppb in Alabama.

“That’s wicked outdated to have levels that high and consider that safe for folks to eat,” said Kopec, the University of Maine researcher.

Though it is no longer made in the U.S., PFOS remains the most commonly found – and tested for – PFAS chemical in fish today.

The primary maker of PFOS, 3M, announced it would begin phasing the chemical out in 2000.

This year, the company said it would pay at least $10.3 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by public water system operators. But in July, attorneys general from 22 states asked the court to reject the settlement, saying it was insufficient to cover the damages.

The military first documented health concerns surrounding PFAS chemicals in the 1970s yet continued to use firefighting foam made with them. Mandated by Congress, the Defense Department was required to stop buying retardant containing PFAS by Oct. 1 and phase it out altogether by 2024. A recently published study linked testicular cancer among military personnel to PFOS.

Pat Elder, an activist and director of the environmental advocacy group Military Poisons, has tested water for PFAS up and down the East Coast, including in Piscataway Creek, which drains from Joint Base Andrews, the home of Air Force One.

In 2021, after testing fish from Piscataway Creek, Maryland officials released the state’s sole PFAS fish consumption advisory to date. But Elder worries Maryland has not gone far enough to protect its residents.

“People eat the fish from this creek, and it creates an acute health hazard that no one seems to be paying attention to,” Elder said.

Since then, Maryland’s Department of the Environment

has conducted more fish monitoring in water bodies near potential PFAS sources, as well as at spots regularly used by subsistence anglers, said spokesperson Jay Apperson. He added that the state plans to put out more advisories based on the results, though declined to give a timeline or share the locations.

Part of the challenge of getting the word out and setting location-specific consumption advisories is that contamination levels vary significantly from lake to lake, as well as species to species, said Brandon Reid, a toxicologist and the manager of Michigan’s Eat Safe Fish program.

Michigan set its screening values for fish consumption advisories in 2014, and the state is in the process of updating them within the next year, Reid said.

But to see the chemicals dip to healthier levels, the pollution needs to stop, too. There is hope: Andrews, the EWG researcher, compared EPA fish sample data from five years apart and found about a 30% drop on average in PFAS contamination.

Bloom has watched this cycle happen in the Huron River in southeastern Michigan, where PFAS chemicals upstream seeped into the water from a chrome plating facility. While the levels of PFAS in the water have slowly gone down, the chemicals remain, she said.

“It’s very, very hard to completely clean up the entire river,” Bloom said. “If we don’t tackle it at the source, we’re going to just keep having to spend taxpayer money to clean it up and deal with fish advisories.”

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THAT’S WICKED OUTDATED TO HAVE LEVELS THAT HIGH AND CONSIDER THAT SAFE FOR FOLKS TO EAT.

Dianne Kopec, a researcher and faculty fellow at the University of Maine