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Rainwater Is No Longer Safe to Drink, Study Says

Even the most remote locations on Earth have rainfall that contains dangerous human-made plastic chemicals.

By Manasee Wagh
Popular Mechanics
Aug 10, 2022

Excerpt:

“Based on the latest U.S. guidelines for PFOA in drinking water, rainwater everywhere would be judged unsafe to drink. Although in the industrial world we don’t often drink rainwater, many people around the world expect it to be safe to drink and it supplies many of our drinking water sources,” Ian Cousins, a professor at Stockholm University’s Department of Environmental Science, and the lead author of the study, says in a news release.

There are thousands of different PFAS substances floating around. The study compared the levels of four common forms (PFOS, PFOA, PFHxS, and PFNA) in various sources: rainwater, soils, and surface waters such as streams, lakes, and oceans. They found that levels of at least two forms of PFAS in rainwater, PFOA and PFOS, “often greatly exceed” the safe levels in drinking water, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) advises. Levels of the chemicals also exceed environmental protection agencies’ standards in different parts of the world, too.

Depending on the type of PFAS, maximum safe levels according to the EPA range from 0.004 parts per trillion (ppt) for PFOA to 2,000 ppt for PFBS (another form of the PFAS chemical, which the study didn’t focus on). While the idea of imbibing any plastic is abhorrent, when the human body exceeds safe limits, it can lead to deleterious affects throughout the body, impacting the immune system, cardiovascular system, fertility, and child development to name a few physiological consequences. It can also suppress children’s response to vaccines, making them less effective. There’s evidence that PFOA can likely cause cancer in humans, according to the EPA.

Read the complete article here.