Mark Ruffalo wants you to think about PFAS. Here’s how the chemicals are affecting NC
Just like the real-life character he plays on-screen, actor Mark Ruffalo is taking on companies that create the substances known as “forever chemicals,” including GenX, PFOA and PFOS.
Ruffalo has spent the last two days touring North Carolina communities that are impacted by forever chemical contamination, including a showing of “Dark Waters” at Wilmington’s Thalian Hall and a visit to Pittsboro. Wilmington’s contamination is coming from Chemours’ plant near the Bladen and Cumberland county lines, while researchers are still investigating the source of Pittsboro’s.
During a press conference Wednesday at the N.C. General Assembly Building, Ruffalo was joined by legislators and community members to call for action against Chemours and DuPont, including legislation that advocates say would better protect the public against the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) found in their drinking water.
“We are the richest country in the world, and we can’t rely on this,” Ruffalo said, holding up a jug of water. “This is poisoning us. It’s colorless, it’s odorless, and we don’t know what the effects are on our bodies and our families for decades to come, and it’s been going on and on and now it’s time to stop.”
DuPont told the EPA it would begin making GenX at the Fayetteville Works plant in 2009, but it had been making its way into the Cape Fear River for decades prior, the by-product of another product line, according to one of the plant’s environmental officials.
Emily Donovan, a Leland mother who is a cofounder of the grassroots organization Clean Cape Fear, called for PFAS chemicals to be regulated as a class, referencing the compounds’ “forever chemicals” nickname. Donovan cited one study that found four newly identified PFAS chemicals in the blood of Wilmington residents.
“They’re forever for a reason, they bioaccumulate, they don’t break down, they live forever. The (acronym) I give to other moms is they’re PFASs, I call them Permanently Freakish Altering Stuff,” Donovan said.
Jasmine Ferguson, a health wellness instructor in Cumberland County, called for Chemours to provide more drinking water for families and asked for the public to consider children who are using the water.
“We’ve been washing this under the rug and our children are brushing their teeth with this water, they’re eating with this water. A lot of single parents don’t get to come home right after school so they’re popping open noodles and using this water,” Ferguson said, stressing the struggles of families in Cumberland County’s Gray’s Creek area.
NC General Assembly and PFAS
Rep. Robert Reives, who represents Durham and Chatham County, spoke about the effects of PFAS contamination on his community. He was joined by Rep. Pricey Harrison and Sen. Harper Peterson.
“We don’t even really know what we don’t know because there’s so many in this chemical family, so many of these chemicals that we’re exposed to, and while we may have a safe level from one chemical, we don’t really know what it means when it’s combined with another chemical, particularly those that aren’t regulated, and there are thousands in the PFAS family alone,” said Harrison, a Greensboro Democrat.
Greensboro is building a granular activated carbon system at its Mitchell Water Treatment Plant to remove PFAS, a project that carries an estimated price tag of $31 million, according to WFMY.
Harrison called for more funding to the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality and the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services to help regulate the chemicals and decide the levels at which they are safe.
“This is not a partisan issue, this is a public health issue,” Harrison said. “I would describe it as a public health emergency.”
In a prepared statement Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Norm Sanderson’s office touted the actions the state has taken on PFAS, including appropriating funds so that the N.C. Policy Collaboratory could test the state’s drinking water for the presence of PFAS, purchasing a new mass spectrometer for DEQ and authorizing DEQ to require anyone who contaminates a private well with PFAS to replace that water supply.
“North Carolina’s state government collaboration with its best-in-class university system to address PFAS contamination and research has made the state a nationwide model,” the statement said.
Sen. Harper Peterson, a Wilmington Democrat, announced his plan when the General Assembly returns to introduce local legislation that would purchase three reverse osmosis filtration stations for each of New Hanover County’s 42 schools.
“It would be nice to have Chemours pay for this, and we will seek appropriation from Chemours,” Peterson said.
“Dark Waters” in Wilmington
At a sold-out showing of “Dark Waters” in Wilmington’s Thalian Hall on Tuesday, Ruffalo spoke about the power of story and how reading a New York Times Magazine profile of Rob Bilott had compelled him to make a movie about the Cincinnati-based lawyer’s battle against DuPont. Ruffalo stars as Bilott in the film, which shows how the attorney went from defending chemical companies to facing off against DuPont and proving that the company failed to come forward with its knowledge about the health risks of C8, instead using it in household items ranging from Teflon-coated pans to stain-resistant carpets.
“I feel like we’ve lost our connection to each other, and the only way that I know how to reinstate that connection is through storytelling,” Ruffalo said. “It (Parkersburg) was a community that is not my community. It’s a conservative community, churchgoing folks and the one thing that I really believe is water transcends ideology and political bounds, and so does storytelling. ... We were all poisoned, and none of us had a choice about it.”
The C8 Science Panel, formed as a result of the class action settlement between Bilott’s clients and DuPont, found probable links between exposure to C8 and six conditions, including high cholesterol, kidney cancer, pregnancy-induced hypertension, testicular cancer, thyroid disease and ulcerative colitis.
In Wilmington, drinking water was for decades contaminated with GenX, a short-chain perfluorinated compound that DuPont and then spin-off company Chemours would ultimately use to replace C8. Residents there have been left to wonder if their own health conditions weren’t caused or exacerbated by drinking water laced with PFAS.
A 2019 study from N.C. State University found that a 2015 sample of water taken near the intake used by Wilmington-area utilities contained 130,000 parts per trillion of PFAS, a number lead researcher Detlef Knappe called “incredibly high.” There is virtually no publicly available health information for many of the the PFAS chemicals contained in that study.
Tuesday night, Kara Kenan of Leland recounted how she found a lump on her left breast two weeks after marrying her husband. She talked about how chemotherapy resulted in hair loss and yellow fluid running from her nose. And she talked about how, since undergoing treatment, her gall bladder has failed and she’s developed hyperthyroidism.
After her own diagnosis, Kenan’s parents, who also lives in Brunswick County, had their own. Her father was diagnosed with leukemia and aggressive bladder cancer, while her mother was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder.
Kenan acknowledged that it’s impossible to link any one case of cancer with PFAS exposure, but said, “It is really hard to ignore what is going on in our environment and how quickly that affected all of us.”
This reporting is financially supported by Report for America/GroundTruth Project and The North Carolina Local News Lab Fund, a component fund of the North Carolina Community Foundation. The News & Observer maintains full editorial control of the work. To support the future of this reporting, subscribe or donate.
This story was originally published February 20, 2020 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Mark Ruffalo wants you to think about PFAS. Here’s how the chemicals are affecting NC."