Michigan has more PFAS sites than other states. There’s a reason.

The most recent national data shows the expanding scope of PFAS across the US: 712 confirmed sites in 49 states, up by 600 locations in one year.

Drilling down into those sites yields the breadth of the problem: About 200 are at Department of Defense sites. Some are high-profile manufacturing locations, while some are at the center of big-dollar settlements after litigation. And a few inspire still more questions, like a New Mexico farm where contaminated cows were euthanized because of food supply contamination fears.

But a geographical mapping also pinpoints Michigan as the state with the most identified locations affected by PFAS contamination.

That’s not accidental, state officials said.

“We’ve got a lot of locations that have been discovered in the state because we’ve been looking,” said Liesl Clark, director of Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy.

That statewide search started in 2018, generating some of the best state-level PFAS data in the US after Michigan tested all public drinking water supplies, all schools, public industrial wastewater discharges and many lakes and streams.

“We’ve taken the most comprehensive approach of any state in the country,” said Steve Sliver, who leads the Michigan PFAS Action and Response Team. The approach started with a specific strategy: “going to sites where we know or suspect they have PFAS,” he said, such as landfills, military installations and automotive suppliers that historically have used the chemicals.

Results showed that 90 percent of Michigan’s public water supplies had no PFAS, while two water supplies showed PFAS higher than federal guidelines — the city of Parchment and Robinson Elementary School, near Grand Haven. Alternative drinking water supplies also have been offered in many other situations, including where there is expanding plumes in groundwater.

The effort continues as the search expands into newer media – like air emissions – and considers multiple types of PFAS beyond PFOS and PFOA, the two with existing groundwater and surface water standards. Within a year, Michigan expects to have enforceable drinking water standards for multiple types of PFAS among other regulatory changes that, officials said, increase protections for residents.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Authority says PFAS are persistent in the environment, don’t break down in the human body and present several adverse health risks. PFOA and PFOS are the most-studied and scientists are accelerating research on the class of chemicals, many of which are flowing into water sources with no publicly available information on their health risks to people and the environment.

All of the progress toward identifying PFAS risks in Michigan follows what some have considered an initial slow-moving PFAS response in the state and other high-profile regional drinking water issues.

“Michigan and the Great Lakes states have been sort of the focal point of a lot of drinking water crises in last couple of years,” said Laura Rubin of the Great Lakes Coalition, a Michigan-based nonprofit focused on preserving shoreline.

After watching the lead crisis in Flint drinking water and toxic algae blooms that shut down water delivery in Toledo, Michigan’s PFAS response accelerated in late 2017 when the chemicals were found to be affecting drinking water across 25 square miles in the Rockford area.

The state already was under fire after a Flint pediatrician pushed for analysis that confirmed suspicions of lead poisoning among city water customers. Fallout from that lead to discovery that public officials had failed to follow safety steps during a switch in water systems, then ignored residents’ concerns that the water may have been unsafe.

The high contamination in the communities north of Grand Rapids – stemming from historic tannery waste generated by Wolverine World Wide – helped to connect dots in other areas. There was the ongoing, decades-long cleanup in Oscoda, where the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base was ground zero for high contamination in surface water and an expanding plume. The first fish consumption advisory in the state came in May 2012 when the fish at Clark’s Marsh in Oscoda tested at record-high levels.

And there were test results released by the EPA in 2016 that showed PFAS in public drinking water supplies in Plainfield Township and Ann Arbor.

“(In Michigan), we are on hyper awareness or hyper alert” when it comes to water issues today, Rubin said. “I don’t think that level of attention and focus is the same outside of the Great Lakes.”

But even after the state’s PFAS effort launched under then-Gov. Rick Snyder, signs posted to delays in recognizing public health risks for the chemicals. One state report warning about PFAS had been ignored since 2012. In another instance, one state employee’s urging to test more homes near Rockford went unheeded for months; during that time, families were drinking extremely high levels of the chemicals. A toddler was discovered to have PFAS blood levels of 484,000 parts per trillion, compared to EPA health advisory levels of 70-ppt.

Today, the testing is forging ahead at full-speed. As of late August, Michigan identified nearly 100 PFAS contamination sites. Among the findings during that process: The municipal water system in Parchment, near Kalamazoo, exceeded EPA guidelines, prompting an emergency municipal shutdown.

More are PFAS sites likely to come, officials said, as the search continues and expands. One example of that is how Michigan is initiating a soil study to both find locations where PFAS is in dirt. Initial testing of areas where contaminated biosolids were spread on farm fields before 2018 already shows some “hits” for PFOS and other chemicals in the per- and poly-fluorocarbon family, but the state still is determining with limited research available just what the numbers mean.

“It will probably take 2-3 years to get a handle on that,” Sliver said. “Then more questions come up, like how do you remediate?”

Getting to answers on cleanup and further limiting people’s exposure in Michigan became the ultimate goal as the MPART effort advanced from testing public drinking water to exploring multiple routes for the chemicals.

“Otherwise,” Sliver said, “we’re just moving PFAS from one media to the next. That’s a cycle we’re doing everything to break.”

Yet that is taking place while most other states are just beginning to recognize the potential for a PFAS problem. Others, which may already have identified high-PFAS readings in drinking water, are struggling with what to do next.

Some states also react with amazement to Michigan’s deployment toward PFAS. The $50 million budget this year – which is going in part toward municipal grants to off-set public costs of mitigation – and staffing of up to 200 people send signals of its priority to the state. That staff is dedicated to PFAS, but also are employees in various departments – like public health and agriculture offices – who end up re-directed to issues involving the chemicals.

That doesn’t come without a cost, Clark said.

“(The) people who spend most of their time dealing with PFAS work aren’t doing the other things on their agenda,” Clark said.

Yet it also reflects the state’s priority to identify and contain PFAS.

Several states have contacted Michigan officials this year for information on the state’s PFAS approach. They include Wisconsin and Pennsylvania officials, in addition to others concerned about contamination.

“We frequently talk to environmental organizations … because they’re trying to figure this out, too,” said Jon Russell, a water resources division manager at EGLE. “In general, they’re a year or two behind us. They’re interested in what we’re doing, and we want to share what we find.”

He continued: “I expect lots of other states will be going down in this path (of widespread testing).”

That’s important, PFAS activists say, because of the pervasiveness of the “forever chemicals” in the environment, including drinking water supplies. Michigan isn’t alone with a manufacturing heritage that resulted in much of its contamination, and states with more robust military presence also are likely to find significant presence of the toxins.

It’s likely everywhere,” said Rob Bilott, a Cincinnati-based attorney who led the PFAS litigation in Parkersburg, West Virginia, against chemical-maker DuPont.

During an interview in the spring, he said that sampling efforts in Michigan and New Jersey lead the way, but others will find it when they look.

“We need to first understand where it is and recognize that we're dealing with something that is a nationally occurring problem,” Bilott said. “There's been discussion about, well, it's not being found in enough water supplies to make it a national issue. I think that's inaccurate. I think a lot of that has to do with detection levels, whether we're even using the right detection reporting levels, but this is a national issue.”

As other states ramp up PFAS detection, Michigan officials said residents can expect to see more contamination sites added to the map.

“It’s not something you want to be a leader in,” Clark said of the search for PFAS, “but it’s something we can rightfully be proud of the investigative structure that we’ve used and the collaborative structure that we’ve used.”

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