What’s in Our Rain (and Snow)?

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Because they don’t break down in the environment, PFAS “forever chemicals” are making their way into drinking water, fertilizer, soil, and yes, even in our air. But how much PFAS is really flying around up in the sky? In this episode, what the rain and snow are telling us about PFAS pollution in the Upper Midwest—plus some information about new PFAS laws in Minnesota that could be a blueprint for Wisconsin.

Host:

Amy Barrilleaux

Guest:

Alexander Frie, Research and Fellowship Coordinator, Minnesota Sea Grant

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Transcript:

Amy Hello and welcome to the Defender, Wisconsin’s environmental podcast, I’m Amy Barrilleaux. The Defender is powered by Clean Wisconsin, your environmental voice since 1970. When I tell you the topic of this episode, you’re probably going to think it’s depressing or maybe even scary, but I promise there is reason for optimism. Researchers at the University of Minnesota have been testing our rain and snow in the upper Midwest to see if it contains PFAS. Those are the toxic forever chemicals that are still being manufactured by chemical companies and used in all kinds of consumer products, from air fryers and burger wrappers to couches and carpets. Because the chemicals don’t break down in the environment, they’ve been making their way into our lakes, rivers, streams, drinking water, fertilizer, soil, and yes, even in our air. But how much PFAS is really flying around up in the sky? In this episode, what the rain and snow are telling us about PFAS pollution. Plus some information about new PFAS laws in Minnesota that could be a blueprint for Wisconsin. That’s right now on The Defender. For two years, researchers at the University of Minnesota have been collecting rain and snow samples in the upper Midwest to figure out how much PFAS is falling from the skies. Joining me is Alex Frie, Research and Fellowship Coordinator with Minnesota Sea Grant, who led the project. Alex, thanks for being here.

Alex Yeah, thanks for having me, Amy, and to Clean Wisconsin for having me.

Amy First, I think when people, when they do think about PFAS and they might not always think about it, they might think about drinking water because there’s been a lot of attention that PFAS found in our drinking water and standards and filtration and things like that. What made you want to look at PFAS in our atmosphere and in the rain?

Alex Yeah, that’s a great question, because you’re right. Normally, we think about PFAS contamination at a single site, a discharge of PFAS-contamination area. But there’s actually quite a bit of evidence for PFAS contaminations in really remote regions, too. A lot lower levels than right next to a prime source. But there is evidence for PFAs contamination in the Antarctic, in the North Pole, South Pole, in really, remote lakes. And really, the only way that can happen is through atmospheric transport in that. PFAS than depositing out of the atmosphere. So we know that this is happening. We don’t always know the magnitude or how important it is. So it’s really important for us to look at it and understand how that PFAS is getting in the atmosphere and, importantly, how much is coming out and entering our ecosystems.

Amy You know, we talk a lot about PFAS, you know, the impact on your health or finding it in the atmosphere or finding in the water, but we don’t always talk about, it almost feels like it got there by magic, right? We don’t talk about hey, why is this here? Where is it coming from? We just talk about kind of like the end, like when it encounters us. So where in your mind is or are all these sort of, I guess, very small particles of PFAS coming from.

Alex Yeah, so, and I think particles and gasses, right? So some PFAS are actually volatile, so they can actually evaporate. So when we think, especially when we think about some of the PFAS that are getting more attention now that are shorter chain species, those, you know, have a potential to potentially evaporate into the atmosphere as well. And it’s kind of a mixed bag as to where it’s coming from. There’s definitely, there’s a lot of uncertainty in this space, but definitely, you know, manufacturers. Are kind of point source emitters. So if someone is producing PFAS compounds or they’re using them in a manufacturing process, there’s potential for that to end up in the atmosphere. They might be spraying PFAS on a metal plating thing. So you can imagine as you aerosolize it, it would then end up with the atmosphere and if you’re producing PFAs at scale, you may be emitting quantities of these PFAS compounds into the atmosphere as well. So that’s the, there’s a lot of uncertainty, I think, for some species. There is also a trend. So we know that kind of legacy PFAS that have the most well-established toxicity. We’re thinking like PFOS, PFOA, really a lot of regulatory scrutiny. Those have more or less been phased out, but there’s species that have come to replace them that are more likely to go into the atmosphere. They’re more likely be a little more volatile. And there’s kind of a phenomenon where we consider many of them precursors to these species that are more kind of long-lived in. Long-lived and what we call kind of terminal or legacy PFAS. So they go into the atmosphere, they can do a little bit of chemistry and they turn into things on varying chain length. So PFAS chain lengths really matter. So like, but things like PFOA or PFOS. So there’s like a phenomenon of environmental chemistry called regrettable substitution. And some of this could be explained by that word, where we’ve replaced some of these traditional PFAS with shorter different chemical compositions, but they’re still PFAS that are more likely to go into the atmosphere, more likely to transport in the atmosphere as we’ve moved away from the things that we know to be toxic. Because generally we think of kind of PFOA and PFOS being a little bit less volatile, a little less atmospheric present, but we still do see them in the rain still as well.

Amy So I wanna take a minute to kind of explain some of the science-y stuff that you’re talking about. You’re using this term species. Probably a lot of people don’t realize that PFAS is like, it’s like a big class of chemicals. And so there are thousands. I don’t think anybody really knows exactly how many types have been produced over the decades. And I guess they started out, you know, back in the forties with these, what you might call long chain PFAS. So that means the molecules longer. The PFOA, the PFOS, those ones that are well studied and are very toxic at potentially very low levels. And then when that started to be like, hey, you know, those stay in your body for a while because they are the longer chain and they’re kind of hurting people. The chemical industry was like, well, we’ll make some smaller ones, right? Is that what happened? They’re like, we will make some shorter chained ones and they won’t stay in you body as long. Is that kind of where we’re at right now?

Alex I think that’s an okay summary. I think whether or not that means that we get more exposure or not is kind of up for question. Those potential species are potentially less toxic even if they’re maybe more mobile as well. The jury’s still out a little bit about the product of that change, but one of the products is that many of those species are more mobile in the environment. And so we see them more places, I guess.

Amy So right, so those kind of smaller ones, I think they’re generally less studied because they’re newer and The thought is well, they won’t stay in your body as much but then at the same time we’re sort of Exposed to them in all kinds of places now Is that right?

Alex Yeah, I think that would be correct to say. And I would say that we also have this interesting phenomenon that’s happening now over the past decade or so where, like you said, there’s thousands of PFAS where we used to think about, you know, these traditional PFAS like PFOA, PFOS that are, you, know, just, you head group in a long fluorinated chain. And I know that’s really in the chemistry, but now the definition of PFAs, like, you know, the definition that Minnesota has adopted with its new Amara’s law definition that have been adopted in multiple kind of inner, like NGO spaces. Is like one fully fluorinated carbon, which is again, very technical, but means that all these other things that are pesticides, that are potentially pharmaceuticals, we would now count as PFAS as well too. So there’s kind of this new effect that we now are counting more things as PFAs too. And some of those we potentially see the atmosphere. So that’s a bit of a tangent there, but I think important to add here. That’s not what we’re focusing on here, but when we talk about kind of PFAS and the atmosphere, we do see a lot of these. You know, what I would call non-traditional PFAS that we now are thinking of in the PFAS space and now we’re regulating in the PFAS space as well, so.

Amy So when things get in the atmosphere, PFAS or other things, they have a tendency to fall down to the earth in rain. Did your study kind of look at the rain and what’s happening with that?

Alex Yeah, exactly. That’s kind of what we’ve focused on. So we worked with the National Atmospheric Deposition Program, which was established kind of in response to the acid rain kind of crisis in the 80s and 90s to monitor, originally to monitor nutrients and kind of existing in the rain. They’ve had a kind of, they’re actually based out of the Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene right now. And they have a precipitation monitoring program and have added PFAS into what they can do. So we work with them to add PFAS to two sites Minnesota and Michigan, I’ve been monitoring the kind of PFAS composition over in the rain and snow on a weekly basis. So kind of essentially it’s just a bucket that opens and closes when it rains. And then we say, well, there’s a person that goes to that bucket, takes that sample and mails it off to a lab once a week. And so we get this nice continuous data set of PFAs that is really novel. There’s been a few of these that are coming out in the past few years, but to have a data set in multiple sites, you know, continuous. Really shows us that there is kind of this, when we look at that data, there is PFAS there in the rain and snow, and it’s persistent. And the 100-some samples we would typically get over two years, 70 to 100 samples, depending on how much it rains over those two years. We didn’t have a single sample that didn’t some detectable level of PFAS. And one other thing that’s important to note here is the analytical methods are quite good now. So we can detect very, very, very low. Levels of PFAS, but the contamination is prevalent, and essentially ubiquitous. Every rain and snow sample that we sampled did have some level of PFAs in it.

Amy I mean, how did that, I guess, make you feel? Because when you’re a kid and you’re out in the snow and it’s fall and you like, oh, this is clean. You know, you eat it or whatever, make a snow cone out of it. Or, you know, you think of what falls from the sky as being pure. And I know you’re scientist and you probably don’t think that way anymore. But when you didn’t get one sample without at least a trace or ultra trace amount of PFAS chemical in it, what went through your mind?

Alex Yeah, no, I think that’s a great point. I think the idea that we think of the atmosphere as pure is something that is worth examining. And I do kind of remember when I was in graduate school, as a person that did a lot of atmospheric science, coming to the realization that there’s chemistry going on in the atmosphere. Lots of the things that we use in a day-to-day life, they do not stay in a liquid, in a solid. Many of them evaporate and they go up and they come back down. And so. I think there’s kind of a change in mindset there that is, you know, many of us should think about is the atmosphere is a contaminable space that many of these organic chemicals that we use, they go into the atmosphere and they’re there. As far as like this specific data set when thinking about the contamination levels. It wasn’t too surprising, given that what we know about how prevalent PFAS are, as well as how good the analytical methods are, that we have become really good over the past two decades at finding PFAS, and so it can mean like it’s a needle in a haystack and we can detect it. So that’s any time we talk about PFAS contamination, I think that’s important to keep in mind. Those lowest level of concentrations of samples that we found PFAS in. Likely it doesn’t have a lot of environmental impact or human impact there, but it’s still important to kind of understand, you know, in, you know how we understand the prevalence of PFAS contamination. So yeah, surprised, but not, but like understandable within the realm of how good the analytical chemistry is.

Amy So PFAS are famously known as forever chemicals, right, because the chemistry of the molecule makes it very, very, very difficult to break down. So as you’re measuring these chemicals in our atmosphere and our rain and our snow, knowing that we’re still manufacturing these chemicals all over the place and they’re used, I mean, they’re probably in the cushion of the chair I’m sitting on right now. They’re probably my shoes. I’m certainly in my water-resistant jackets. Does it feel like, hey, maybe people should, not just people, but maybe lawmakers, should start paying attention, any chemical manufacturers, that these chemicals that we’re putting in the atmosphere, you know, they’re going to be with us for easily thousands of years.

Alex Yeah, and yes, I think the short answer is yes. I think it’s very important to think about contamination in a holistic sense that when we do use these things for what are really useful purposes like your raincoat, like my PFAS, my raincoat almost has PFAS likely has PFAS in it too, that those things end up in the environment and they will exist, especially when we talk about these forever chemicals, they will exists in the environmental and they have potentially negative effects very long period of time. So it’s really important to think about that when we think of what we’re using and when in our products. So yes, yes, it’s important that we think about where PFAS go. And I will say that for our samples, we do see some concentrations actually in rain and snow that are above the Minnesota kind of health-based guidance for PFOA specifically. And that health-base guidance is some of the lowest in the country. So whether or not that will stay at that level, but if that, you know, is a… Value that bears out having toxic effects that low level could potentially mean that you have PFAS contamination that’s relevant to human health actually in the rain and snow. And so that’s a potentially interesting and impactful finding. And so if that’s true, then we potentially wanna regulate that to address that as well.

Amy So is it then not an exaggeration to say that we are surrounding ourselves with PFAS? Because if it’s in the atmosphere, it’s the rain, it in the snow, it is in our clothes, it’s our pots and pans, it’ in our, you know, couches, and in our drinking water to some extent because it’s extremely difficult to get it all out. Are we getting PFAS from almost every different… source when we breathe, when we eat, when we drink.

Alex Yeah, it’s not a stretch to say PFAS contamination is ubiquitous, it is everywhere. It is, like I said earlier, you find it in the Antarctic. You find it, I think if you have a big enough sample on the right instrument, you will find PFAS in almost every environment, every living being kind of on the planet. That is not an exaggeration. I think whether or not it matters for like a health or environmental impact context is another question, but yes, we all have PFAS in us, you know. And you can mitigate some of your own exposure through avoiding use of some PFAS-containing products or potentially regulating them out. But right now, there is PFAS. It’s in the rain, it’s in most waters, it’s in most soils at some level. So, yep, that is a correct statement that it’s pretty much everywhere.

Amy I think there’s… Probably two ways people are kind of taking in this information right now. One is, oh my gosh, I’m horrified, how can I protect myself? And the other is kind of like, well, I guess, I can’t worry about that, it’s over kind of thing. You know, it is too late to do anything about it if it’s in my air and it’s in my water. What’s your, I guess, reaction to that kind of overwhelmed? Feeling that people have that when they see and read your study and think well, okay, it’s there’s PFAS in my rain, I guess You know, I’ll Just look the other way because it’s too too awful to think about how can you kind of help people through that?

Alex Yeah, no, that’s a great question. I’d say that, you know, we have to think about the agency we have. I think both of those answers are the wrong answer. The like, we should panic in like, we’re all gonna die or you know we can’t do anything because the problem is too big. Neither of those are the right answer because there are spots that like where the impact is the greatest and we can mitigate that, right? You know, there are, you if, you know, if a state or a government chooses there’s regulatory options. So in Minnesota, we do see Amara’s law on this, you know they’re moving PFAS from a lot. If not all of consumer products in there. And there’s a lot of phase outs of a lot the specific PFAS there. So there are solutions that are being done. There’s also, you know, there’s mitigation in place. The places where PFAS has the most impact, you know are those places where there’s kind of that localized high level contamination. That is where you’ll see kind of the most acute impact. So that’s where, you now, we should be worried. Should we be concerned about PFAS kind of in the everywhere? We should be concerned about it, but. Should we panic about it? Maybe not, but we should probably work to resolve it and try to think about, you know, is this something, is this the world we want to see or is this what we want to use our agency to kind of change, right? It’s within our control to some level. And I know a lot of the PFAS is a big problem, but this kind of prevalent contamination doesn’t mean like the world is over either. Does that help, is that clear?

Amy I mean, I think, you know, I’ll ask you more about what we can do in a minute, but I did want to get back because, you’re over there in Minnesota, I’m here in Wisconsin, and we’re next door neighbors, but in the PeaceFast landscape, I thinks things are very different. You’ve got 3M there, and I think you’re mentioning some laws that I don’t really know about that Minnesota has to try to get a handle on. PFAS contamination that certainly Wisconsin does not have. So explain to me again, what is this law that you’re referring to, or what are the steps that Minnesota has taken to try to do some actual work to get PFAS out of our lives?

Alex I’ll preface this by saying I’m not a legal expert in this, but I’m like, loosely aware. So the law is called Amara’s Law, but it was passed two years ago. And the point is to phase out PFAS in Minnesota, essentially, for kind of non-avoidable uses. So looking at consumer products that have PFAS and saying, you really need to be using something else, especially in spaces like where kids are involved, like there’s a lot of focus on like child-facing products and really trying to phase … Have a plan for phasing PFAS out in most products in Minnesota. So that is an effort that’s being led by the Minnesota Police and Control Agency. It’s ongoing, but it potentially has a lot of impact on these exposures. So I do also think 3M has some phase-out plans for the PFAS in the manufacturing plants in Minnesota, so one nice thing that we hope to see through our work is if those 3M plants are, you know, important to… Atmospheric, PFAS that we’re seeing the atmosphere in our Minnesota sites, we have kind of future work planned that in the next few years that maybe we’ll see less showing the impact of those phase-outs as well, because we’re not sure at this point how important those different sources are. We hope to be as we move forward and I hope to build some arguments around there. But yeah, so Amara’s Law is the law in Minnesota. It kind of on. Like an interesting aspect of how Amara’s Law is, it has a really broad definition of PFAS. So again, there’s pesticides that potentially fall under it as well. And like what that will look like is an interesting discussion, but it’s really ongoing. And hopefully in the next few years, we’ll see a more or less complete phase out of PFAs in Minnesota. And you may want to fact check me on that because I’m 80% sure that’s accurate. So yeah. Yeah.

Amy Well, I know, yes, you’re not a policy expert on all the intricacies of that law. But I do think it’s important for people in Wisconsin to kind of hear what neighboring states are doing. And I know there’s a lot happening also in Michigan, so our two neighbors. It feels like we are, as a world, and certainly as a nation, producing more PFAS, not less. I went to buy some, like a bedspread the other day, and it was labeled. Water-resistant, and I’m going, well, this is a grown-up bedspread. It’s not for a crib. Why are you making this resistant? You know, I feel like PFAS is in almost everything. So what I guess goes through your mind or when you see on one hand people are like very upset about chemicals and PFAS in our environment and on the other hand, everywhere you look something new is coming out with PFAS. Is it kind of frustrating?

Alex I guess I think of myself as a pragmatist a little bit. I’d say frustration is not, as a person who is trained as an environmental chemist, you see chemicals everywhere, right? And you start to understand that everything we use, every single piece of clothing, every single product has something in it that is a chemical there too. So I’d says frustrating is not the right word. I think because we know that some of these things are toxic, hopefully we’re seeing those phased out, PFAS are really useful, right. That’s why we see them in the products that we do see. I do think we’re moving towards, you know, consumer product phase-outs and we see them in lots of different states are requiring them now. So like your exposure as an individual, my exposure individual, I think I’m optimistic that we’ll see reductions over the next few decades. I think that’s the trajectory. There’s enough public concern, you know, and I’d say almost bipartisan concern around PFAS. You know, there’s work being done to kind of reduce PFAS exposures. I’m optimistic over the long term that some of those things that we can maybe think of as maybe unnecessary uses of PFAS are going to be less common in the next decade or two. So I’m optimist there.

Amy This is the most optimistic conversation I have ever had on PFAS. So I really appreciate your optimism.

Alex I’m an optimist in general, I think, so hopefully it’s well placed.

Amy Yeah, especially, I think, when you’re close to something. When you’re research, we’re in the Great Lakes region. Largest freshwater system in the world is here. We have a lot to protect. To kind of see some warning signs of danger can be frightening. Yeah.

Alex Hopefully it’s researched like you.

Amy Oh, go ahead.

Alex That does bring up a good point. So I think back to where your question of why are we doing this? Like Minnesota Sea Grant specifically like we focus on like great lakes issues and like you know when we think about water in the Great Lakes specifically Lake Superior a lot of that water comes in through the atmosphere. Over half of the water in Lake Superior comes in as rain so that happens over the lake before it doesn’t hit ground before it ends up in the lake. So when we thinking about contamination to our large lakes this kind of the composition of the atmosphere, the composition in the rain and snow really matters. And that is one of our kind of major motivations as well to understand the contamination to those large lakes that’s coming through the atmosphere.

Amy And I’ve been fortunate enough to see a beautiful rainstorm over Lake Superior. I know exactly what you’re saying. I think people in Wisconsin, we love our Great Lakes. We don’t always think about them necessarily and how to protect them or how unique and special they are. So is there any, you’ve come out with this research, you’re going to be presenting it. What are, I guess, the next steps after that?

Alex Yeah, for us, we’re gonna kind of continue. So our research really has three prongs. The first is kind of this traditional analysis of looking at what we would call, high confidence, traditional PFAS. We’re also doing some more exploratory work to understand that those thousands of compounds that we know exist, to look at, to see, maybe at a little bit lower confidence, use some nice animal chemistry tools to explore which ones are in rain and snow and maybe which ones aren’t in our current methods, we should explain. And then we’re also doing. Kind of atmospheric modeling as well. So looking backwards to figure out, if we see this in the rain and snow at a given place, can we look at where those air masses come from? So, looking at the history like that, just like you think a forecast, but it’s backwards, a backwards forecast. And so we can do that for when we see these chemicals in this bucket. And if we sample there for a long time, we can start to say something about where those chemicals are coming from, hopefully. And we’re actually excited to say, this summer we’re starting another three-year project really focused on Minnesota. So the project we’re just finishing up is focused to cut down on the whole region. But over the next three years, a few years we’ll have seven different sites across Minnesota that we’re gonna sample PFAS in. So hopefully we’ll see this. So if we have like phase-outs from Amara’s law, we have phase-out that are happening at 3M plants that will see reductions in chemical and PFAS pollution in the rain and snow in Minnesota and potentially cleaner waters in Minnesota over the three years. So that’s one thing we’re hoping.

Amy That’s wonderful, and you have, I mean it’s a first to make me feel optimistic about PFAS, so I really appreciate it. Alexander Freeh, researcher with the University of Minnesota. Thank you so much for being here and explaining a really complicated but important topic. I appreciate it

Alex Thank you, Amy, for having me.

Amy And thank you for listening to The Defender. For more information on Amara’s Law in Minnesota, that’s the law that targets PFAS in consumer products, check out the show notes or log onto cleanwisconsin.org. Plus we have plenty of links to a lot more information on the health harms and costs of PFAS and plenty of previous episodes linked on this critical topic. Again, just check the shownotes. And if you have something you want me to talk about or a comment on the show, send me an email podcast at cleanwisconson.org Remember to rate and review the show on your favorite podcast streaming platform because it helps other people find us. I also want to give a shout out to our new listeners on civic radio news and talk stations across the state. Welcome to the conversation. I’m Amy Barrilleaux. Talk to you later.