PFAS, also known as forever chemicals, are ubiquitous. They’re found everywhere from the Arctic to Antarctica That’s according to Scott Belcher. He’s an endocrine toxicologist at North Carolina State University, where he studies the effects of these chemicals on wildlife.
WFDD’s Paul Garber spoke with Belcher about his work. He begins by explaining why alligators in the Cape Fear River basin are important indicators of the potential health impacts of PFAS on humans.
"They have been in this water since the very beginning of that contamination in the 1980s," he says. "We've seen animals that were recently born all the way up to probably 60 to 70 years old here in North Carolina. They have a very finely tuned immune system alligators, because of the environment that they live in, because of their social interactions that require rapid healing, for example the interactions that could cause a loss of a limb. And you can imagine in that kind of swampy environment, that there's lots of bacteria and lots of other things. So it's really super robust. We hypothesized that that part of the immune system would be more sensitive than say, trying to follow human populations."
Interview highlights:
On what can be learned from the alligators in the study:
"We were looking at general health effects and started to notice immune changes that were very similar to human lupus. Lupus is an autoimmune disease, where essentially through a series of events, leads to your own immune system attacking your own cells. That really led us to the conclusion that these animals were having autoimmune impacts related to these higher concentrations of PFAS."
On the potential adverse impact of PFAS on humans:
"Probably the most dramatic are the strong associations with cancers, testicular cancer, renal cancer, etc. The whole body of data is showing that these chemicals are what we call 'systemically toxic,' that is, they are toxic to many organs throughout the body. It's not just liver effects and kidney effects. And many of these we have little understanding of. The other really important point is it's becoming very, very clear that PFAS exposure impacts the fetus and newborns. One really good example has come from much data from Megan Romano's lab at Dartmouth, looking at human birth cohorts that show the duration of breastfeeding, for example, is shortened greatly by PFAS exposure. That leads to a whole body of evidence that we know how the health benefits of breastfeeding are important to both mom and newborn."
On whether these human impacts are real or hypothetical:
"All the things that I have discussed, all the health of it, we have very strong data. Every PFAS that has been tested adequately has been found to be toxic. I do believe that there needs to be a stronger commitment from our governments and leaders to really focus on remediating this in a way that is fair and just to the consumer, rather than putting the burden on the wastewater and public water utilities to pay for the mess that has been made through manufacturers."