Mike Wolanin | The Republic People fish from the exposed low head dam on East Fork White River near the Third Street bridge in Columbus, Ind., Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023. The old Columbus Municipal Landfill was located in the wooded area across the river. The landfill is an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund Site.
Fish caught in rivers in Bartholomew County contain significantly higher levels of toxic “forever chemicals” linked to cancer and other illnesses than samples of water from a municipal well that city officials recently shut down.
Routine testing of fish in the Driftwood River and East Fork White River in Bartholomew County over the past several years has found concentrations of PFOS at levels that far exceed current federal health guidelines and proposed limits for drinking water, according to results that state regulators reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
PFOS — or perfluorooctanesulfonic acid — belongs to a cluster of industrial chemicals called PFAS that are associated with a variety of serious health conditions and have been used in products ranging from cookware to carpets and firefighting foams and consumer products since the 1940s, according to the EPA.
Research suggests exposure to certain levels of PFAS can lead to reproductive effects in humans, developmental delays, increased risks for certain cancers, elevated cholesterol levels and weakening of the immune system, according to the EPA.
The chemicals are sometimes called “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down naturally in the environment — or do so slowly — and can remain in a person’s blood indefinitely. U.S. manufacturers have voluntarily phased out compounds such as PFAS, though there still are a limited number of ongoing uses for them.
Testing by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management has found PFOS in tissue samples of seven species of fish in two Bartholomew County rivers since 2017, when state regulators added the chemical to the list of substances they test for, federal records show.
Samples of a smallmouth bass taken in 2017 near the intersection of Lowell Road and County Road 325W contained concentrations of PFOS as high as 15,600 parts per trillion, according to the EPA.
That same year, samples of fish taken from East Fork White River just north of the bridge on East County Road 800S contained PFOS concentrations as high as high as 13,100 parts per trillion.
This past September, samples of four species of fish taken from East Fork White River not far from where 2017 samples were collected, were found to contain PFOS concentrations ranging from 12,000 parts per trillion in smallmouth bass to 590 parts per trillion in channel catfish.
Since 2017, testing by IDEM in Bartholomew County rivers also has detected PFOS in longear sunfish, smallmouth buffalo, freshwater drum, spotted bass and rock bass.
By comparison, the EPA has proposed strict limits for PFOS of 4 parts per trillion in drinking water. The agency’s nonbinding lifetime drinking water health advisory level for PFOS is 0.02 parts per trillion.
The EPA says its health advisory levels indicate “the safe levels of exposure through drinking water over the course of a person’s lifetime to avoid adverse health effects.”
Last month, city officials decided to shut down a municipal well after test results showed that untreated water in the well contained PFOA – another common type of PFAS – at 45 parts per trillion, as well as other PFAS. The EPA has proposed the same limit of 4 parts per trillion for both PFOA and PFOS.
IDEM, for its part, said because the results from the fish were below 20,000 parts per trillion, they fell within “background concentrations we see across the state” – meaning levels of substances that are normally found in the environment – and were therefore not deemed “elevated.”
IDEM has taken over 625 samples of fish since 2017, and PFOS has been detected in every single one, including 12% that had concentrations higher than 20,000 parts per trillion, officials said.
Uncertain adverse effects
When asked about the guidelines for PFOS, IDEM officials pointed to a set of best practices for PFOS in freshwater fish that the Great Lakes Consortium for Fish Consumption Advisories drafted in 2019.
The consortium is a collaboration of fish advisory program managers from Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, among other regulatory bodies in the United States and Canada.
According to a copy of the consortium’s best practices, the group highlighted in 2019 that there had been a lack of studies at the time that examined “the effect of PFOS on human health from fish ingestion.”
“PFOS adverse effects have been demonstrated primarily in animal exposure studies and in human epidemiology studies involving contaminated drinking water,” the consortium states. “There are few epidemiology studies describing the effect of PFOS on human health from fish ingestion. Thus, the extent to which PFOS adverse effects will be observed in fish-eating populations is uncertain.”
Additionally, the consortium said the well-documented benefits of eating fish should also be considered when setting guidelines.
The consortium’s best practices, as well as Indiana’s guidelines for fish consumption advisories for the chemical, are based on the EPA’s 2016 drinking water health advisory on PFOS.
However, the EPA released an updated advisory last year, stating that an evaluation of over 400 studies published since 2016 “indicate that the levels at which negative health outcomes could occur” from exposure to PFOA and PFOS “are much lower than previously understood when the agency issued its 2016 (advisory)” – including some negative health effects that may occur in concentrations in water that are “below EPA’s ability to detect at this time.”
As a result, the EPA lowered the advisory level for PFOS to 0.02 parts per trillion, down from 70 parts per trillion in 2016.
“There is currently a workgroup comprised of consortium members to revisit the PFOS Best Practices based on the (new) EPA reference,” said IDEM spokesman Barry Sneed. “However, IDEM does not have a timeline for completion of the project.”
Several species of fish commonly found in Bartholomew County rivers already have some degree of consumption advisory due to contamination from other substances, including mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls, also known as PCBs.
Mercury and PCBs are the primary drivers of fish consumption advisories in Indiana waterbodies, according to the Indiana Department of Health.
In 2019, fish consumption guidelines were issued for Little Deer Creek and Government Ditch in Cass County and Big Lick Creek and Little Lick Creek in Blackford County due to PFOS.
The Indiana Fish Consumption Guidelines are developed in coordination with the Indiana Department of Health, Indiana Department of Natural Resources and IDEM. The guidelines are not meant to dissuade people from eating fish, but rather to minimize risk of exposure to chemicals while still gaining the benefits from eating fish, IDEM said.
‘Quite widespread’
A recent study by researchers at Duke University and Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy organization, says that fish with detectable levels of PFAS have been found in all 48 continental U.S. states and in nearly every sample taken of freshwater fish.
The study, which was published in March in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research, analyzed data from 500 samples of fish fillets collected across the country from 2013 to 2015 under the U.S. EPA’s monitoring programs, the National Rivers and Streams Assessment and the Great Lakes Human Health Fish Fillet Tissue Study.
PFOS was the most commonly detected PFAS in the fish sample, the study states.
“The contamination of PFAS in (freshwater) fish is quite widespread,” Tasha Stoiber, a senior scientist at Environmental Working Group who is one of the study’s authors, told The Republic.
“Even just infrequent consumption of fish can significantly affect the levels of PFAS in your blood,” Stoiber added later in the interview. “…Just one meal of fish could be equivalent to drinking a whole month’s worth of low-level contaminated drinking water.”
Researchers calculated that eating one fish in a year equated to ingesting water with PFOS at 48 parts per trillion for one month, which is about 10 times higher than the proposed EPA limits.
At the same time, it’s hard to avoid PFAS. People can be exposed to them in a variety of ways, according to the EPA.
The chemicals can be found in water, soil, air, food and numerous consumer products, including cleaning products, non-stick cookware, shampoo, dental floss and cosmetics.
Because PFAS have been used in many consumer products — in some cases since the 1940s — researchers believe that most Americans have been exposed to them.
But the detection of the long-lasting and highly toxic chemicals in freshwater fish in Bartholomew County, as well as in Columbus’ drinking water, has raised questions about how vulnerable the community is to these emerging contaminants.
Last month, city officials said they had shut down a municipal well between Garden City and the railroad tracks on Columbus’ south side following testing that detected PFAS at levels that exceed proposed federal limits.
Officials said it is hard to identify the sources of the contamination in the aquifer at this point or how long the chemicals have been there, though they suspect “whatever it is has started in our general area, maybe a little bit north in the Edinburgh area.”
In addition, it’s hard to say exactly how the fish in Bartholomew County were exposed to PFOS. It is possible that they came in contact with the substance elsewhere and then swam into Bartholomew County, where they were caught and tested.
Stoiber said some common sources for PFOS contamination in freshwater in the United States include contaminated biosolids applied to agriculture, leaching from older landfills, manufacturing facilities that used the chemical, among other potential sources.
IDEM’s testing of the tissue samples in Bartholomew County did not find quantifiable levels of PFOA. However, PFOA was among the types of PFAS detected in untreated water in Columbus.
Experts consulted by The Republic said that suggests that the source of contamination in the freshwater fish could be different than what has caused PFOA to get into the city’s aquifer.
“We’ve used PFAS for so long and there have been so few regulations,” Stoiber said. “…The result has been this widespread contamination that affects people’s food.”
