Residents at Friendly Acres Mobile Home Park were given bottled water and warned about possible contamination in their well during a March meeting organized by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board and California's Division of Drinking Water. First reported by the Red Bluff Daily News, the concern stems from alarming levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
Those man-made chemicals, called PFAS, are used to make a huge number of modern products like stain-resistant material, nonstick cookware, food packaging and waterproof clothing. They’ve also been linked to health impacts including cancer, liver and thyroid damage.
Anna Reade, who studies PFAS at the environmental non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council, said those so-called forever chemicals found at Friendly Acres should be worrying.
“Our body has a hard time getting rid of them, so they build up in our body. So if you think about PFOA or PFOS, which is what we're talking about in these wells, they have half lives of four, five, 10 years. It takes years for a PFAS that we ingest to eventually come out,” said Reade.
California started testing groundwater for PFAS in 2019, choosing sites near places like factories and airports where they suspected to find the chemicals. The well water at Friendly Acres was monitored because it’s near a manufacturing facility, now owned by Reynolds Packaging, with high PFAS contamination in groundwater.
Reade said there’s no proof of where the PFAS at Friendly Acres is coming from but that the smaller PFAS analytes found in that well can migrate more easily from other sources.
“What we could be seeing is the beginning of that contamination moving from that plant over to Friendly Acres,” she said.
A spokesperson for Reynolds, Michael Robinson, said the company works with the state to monitor groundwater.
“No connection has emerged that points to the origin of the PFAS. Reynolds proactively removed PFAS from our products and manufacturing process in 2022,” said Robinson.
California passed legislation in 2020 requiring that if certain kinds, or analytes, of PFAS were found at high enough levels in monitored sources, the owner of that water system must close or treat the well, or provide public notification within 30 days.
According to California’s State Water Resources Control Board PFAS data, the well at Friendly Acres has had levels requiring such a response since 2020. The director of the Tehama County Environmental Health Department, Tia Branton, said this month’s meeting was the first time residents at the mobile home park were given bottled water.
So far, there are no regulatory limits to commercial PFAS use in California. But last year the federal Environmental Protection Agency proposed maximum contaminant levels for six types of PFAS. That would require water system operators to reduce those PFAS if they exceed contaminant levels. A final decision by the EPA is expected this year.
