Chilmark officials have taken steps to help private homeowners test their drinking water for forever chemicals, such as PFAS, but say covering the costs of testing will be the responsibility of the homeowner.
At a board of health meeting on Wednesday, Chilmark residents brought their concerns regarding PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, possibly being present in their private well water after some homeowners had positive tests.
The town is trying to coordinate for homeowners interested in testing their wells for the chemicals, and has updated information on its website. While it stopped short of offering subsidies, the board will be grouping interested homeowners tests together to be sent off-Island to a lab. Grouping them together will save homeowners money. Tests on-Island reportedly cost nearly double the amount when not grouped together and sent to the closest off-Island facility, which for the Vineyard is Barnstable County Water Quality Laboratory.
“We can’t take on the cost, because it’s on private property,” Chilmark health agent Anna McCaffrey said in Wednesday’s meeting.
At a prior select board meeting, members had considered creating a subsidies program for homeowners to be relieved of the cost of the tests, which are $265 each when grouped together and sent to Barnstable.
In addition to coordinating testing, the board of health is looking to educate the public more thoroughly. PFAS are human-made chemicals that are present in products like firefighting foams, nonstick pans, and raincoats, and in large quantities, they have been linked to health concerns.
“We want to provide as many tools as we possibly can — to get it to as many people as we can,” board of health member Janet Buhrman said in Wednesday’s meeting.
The issue of PFAS in Chilmark was raised earlier this month after one resident, Jessica Roddy, presented at a select board meeting about her own experience; she said that her doctors linked the presence of PFAS in her private well to her recent breast cancer diagnosis.
In 2022, Roddy was part of a study about PFAS in Chilmark wells, and during the test, she found out that her home had the highest concentration of the 19 homes tested, at over 50 parts per trillion — double the safety threshold at state levels. Her doctors recommended she get a blood test to see whether any chemicals were present, after a genetic marker test came back negative. She had high levels of PFAS in her blood. Her experience resonated with some other up-Island locals who have private wells and their own concerns about PFAS in their drinking water.
Roddy has since urged the board of health to increase access to testing for homeowners and to stay persistent in educating the public.
“I think we need to keep the focus on testing private wells. People really don’t test their water for anything, let alone PFAS,” Roddy wrote in an email to the board. “The educational portion of this is critical.”
The impacts of PFAS contamination and public health are still being studied, but experts say that being aware of the issue is paramount.
Laurel Schaider, the senior scientist of environmental chemistry and engineering at the Silent Spring Institute, which is a Newton-based organization founded to study the link between everyday chemicals and women’s health, said PFAS and forever chemicals are found in a variety of household items and the health effects should be taken seriously. Silent Spring was the first organization to test for, and find, PFAS in private wells on Cape Cod.
“The evidence for harmful health effects from PFAS is overwhelming,” Schaider said in an interview with The Times. “Testing by the CDC has found that on average, they think that over 99 percent of the US population has PFAS in our blood, because not only are the chemicals themselves super-persistent, but certain PFAS are also really difficult for our bodies to excrete.”
In Chilmark, the board of health said education is its primary goal while it organizes various paths for Islanders to get their wells tested.
Board members noted that part of their outreach will be letting the public know the many things forever chemicals can be found in. They debated sending a flier to residents listing household items that contain PFAS. Various cleaners, clothing, and pans have trace amounts of forever chemicals. But at Wednesday’s meeting, the director of the Vineyard Conservation Society, Samantha Look, encouraged the board to keep its efforts on the larger concentrations of forever chemicals and create policies that support homeowners in testing their drinking water.
“The fact that this has gotten into our water systems now, [are there] things — like big-picture things — that the town maybe wants to create more policies around?” Look questioned the board. “Is the town going to do a deep dive into practices that need to be changed?”
The members responded that awareness raised by homeowners themselves would be helpful in pushing policy changes.
“Unfortunately, it takes somebody to get sick to really raise awareness to it,” Buhrman said.
“It would need to be a community-guided undertaking,” board chair Katherine Lees Carroll added.
Chilmark Fire Chief Jeremy Bradshaw said they haven’t used the “bad” firefighting foams in up-Island drills as far as he knows. He wondered about where PFAS were coming from in private wells, and said officials across the town have been discussing the issue.
“I know for the last 20 years we haven’t used that foam in drills,” he said.
The board sent a form to Chilmark residents over email on Friday morning, where they can enter their information in order to be notified about future PFAS testing. Town officials said efforts are being made to group individual tests together — up to 25 tests can be sent to a lab in Barnstable County at once — which would mitigate some possible transportation issues. Since PFAS tests need to be collected and received by a lab on the same day, grouping tests together and organizing transport could help streamline efforts.
At the beginning of the form, a written statement outlines the board’s position: “The Board of Health recognizes that PFAS is an emerging environmental and public health concern across the Commonwealth and within our community.”
Good for you Chilmark! Proactive is terrific!