PFAS proliferate in Island talks

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, colloquially called PFAS, are everywhere. 

These chemicals can be very dangerous, even carcinogenic. Not only are many everyday household products chock-full of them, but they’re also present in the water that U.S. residents, even Islanders here — out in the Atlantic — drink. In fact, 97 to 99 percent of people in the U.S. have PFAS in their blood.

There are thousands of the human-made chemicals federally recognized under the family of PFAS, and while some say there may be more like a million types, only six specific compounds were previously federally regulated. And now, those defenses are under discussion. Meanwhile, in places like Martha’s Vineyard, where some private wells tested too high for standards in recent years, and at least one town must ask voters to approve the funds to remove PFAS at municipal sites, Island groups want to encourage more knowledge around the threat of the chemicals.

An event hosted by the Vineyard Conservation Society (VCS), a group dedicated to the protection of land and water through education, advocacy, and legal defense, and funded by the Farm Neck Foundation, gathered three well-known voices on the issue at the end of March to discuss PFAS.

The goal of the discussion was to understand “this big family of chemicals that seem to be almost everywhere in our world at this point, and how we as the community can protect ourselves and mitigate the issue,” Samanatha Look, executive director of VCS, said.

PFAS chemicals are persistent, and don’t readily break down in the environment, Kyla Bennet, director of science policy at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility who previously worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said. 

The common trend between all the chemicals is a carbon fluorine bond, which is one of the strongest bonds in organic chemistry. That’s why they’re also called “forever chemicals,” jargon coined by journalists to describe this phenomenon. The chemicals bioaccumulate, which means they can build up in a person’s body, and biomagnify, which refers to the way they increase in magnitude as they go through the food chain, such as from soil to hay to livestock to humans.

And these aren’t natural substances. In 1938, the chemical company DuPont, which still exists today, accidentally created PTFE, also known as Teflon. Teflon was used in the Manhattan Project, a research and development program to create nuclear weapons in World War II, to purify uranium. Essentially, DuPont’s accident enabled the use of atomic bombs. 

Teflon was seen as a “really handy chemical,” Bennet said at the event. In 1961, DuPont created the Happy Pan, a Teflon nonstick skillet. In 1969, it created Gore-Tex, which is waterproof fabric. 

Then, the use of Teflon dominoed. “Today, in 2026, PFAS are ubiquitous in a number of consumer products,” Bennet said. They can be found in a range of items, like pizza boxes, shampoos and conditioners, carpets and upholstered furniture, contact lenses, dental floss, and menstrual products.

And while these chemicals became prevalent over the past century, they weren’t talked about or spoken about as a concern on the Island until 2018, when water wells at the airport tested positive for the “forever chemicals,” Look said. Private wells at houses south and east of the airport also showed high levels of PFAS.

Then came concerns about proposed artificial turf and the link to the chemicals. Private wells close to the former landfill in West Tisbury were also tested, and concentrations were recorded above the state limit; a second site of PFAS was also identified at the fire station in West Tisbury. They’ve been found in the water at the Chilmark School, and more recently, private wells in Chilmark tested positive. A Chilmark resident, Jessica Roddy, shared her story about a cancer diagnosis and her private well, which tested positive for PFAS. She said her blood tests showed a high amount of the “forever chemicals,” and that her doctors confirmed PFAS in her well could be linked to her eventual diagnosis. 

“Is this scary? Hell yes, it’s scary. It’s scary because these are very, very dangerous chemicals,” Bennet said.

Chilmark spearheaded efforts to test wells last year after Roddy came forward. The town’s board of health and select board initiated a program for tests, which was open for a few months but is now closed.

There are three routes of exposure for PFAS: ingestion, absorption through the skin, and inhalation. And exposure can cause testicular cancer, kidney cancer, liver damage, inflammatory bowel disease, increased cholesterol, thyroid problems, developmental effects in unborn children, obesity, and vaccine response.

Despite their long existence, PFAS weren’t officially regulated by the EPA until April 2024; and still, only six specific compounds, which includes the better-known PFOA and PFOS, were regulated. Now, under the Trump administration, however, that’s changed. Last May, the EPA said they’d delay enforcement on chemical limits for PFOA and PFOS, and rescind and reconsider limits on the other four. Meanwhile, as the EPA was slow to initially move on the federal regulations, Bennet said, states tried to “fill the regulatory void.”

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) regulates six PFAS in water, four of which are the ones that were regulated by the EPA. The regulations were adopted in 2020, and were among the strictest in the country; the maximum standard in the state is 20 nanograms per liter, or parts per trillion, of all those PFAS compounds in water.

In Massachusetts, samples from 1,400 public water systems, mostly municipal systems or systems for condominiums or town halls, schools, or restaurants, came back 12 percent above the state standard, which means more than 10 percent of water supplies in the state had to take steps to address PFAS in their water.

Private wells, on the other hand, serve half a million people in Massachusetts; around 5,000 people on the Island rely on a private well. Private well owners, who are typically located in more rural areas not close to businesses and industries, are more on their own to test and treat their water.

Laurel Schaider, a senior scientist at the Newton-based independent nonprofit Silent Spring Institute, spoke at the event about what consumers and voters can do, because a lot of the burden is on the individual. The institute was originally created more than 30 years ago for research on the environmental causes of breast cancer.

Schaider referenced a private well study conducted by MassDEP and UMass Amherst in 2021 and 2022 that tested private wells in 80 towns throughout the state where at least 60 percent of residents used private wells. 

Three towns and 71 wells on Martha’s Vineyard were part of the study. Eighty percent of those wells didn’t have detectable levels of PFAS. (The detectable level for the study was two parts per trillion.) But several wells, one in Chilmark and four in West Tisbury, were over the state standard.

Separately, the institute, through a study done on the Cape in 2011 that saw PFAS in almost all of the 150 private wells, found that areas that had more development tended to have higher levels of PFAS and other contaminants. They also found that higher levels of nitrate (from septic systems), higher levels of boron, higher levels of acesulfame (artificial sweetener), and shallower wells are predictors of higher levels of PFAS.

Unfortunately, and it’s not always widely known, private wells need to be tested every year through a certified lab. Filtration systems can also be helpful, but Bennet and Schaider both said that these should be certified by the National Sanitation Foundation. They should be maintained regularly ,because filter cartridges can get filled up, and then contaminants end up in the water anyway. For household products, Schaider recommended that people don’t use nonessential PFAS-riddled items, and find alternatives.

There are several PFAS filtration services on the Island, such as Island Water Systems Services, Clear Water MV, Island Water Source, and MV Filtration, some of which offer tests for PFAS as well.

The talk was also joined by Ayesha Khan from Nantucket, who started the Nantucket PFAS Action Group in 2020 after her husband, Nate Barner, father of two and captain of the Nantucket Fire Department, received a testicular cancer diagnosis linked to PFAS exposure in fire service. Her husband is in remission, but Khan came to share how her story is relevant to this Island.

“Nantucket, like Martha’s Vineyard, is an island out to sea. There’s no industrial facilities, there’s no manufacturing plants. We don’t really have fast-food chains, but even with all those precautions, we haven’t been able to escape PFAs,” she added.

Part of their efforts was to support a resolution that asked the International Association of Fire Fighters union to remove PFAS industry and influence. The resolution received a 99 percent approval, and three weeks later, Khan said, a manufacturer designed a PFAS-free outer shell, used to protect the firefighters from direct flame.

Khan emphasized the importance of advocacy, and said that the real goal is to shift the burden back to “industrial polluters and chemical companies who profited greatly for decades over these chemicals.” She also emphasized the need for private well owners to test their water.

“This isn’t the beginning nor the end of what our community needs to do around this issue,” Look said. “The towns have been working on it, but we hope that there’s much more to come.”