Water, COVID-19, And Risk
By: Cody Sovis
Tags: Covid 19, Cancer, Less Cancer, Pfas

Water, COVID-19, And Risk

It’s a simple thing. In modern times, we take it as a given, as an after thought. Access to safe drinking water isn’t a concern in most countries, and certainly not as challenging as access to food. In these pandemic times, that’s something that’s visible; there are soup lines and food banks, but no one lines up for water on a chilly morning in December.

But taking the safety of our water might no longer be a given. Even more importantly, we have to start examining how that harmful water could have impacts we haven’t even foreseen.

Humankind is comfortable with risk. We always have been. We have a natural ability to weigh cost and benefit, risk and reward. It’s a cognitive process that’s allowed us to evolve and take on bigger and bigger challenges. It was an essential tool in our ability to size up predators, go on the hunt, migrate to warmer or colder climates, meet or fight neighboring tribes. When we know risk, we can make decisions.

Uncertainty, however, is not something our species is particularly well-suited for. It’s why, in the early days of this pandemic, Americans actually stayed home and resorted to wiping down groceries, closing schools, and turned every interaction into a Zoom call, even as cases were in the dozens in most parts of the country. But as we learned about the risk not to the whole of society, but to ourselves, those habits and behaviors changed. If the odds of my contracting the virus are x, and my risk of dying is y, then why shouldn’t I see family, or friends, or hit the bar? We measured the risk, and too many of determined that short-term convenience and entertainment was worth the consequences that would be suffered almost entirely by someone else. Risks weighed.

Now, those two issues, PFAS and COVID-19, are converging. Since early November, our own Michigan Rep. Dan Kildee has been pushing CDC director Robert Redford to closely asses the impact of PFAS exposure and COVID-19. These health risks in isolation share that same sense of remote consequence. Nearly every American has PFAS in their bloodstream, even newborns. Nearly every American is still at risk of contracting the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, with a vaccine on the way but still months away from widespread distribution.

As Rep. Kildee and other have pointed out, it’s often the same front line and emergency services workers facing COVID-19 in the trends that already have an elevated risk of high exposure levels of PFAS, most notably in firefighters and National Guard units. Firefighting foam and military bases have become hotbeds for PFAS contamination plumes poisoning service members on-base and families in their surrounding communities.

There are vital concerns that exposure to PFAS could reduce the effectiveness of a COVID-19 vaccine, a vaccine that could be distributed to these types of workers as soon as Monday, December 14.

In response, Dr. Redford announced a study to track PFAS levels in participants’ bloodstreams and to monitor the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine in real-time, outside of any on-going trials. With emergency use already confirmed, this is essential a safety precaution coming after the fact, though there isn’t any evidence that a less-effective vaccine itself is in anyway harmful to those who take it. There is evidence that PFAS reduces the efficacy of other vaccines, including tetanus and diphtheria in infants, as well as a decreased response to influenza in adults.

On a more broad scale, the challenges facing front line workers aren’t too different from the exposure levels of all Americans. More than 200 million Americans are likely eating food or drinking water that is contaminated with PFAS. There are still no federal limits on PFAS releases into the air or in drinking water, and no federal enforcement of PFAS clean-up one detected.

We face risks in what we do, what we say, who we meet, and what we drink. Just because that risk may seem small individually doesn’t mean it can’t have catastrophic consequences for our neighbors, for our family, or for our fellow citizens. Fighting PFAS at the local, state, and federal level is the same battle as fighting COVID-19; it’s going to take leadership from the top, cooperation at every level, and empathy from everyone.