Human Environment Interaction

Vance Cook
4/27/2020

 Environment and Society
In response to the recent national holiday, Earth Day, I have been interested in what ways the Earth, our home, interacts with us humans, and how humans interact with the Earth. This symbolic interaction is quite diverse across the globe, yet people are all interacting, on some level, with their environment around them. People interact with their environment in different ways, and the environment interacts with people in different ways as well. This thought is what influenced me in choosing a topic to talk about for my final blog post. In thinking of the different ways people interact with their environment, some negative interactions come to mind; one thing in particular is the overall human contribution to pollution of the environment. Pollution happens all across the globe, and has been happening for hundreds of years. After long periods of this, I feel that those effects are now coming full circle. Our long term pollution habits, that we have allowed, are now affecting the environment and that same polluted environment is having some effect on those that call it home. 

For an in-depth look at how our level of pollution has come full circle, I could talk about our human contribution to pollution over time, but that is quite a broad topic. Instead I have become intrigued with one pollutant in particular, PFAS. That stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which are a family of man-made chemicals that are found in a wide range of consumer products. They increase the risk of many negative health problems in communities with high exposure to any of the PFAS chemicals. There are over 5000 different types of PFAS, and according to the FDA, “PFAS have been used in a variety of applications including in stain- and water-resistant fabrics and carpeting, cleaning products, paints, and fire-fighting foams. In addition, certain PFAS are authorized by the FDA for limited use in cookware, food packaging and processing,”[1]. 

 Since most humans have access to almost all of these products, one can imagine how widespread the negative health consequences will be. PFAS chemicals can be especially harmful when ingested or absorbed into the body, and they stay in the body for long periods of time. Ingesting foods that have been contaminated with low levels of PFAS can be very harmful in the long run because they will slowly accumulate within the body and cause more harm the longer they stay in the body and the greater volume of which they accumulate in the human body. 

According to the EPA, “The most-studied PFAS chemicals are PFOA and PFOS. Studies indicate that PFOA and PFOS can cause reproductive and developmental, liver and kidney, and immunological effects in laboratory animals. Both chemicals have caused tumors in animals. The most consistent findings are increased cholesterol levels among exposed populations, with more limited findings related to: low infant birth weights, effects on the immune system, cancer (for PFOA), and thyroid hormone disruption (for PFOS),”[2].

Partly out of concern, partly out of curiosity I am wondering what the levels of exposure are, to PFAS chemicals, within my home state of Michigan. According to the Michigan Government website, “PFAS sites are where one or more groundwater sample exceeds the Part 201 cleanup criteria for groundwater used as drinking water, which is 70 ppt PFOS + PFOA,”[3]. Additionally listed, on the Michigan.gov, website was a map of all the PFAS sites found in Michigan(map is located below). 

    Figure 1. PFAS sites in Michigan

Using this map of locations with higher exposure to PFAS, I can examine health data within these areas of Michigan that experience higher concentrations of PFAS exposure in their water. Because there are so many types of PFAS chemicals, they all have not been studied thoroughly enough to determine all of their side effects, however the types of PFAS that have been studied have been linked to lowered birth rate in infants. That is where I shall begin my search.

Looking at the list of the 89 PFAS sites Michigan(locations that have tested above 70 ppt PFOS/PFAS) counties with the highest number of PFAS sites are Kent, Iosco, Kalamazoo, Muskegon, and Washteenaw [figure 2]. These sites will be used to concentrate my search to select locations. 
Figure 2. Count of PFAS sites within Michigan by county

Based on finding out the counties with higher number of PFAS sites, I can use these locations to focus my search to. Since these counties have been measured for PFAS, I can compare data in these locations and see if there are any correlations between the counties with higher PFAS levels, and increased health defects in those areas. Since PFOS/PFAS substances have been studied to have negative impacts on infant birth weights, cancer, the immune system, and the thyroid, I shall begin looking at data related to these health concerns. Beginning with infant birth weights, I found information displaying the percentage of infants born with a weight less than 2.5kg(5.51lbs), which is the standard for considering an infant's weight to be low.  
Figure 3. Percentage of infants born below a weight of 2.5kg or 5.51 lbs. 

Looking at the above graph(figure 3), I have assembled data related to the percentage of infants, born in each county, with low birth weight. The counties remain the same counties as used in figure 2, those with 1 or more tested PFAS sites. Looking at figure 2 and figure 3, those counties with the highest number of sites tested containing PFAS do not show abnormally larger rates of infants born with low birth weights. Because there is no correlation between sites with a higher number of PFAS sites and the locations also showing higher rates of low infant birth weight, there must be other factors impacting low infant birth weight. In the future I would like to examine data on the other known side effects of PFAS ingestion such as cancer rates, immune system health, and thyroid health. This would help me determine which of those side effects is the most observable and directly impacting. 

For the sake of concluding, I am wrapping up my research here. I had wanted to examine additional data related to other known PFAS side effects, however I was only able to find conclusive information regarding percentages of children born with a low birth weight. It would improve the accuracy of the research to examine all of the known PFAS side effects and their rates of occurance broken down by each county. Despite not being able to look into additional side effects, I was able to learn a lot about PFAS and its level of danger it proposed for our society. The PFAS chemicals are all man-made, and have been used in a wide range of consumer products starting in the 1940’s. Our continuous use of these chemicals has contaminated our environment to the point of no return. There is an abundance of PFAS in our groundwater, and there are over 89 observed locations which have been tested and contain greater than the permitted amount of PFAS chemicals in the ground water. This is a huge issue because most groundwater sources are in contact with our drinking water. This would imply humans have been ingesting PFAS in their drinking water for long periods of time. One can only imagine the harmful repercussions that come with ingesting man made chemicals for long periods of time. This is now an issue that is widespread enough to impact nearly all human beings, and is therefore a collective issue now. It's not up to one group to resolve this, but rather our collective responsibility to make a change to decrease our PFAS contamination over time to better the health of our people. It is not too late to make necessary changes to eliminate the use of PFAS chemicals, or at least to reduce the PFAS contamination in our food and drinking sources. 



Resources: 


  1. Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. “Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS).” U.S. Food and Drug Administration, FDA, 20 Dec. 2019, www.fda.gov/food/chemicals/and-polyfluoroalkyl-substances-pfas.

  1. “Basic Information on PFAS.” EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, 6 Dec. 2018, www.epa.gov/pfas/basic-information-pfas.

  1. “PFAS Sites.” PFAS Response - PFAS Sites, www.michigan.gov/pfasresponse/0,9038,7-365-86511_95645---,00.html.

  1. S.L. Kristensen, C.H. Ramlau-Hansen, E. Ernst, S.F. Olsen, J.P. Bonde, A. Vested, T.I. Halldorsson, G. Becher, L.S. Haug, G. Toft, Long-term effects of prenatal exposure to perfluoroalkyl substances on female reproduction, Human Reproduction, Volume 28, Issue 12, December 2013, Pages 3337–3348, https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/det382

  1. Jiang Q., Gao H., Zhang L. (2015) Metabolic Effects PFAS. In: DeWitt J. (eds) Toxicological Effects of Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances. Molecular and Integrative Toxicology. Humana Press, Cham

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