Dr. Jim Malley, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering here at UNH, is looking into treating the groundwater issues in our area. He has noted that the local water supplies are suffering from issues ranging from PFCs and 1,4-dioxane.
For those of us who don't know what either of those are, PFCs are a group of chemicals that are commonly used to make pans and other cookware non-stick, in food packaging, or even to make sofas and carpets stain resistant. It's half life (time it takes for half of it to leave the human body) is several years. There are studies that show this can disrupt normal endocrine activity (endocrine activity is any activity in the body regarding metabolism, growth, and development).
1,4-dioxane is used in paint strippers, dyes, greases, and so forth. The EPA has spotted this as something that is, "likely carcinogenic to humans," or is likely cancer-causing. The EPA also notes that it is "weakly genotoxic," or damaging to genes. Specific effects are unknown in humans but studies have found it has effects on the development of fetuses in mice.
With that out of the way, the Air Force found levels of PFOS (a PFC) 12.5 times higher than the EPA's provisional health advisory at the time (May 2014) at the Pease International Tradeport. In September this year at the former Pease Air Force Base the City of Portsmouth set up a carbon filtration system to test treatment of the water.
However, Professor Malley has also noted that there have been water issues that the local officials need to keep an eye on. Though it does seem that officials want to fix this. State Representative Tom Sherman, Dan Innis who is running for State Senate (District 24), Kelly Ayotte, and Maggie Hassan have all said they are pushing for cleaner water.
Technical information is from here:
PFCs: https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/materials/perflou...
1,4-dioxane:https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-03...
Sherman, Innis, Ayotte: http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/20161016/effort...
Hassan: http://governor.nh.gov/media/news/2016/pr-2016-05-...
