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Check if your state provides any sort of consumer confidence report for their public supply wells/water supply districts. In mine, they are usually published annually and may provide additional quarterly or more frequent monitoring that is also publicly available. These can tell you what sort of vulnerability your water source may have.
Toggling the 'info' used for EWG's interactive map shows that they used publicly available data, so it's entirely possible that they may have used data from your state's open data portal or otherwise.
If you are comfortable DM'ing me your approximate location and which dot I can give you some insight. I've been researching PFAS in water since 2019 and have data used by EWG, including the USGS study and EPA's UCMR5.
I mean, our waters are really polluted. The lakes are full of dioxin and other chemicals. Up north we’ve had mercury spills that are still lingering. Maybe if you live in the Northwest Territories the water us clean.
30 state attorneys general have sued or are suing polluters to fund cleanups, totalling $12 billion collectively as of 2025. There’s some class actions out there too. I couldn’t find information if these amounts are enough though, while they can more easily purify drinking water, total eradication may not be possible. Lawsuits against some companies who declined to settle are ongoing in various states.
Republicans: We're going to start investigating the mothers of dead babies and holding them personally responsible for murdering their children if we find they didn't do everything humanly possible to avoid risk.
So i absolutely think PFAS pollution is a real issue, and i'm not a geologist - but there are some clear issues with this study.
Firstly the low numbers involved. NH only has about 12000 births a year and has a low infant mortality rate, so there are likely only about 36 infant deaths per year in the whole state. Maybe half the homes in the state rely on well water, so that's only 18 infant deaths per year on well water. While 18 dead infants is a tragedy, that's a very small number to start breaking down into subgroups and drawing far reaching conclusions on.
I couldn't easily come up with an answer for how much of new hampshire is downstream from pfas pollution, but if it's 10% of the well-users in the state then you could get the 191% higher number because you had 5 deaths when you expected ~2. Likely they used multiple-year data, but you can see how that's problematic because this could just be noise or there could be other factors such as the people living downstream being poorer than those living upstream.
It could be made significantly better by taking samples of water at the homes of any low birthweight children or infant deaths. That'd be pretty low cost and would dispense with any of the issues of geology. You could compare those to state-wide averages to see if they are outliers.
This study certainly warrants doing further research, but I agree with /u/the_Q_spice that it doesn't prove a whole lot on its own.
It was under the Biden administration that single fluoridated carbons were designated not forever chemicals and his administration also approved a similar pesticide.
On the one hand it’s good that people are being informed due to headlines like the one above, but on the other hand it makes it seem like a partisan issue when neither party seems to care.
I think it's incredibly dangerous to say, oh, both parties are the same, it doesn't matter. It does. The republicans under Trump are the absolute worst.
So, please add substance to your claim, that Biden did the same. I didn't find anything similar his administration approved.
EPA under him said that single fluorinated compounds are not PFAS, because they are not as stable as PFAS. If it degrades, it's not a forever chemical. So that does sound reasonable.
And that’s not even talking about the proposed atrazine changes that started in motion under Biden’s administration, and the first Trump administration did something similar.
They’re worried about the wrong fluoride in the water. Pfas are fluoridated chemicals, but they don’t come listed on the fluoride ion line item on a water test.
That's what I was thinking when looking at the map someone posted. It only reflects the places they actually test. Can't complain about it if you don't know it's happening.
There needs to be a blanket ban on producing these chemicals at this point. I’m tired of the industry delaying action on this. The benefit of these chemicals clearly doesn’t match the risk profile and there’s no reason why we should have to wait for industry to find replacements before they are banned.
191% sounds huge, but I’d really want to see the absolute risk and how well they controlled for co‑exposures (other contaminants, socioeconomic factors, smoking, etc.). That said, this lines up uncomfortably well with the broader PFAS story: persistent exposure, bioaccumulation, immune and cardiovascular impacts, and then you finally see the tip of the iceberg in something as stark as infant mortality.
Where I could be wrong is if the “upstream vs downstream” wells differ systematically in some hidden way that’s not PFAS-related, but if this holds up across sites, it’s a screaming argument for aggressive PFAS regulation and cleanup, not more “wait for perfect certainty.”
Per 100,000 births, this works out to 2,639 additional low-weight births, 1,475 additional preterm births and 611 additional deaths in the first year of life.
Reading their appendix they cover a large number of covariates including SES, medical history, other major sources of pollutants, housing and census tract characteristics
We here discuss the regression control variables contained in the vector Xict.
Demographics: The first set of control variables accounts for mothers’
demographic factors. These are meant to account for differences, whether
random or nonrandom, between mothers who are more and less exposed to
PFAS. These control variables include maternal age, marital status, maternal
education, paternal education, food stamps, race, tract-level median income,
tract-level percent of tract in manufacturing, tract-level median house prices,
and tract-level number of housing units. Variables that are not at the tract
level vary over time because they depend on the mother.
Environmental: The second set of control variables accounts for other
environmental threats to human health, in case these covary with mothers’
PFAS exposure. These control variables include Census block group-level air
pollution, Census block group-level temperature, and the number of Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program sites in 2022 that are within 5 km of mater-
nal residence. Pollution and temperature data are at the annual level, with
temperature constructed by averaging each day’s minimum and maximum
temperatures and then averaging over the year.
Medical: The third set of control variables accounts for medical factors
that could directly affect birth outcomes. These control variables include
whether the mother has private insurance, average number of cigarettes
smoked per day, maternal weight pre-pregnancy, maternal weight post-pregnancy,
maternal height, and indicators for diabetes, hypertension, previous Cae-
sarean section, and in vitro fertilization. We omit medical indicators for,
among others, gestational hypertension, eclampsia, vaginal bleeding during
pregnancy, admission to intensive care unit, unplanned operating room pro-
cedure, and the child being transported to another facility because they could
reflect effects of PFAS on birth outcomes we study. Variables that are not
at the tract level vary over time because they depend on the mother.
House attributes: The fourth set of control variables accounts for features
that may increase household members’ concerns about PFAS. In particular,
we control for a house’s elevation, its distance to the closest contaminated
site, and the accumulation of surface flow from PFAS-contaminated sites at
each individual residence (see Supporting Information K). These do not vary
over time.
Well attributes: The final set of control variables captures features that
could affect both housing choices and the transport of PFAS around a public
well. These include surface elevation, distance from the well to the matched
contaminated site, number of contaminated sites within 5km of the well,
level of PFAS at the matched contaminated site (from [2]), and exposure to
airborne PFAS (see Supporting Information A.6). These do not vary over
time (airborne exposure is calculated from 2015 wind direction data
No. The 191% is in comparison to the infant mortality rate of babies who were born upstream of the PFAS pollution, so if there were ten babies out of 10k who were born upstream who died prematurely, it means ~30 babies out of 10k who were born downstream died prematurely.
No, not most, and there are lots of nuances - including where the carbon was sourced (coal versus biochar) and the temperatures at which it was processed (lower temps produce activated carbon that's more effective at capturing PFAS). Activated carbon can be pretty good at removing PFOS and PFOA which is a good start but it's much less effective with the shorter-chain PFAS compounds overall.
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Here is an interactive map that shows public water PFAS concentrations
https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/map/
I live kinda close but not super close to one of the light blue dots. How do I know if I should be concerned?
Check if your state provides any sort of consumer confidence report for their public supply wells/water supply districts. In mine, they are usually published annually and may provide additional quarterly or more frequent monitoring that is also publicly available. These can tell you what sort of vulnerability your water source may have.
Toggling the 'info' used for EWG's interactive map shows that they used publicly available data, so it's entirely possible that they may have used data from your state's open data portal or otherwise.
If you are comfortable DM'ing me your approximate location and which dot I can give you some insight. I've been researching PFAS in water since 2019 and have data used by EWG, including the USGS study and EPA's UCMR5.
Could I DM as well?
I found one for Canada, its at the bottom of this article: https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/features/2025/pfas-canada-map/
I mean, our waters are really polluted. The lakes are full of dioxin and other chemicals. Up north we’ve had mercury spills that are still lingering. Maybe if you live in the Northwest Territories the water us clean.
My husband grew up in the Northwest Territories and did not have clean drinking water.
Yellowknife has clean tap water but the lakes have a lot of arsenic from the mining operations up there.
Thank you so much for posting this!
Is there an equivalent of this for the EU?
I haven't seen anything comprehensive, here's two data sources covering some eu countries.
https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/publications/pfas-pollution-in-european-waters/figure-1-interactive-maps-for-pfos-data-in-european-surface-and-groundwater-2018-2022-annual-average-values-in-water-matrix
https://foreverpollution.eu/map/
Fantastic. Any Idea where I can get a Download of that Data?
*Public water PFAS concentrations in the United States
The clusterfuck that is NH politics with 400 geriatric reps will surely get right on this!
We know arrr-F-Kay isn’t gonna do anything about it.
He’s too busy, tanning himself into the first ever pair of full-size human Oxford shoes
So when are we suing these mega polluters then?
30 state attorneys general have sued or are suing polluters to fund cleanups, totalling $12 billion collectively as of 2025. There’s some class actions out there too. I couldn’t find information if these amounts are enough though, while they can more easily purify drinking water, total eradication may not be possible. Lawsuits against some companies who declined to settle are ongoing in various states.
Republicans: We're going to start investigating the mothers of dead babies and holding them personally responsible for murdering their children if we find they didn't do everything humanly possible to avoid risk.
They’re out of the womb, they don’t even care that much.
A huge issue with this study is they only looked at site location.
The defense would hammer that with testimony from hydrogeologists.
Just because something is upstream doesn’t actually mean that the material migrated into the drinking supply.
As a fluvial geomorphologist, I would be able and willing to testify that this study does not definitively prove PFAS contamination.
The issue is that this study doesn’t even prove anything other than proximity to an event. Causal evidence is a lot harder to prove.
So i absolutely think PFAS pollution is a real issue, and i'm not a geologist - but there are some clear issues with this study.
Firstly the low numbers involved. NH only has about 12000 births a year and has a low infant mortality rate, so there are likely only about 36 infant deaths per year in the whole state. Maybe half the homes in the state rely on well water, so that's only 18 infant deaths per year on well water. While 18 dead infants is a tragedy, that's a very small number to start breaking down into subgroups and drawing far reaching conclusions on.
I couldn't easily come up with an answer for how much of new hampshire is downstream from pfas pollution, but if it's 10% of the well-users in the state then you could get the 191% higher number because you had 5 deaths when you expected ~2. Likely they used multiple-year data, but you can see how that's problematic because this could just be noise or there could be other factors such as the people living downstream being poorer than those living upstream.
It could be made significantly better by taking samples of water at the homes of any low birthweight children or infant deaths. That'd be pretty low cost and would dispense with any of the issues of geology. You could compare those to state-wide averages to see if they are outliers.
This study certainly warrants doing further research, but I agree with /u/the_Q_spice that it doesn't prove a whole lot on its own.
What experiment would you run to look for proof?
Trump officials set to approve ‘forever chemical’ as pesticide ingredient | Pfas | The Guardian (10 Nov 2025)
I do not have the words to describe my horror and disgust
It was under the Biden administration that single fluoridated carbons were designated not forever chemicals and his administration also approved a similar pesticide.
On the one hand it’s good that people are being informed due to headlines like the one above, but on the other hand it makes it seem like a partisan issue when neither party seems to care.
I think it's incredibly dangerous to say, oh, both parties are the same, it doesn't matter. It does. The republicans under Trump are the absolute worst.
So, please add substance to your claim, that Biden did the same. I didn't find anything similar his administration approved.
Quite the opposite, his admin was the first to set enforceable limits in drinking water: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/10/health/pfas-drinking-water-standard/index.html
EPA under him said that single fluorinated compounds are not PFAS, because they are not as stable as PFAS. If it degrades, it's not a forever chemical. So that does sound reasonable.
If you couldn’t find anything about the Biden administration approving a similar compound you didn’t look very hard.
https://www.epa.gov/pesticides/epa-registers-new-active-ingredient-fluazaindolizine
https://time.com/7336883/epa-pfas-pesticides-health-risks/
https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/fact-check-epa-debunks-false-claims-agency-recently-approved-forever-chemical
And that’s not even talking about the proposed atrazine changes that started in motion under Biden’s administration, and the first Trump administration did something similar.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5027367-biden-administration-proposal-atrazine-levels/amp/
The farm lobby is too damned strong and they go after both parties.
And if single fluorinated compounds are OK then I guess there’s no reason to make a hubbub about this latest approval then, eh?
Epyrifenacil can break down into a smaller forever chemical called trifluoroacetic acid (Tfa). http://regulations.gov/document/EPA-HQ-OPP-2022-0354-0009
So to answer your question, no, not every fluorinated compound has the same risk.
Absolutely, yes, it is very important to understand that Democrats serve the interests of capital just as exclusively as Republicans do.
By the author of a peer-reviewed study today in the journal PNAS
But they’re worried about vaccines and fluoride. Yikes.
They’re worried about the wrong fluoride in the water. Pfas are fluoridated chemicals, but they don’t come listed on the fluoride ion line item on a water test.
Republicans are prioritising repealing clean water regulations.
Including, specifically, nascent PFAS drinking water standards.
That's what I was thinking when looking at the map someone posted. It only reflects the places they actually test. Can't complain about it if you don't know it's happening.
It's maddening how hard it is to get their n. 11,500 births, 498 infant deaths.
And the EPA just authorized use of more PFAS as a pesticide on our food.
https://www.foodandwine.com/epa-approves-pesticides-containing-forever-chemicals-pfas-11855500
Now read this ...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/15/trump-administrat-pfas-limits
There needs to be a blanket ban on producing these chemicals at this point. I’m tired of the industry delaying action on this. The benefit of these chemicals clearly doesn’t match the risk profile and there’s no reason why we should have to wait for industry to find replacements before they are banned.
191% sounds huge, but I’d really want to see the absolute risk and how well they controlled for co‑exposures (other contaminants, socioeconomic factors, smoking, etc.). That said, this lines up uncomfortably well with the broader PFAS story: persistent exposure, bioaccumulation, immune and cardiovascular impacts, and then you finally see the tip of the iceberg in something as stark as infant mortality.
Where I could be wrong is if the “upstream vs downstream” wells differ systematically in some hidden way that’s not PFAS-related, but if this holds up across sites, it’s a screaming argument for aggressive PFAS regulation and cleanup, not more “wait for perfect certainty.”
It's in the link:
Reading their appendix they cover a large number of covariates including SES, medical history, other major sources of pollutants, housing and census tract characteristics
Nice, thanks for pulling that. With that level of controls, the causal story looks pretty strong, residual confounding aside.
for numbers, that means infant mortality went from 320 per 100,000 to 931 per 100000
Great news! We are getting more PFAS.
And now it's in all of our vegetables thanks to the Trump administration.
drinking poison kills people, anyway…
This is frightening. Do water filters that claim to eliminate PFAS help?
Wouldn't a 100% mean every baby downstream died, where's the extra 91% from?
No. The 191% is in comparison to the infant mortality rate of babies who were born upstream of the PFAS pollution, so if there were ten babies out of 10k who were born upstream who died prematurely, it means ~30 babies out of 10k who were born downstream died prematurely.
It amazes me that so many people do not have filtration systems in their homes.
Only a reverse osmosis system effectively remove these chemicals, and they are relatively expensive.
Activated carbon is very effective for most PFAS. 1,4 dioxane on the other hand, even RO on its own isn’t very effective.
No, not most, and there are lots of nuances - including where the carbon was sourced (coal versus biochar) and the temperatures at which it was processed (lower temps produce activated carbon that's more effective at capturing PFAS). Activated carbon can be pretty good at removing PFOS and PFOA which is a good start but it's much less effective with the shorter-chain PFAS compounds overall.