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Bladen County

An older woman in graying hair is wearing a mask as a nurse prepares to give her a coronavirus vaccine at a temporary clinic in Asheville.

COVID vaccinations are climbing, slowly, in rural North Carolina. But skepticism remains

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COVID vaccinations are climbing, slowly, in rural North Carolina. But skepticism remains - North Carolina Health News

New COVID cases have been surging in southeastern North Carolina, as they have across the state and the country, putting another strain on hospitals that hoped to be in the homestretch of the pandemic.

By Sarah Nagem, for the Border Belt Independent

sarahnagem@borderbelt.org

Rita Watson had chosen not to get the COVID-19 vaccine. She was worried about what was in the shots and whether they were safe. 

But when her 41-year-old daughter contracted the virus and became severely ill, Watson reconsidered. She and her four sons went to the Robeson County Health Department on Thursday to be vaccinated. 

“I decided, seeing my daughter in that hospital, I was bringing myself and my kids up here,” said Watson, 58, of Fairmont. 

New COVID cases have been surging in southeastern North Carolina, as they have across the state and the country, putting another strain on hospitals that hoped to be in the homestretch of the pandemic. 

But health experts say a few factors are convincing some people who had been skeptical of the vaccine to finally get the shot: a rise in cases mostly caused by the delta variant, a sharp upswing in the percentage of positive COVID tests and the promise of $100 gift cards from the state.

Pam Locklear, a nurse at the Robeson County Health Department, administers the COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday, Aug. 5, 2021. Photo by Sarah Nagem

In Robeson County, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in North Carolina, 354 people were vaccinated at the health department between Monday morning and mid-afternoon Thursday this week. That compares to fewer than 200 people two weeks ago, according to the department. 

“People are taking a look at the numbers and realizing there’s an urgent need,” said Melissa Packer, assistant health director for the Robeson health department. 

Terri Duncan, director of the health department in nearby Bladen County, said she has also seen an “increased interest” in the vaccine, although not at the level of when the shots first became available. On a recent day, she said, three generations of a local family got the vaccine together. 

Across North Carolina, more than 109,000 doses of the vaccine were administered the week of July 26, up from about 79,000 doses the week of July 5, data shows. 

Even so, hospitals say they are struggling to keep up as more people, many of them younger adults, are getting sick. And experts say they still have a long way to go with vaccinations, particularly in this rural part of the state where rates are lagging. 

Last week, UNC Health Southeastern in Robeson County made a public plea: Don’t go to the emergency room unless you’re very sick, because there’s just no more room. The hospital encouraged people to go to their primary care doctor or an urgent care facility instead. 

The number of COVID patients at UNC Health Southeastern increased over the past month, from a low of seven to 33 on Monday, according to James Granger, business development officer for the hospital. 

Hospital admissions have risen in other nearby counties since July 1, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: up 500% in Bladen, 146% in Columbus and 59% in Scotland. 

‘Think we know everything’

Watson said her daughter, LaShawna Watson-Baker, spent several days in the hospital, first in Scotland County and then in Chapel Hill. 

“I couldn’t do nothing but pray to God,” Watson said. “I thought we were going to lose her.” 

Miraculously, Watson said, her daughter is now recovering at home. She needs a walker to get around because her muscles are still weak. 

On Thursday, Watson asked a nurse administering the vaccine if the shot was safe. The nurse responded with a rundown of potential side effects and urged Watson to do more research. 

Ultimately, Watson said she was relieved to get it done. But skepticism remains for many in this community. 

Only 27% of Robeson County’s population is fully vaccinated against COVID, compared to 47% statewide. Reasons for opting out of the vaccine seem to span the spectrum, from religion to politics to history. 

“I believe you need to have faith in the Lord and not have fear,” said Karen Ibasco, 51, who was helping out at a shop in downtown Pembroke this week. “We all have a death date.” 

Ibasco said she does not have plans to get the vaccine, but she wears a mask in public settings. 

In Lumberton, 44-year-old barber Stoney Stone said he was worried the vaccines were released too quickly, before they got full approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. 

Stone said he is a supporter of Republican Donald Trump, and he wonders if the pandemic was manufactured by those who do not approve of the former president. 

“I think the government unleashed it on all of us,” Stone said. “Was this something to make (Trump) look bad or hurt the economy?” 

But Stone said he planned to get the COVID vaccine at an open house for his son’s school. He wants to protect his family, he said, and he predicts states will take a cue from New York City and require proof of vaccination for some activities. 

Stoney Stone, a 44-year-old barber in Robeson County, said he was skeptical of the vaccine, but he planned to get the shot to help protect his family.
Photo by Sarah Nagem

N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper announced last week that the vaccination status of all state employees would be verified. Those who are not vaccinated must wear a mask and undergo weekly COVID testing. 

The state Department of Health and Human Services also encouraged private-sector businesses to verify each worker’s status.

But Stone said many people don’t take kindly to the government telling them what to do. “We’re a bunch of Southerners who think we know everything,” he quipped. 

Frank Evans, 72, was blunt: “I think a lot of it is a bunch of crap,” he said. 

Evans said he got the vaccine “to preserve my own life” and to keep others safe. But, he said, “That was after I did my own research, not because the government told me.” 

Geoffrey Townsend, 41, received his first dose of the COVID vaccine at the Robeson County Health Department on Thursday, swayed by the rise in cases and his mother’s threat that she wouldn’t make him a home-cooked meal until he went. 

Townsend, who is Black, said he had been scared of the vaccine. He cited the Tuskegee experiment in which the government studied, under false pretenses, the effects of syphilis on hundreds of Black men between the 1930s and the 1970s. 

“That’s an issue that we talk about a lot,” Townsend said. 

His uncle died of COVID, he said, and then a former classmate. That’s when his mother really urged him to get inoculated. 

But Townsend said he worried what his friends might say about his decision. 

“When they find out I got the shot, they’re going to get on me,” he said. “I might not tell them I got the shot.” 

‘Data and science are clear’

More than 4,300 new COVID cases were reported in North Carolina on Thursday, a drastic jump from 375 a month earlier. As of mid-week, 10.4% of COVID tests in the state came back positive, according to DHHS. Health officials say the goal is 5% or lower.

During a press briefing Thursday, Cooper said the spike in cases “is driven by the unvaccinated.”

“The data and the science are clear that getting the COVID vaccine dramatically lowers the chance of severe illness, hospitalization and death,” he said. “These vaccines are safe and effective, and they are the key to getting to end this pandemic.” 

Of the 30 COVID patients isolated at UNC Health Southeastern on Friday, 27 were unvaccinated, the hospital said.

Scotland County on Monday had 93 active COVID cases, mostly involving people who were not vaccinated, said Kathie Cox, health director for the health department there. Twelve were among school-age children, and 19 were among people who were fully vaccinated against COVID, she said.

Those who were fully vaccinated are “recovered,” she said.

The delta variant is “deadly, and it’s very scary,” Cox said. Infections caused by the variant are more contagious and could lead to more severe illness among those infected, according to the CDC.

Cox said Scotland County is “slowly but surely” seeing an increase in administered vaccines, and the health department encourages everyone to practice the three W’s: wear a mask, wash your hands and watch your social distance. 

Tamra Bullard, a nurse at the Robeson County Health Department, administered the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine to Geoffrey Townsend on Thursday, Aug. 5, 2021.
Photo by Sarah Nagem

“People need to really be concerned about who’s at a greater risk of catching and spreading COVID-19,” Cox said. 

Health officials say they’re hoping for a bigger increase in vaccinations since some counties are offering $100 gift cards to those who get their first dose and $25 gift cards to those who drive someone to get the shot. 

On Thursday, 54 people were slated to get a $100 gift card at the Robeson County Health Department by about 1 p.m., officials said. Another 16 were expected to receive a $25 card. 

“I think it’s working,” Packer said of the financial incentives. 

For Watson, the fear of losing her daughter was too much to bear. “Getting the shot is the best thing for people to do right now,” she said. 

These pets have high levels of forever chemicals in their blood. Has that made them sick?

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These pets have high levels of forever chemicals in their blood. Has that made them sick? - North Carolina Health News

N.C. State researchers tested for PFAS in 31 dogs and 35 horses living near the chemical plant. They found at least one measurable type of PFAS in every dog tested and all but one horse. Some of the levels were staggering.

By Greg Barnes

Mike Watters saved the second report from N.C. State University’s Pets and Equine Testing Survey for last.

Two of Watters’ beloved Siberian huskies had participated in the study. While both had health issues, Watters said, they were much more pronounced in Cesar. 

Watters said he started noticing the problems a year and a half after his family moved in 2012 to a home about a mile from the Chemours Fayetteville Works chemical plant in Bladen County.

Cesar continually lost his hair and got sores on his back. He had numerous fatty tumors, and, later in life, developed a pancreatic disorder and other gastrointestinal issues, Watters said. 

Cesar died in March at age 13, shortly after researchers at N.C. State tested his blood for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances known as PFAS or “forever chemicals.”

Watters knew that his well water had long been contaminated with PFAS that floated out of the chemical plant’s vent stacks and fell with the rain on his property. Now he was about to find out if those same chemicals had accumulated in Cesar and his brother, Loki.

N.C. State researchers had taken blood samples from 31 dogs and 35 horses that live near Chemours and analyzed them for the presence of 34 types of PFAS. Watters recently received the results.

He said he opened Loki’s report first. Loki’s PFAS readings were high, but Watters said they were in line with what he expected.

“And then I opened up Cesar’s and saw 11,800 parts per trillion and I busted down crying,” Watters said. “That absolutely struck me. I mean that was like a stab in the heart.”

Cesar died in March with PFAS levels in his blood that were 169 times higher than the EPA’s health advisory. Photo courtesy of his owner.

North Carolina and the federal government do not regulate PFAS, which are commonly used to make everyday products water, grease and stain-resistant. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has set a health advisory level for only two of the oldest types of PFAS — perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) — at 70 parts per trillion, either by themselves or in combination.

The total PFAS concentration in Cesar’s blood was 169 times higher than the EPA’s health advisory for PFOA and PFOS.

Findings presented

N.C. State researcher Scott Belcher, an associate professor in the university’s biological sciences department, presented the PETS study findings to community members during a video conference Thursday evening.

As he did, Belcher emphasized that the study can only tell participants how much of each PFAS analyzed was present in their pets’ blood on the day the samples were taken. The results, he said, cannot tell if any past, current or future health problems of the animals may be related to the PFAS exposure. He said N.C. State plans to expand testing in the future.

Most of the dogs and horses tested came from Gray’s Creek, a rural community in Cumberland County near Chemours where more than 4,900 private drinking wells have been found to exceed the levels of PFAS specified in a consent order the chemical company entered into in 2019.

The consent order requires Chemours to provide homeowners with water filtration systems if the level of a single PFAS measures more than 10 parts per trillion, or if a combination of different PFAS exceed 70 parts per trillion. 

As of April 19, the levels of PFAS in wells that exceeded those parameters were found to extend 18 miles from the plant, according to the most recent findings cited by the state Department of Environmental Quality. That is six miles farther than what was previously known.

Chemours contends that the levels of PFAS found in Gray’s Creek are not enough to pose a health risk.

A vet’s concerns

Kim Krivit, a veterinarian at North Star Veterinary Hospital in the neighboring Parkton community, has been treating pets from Gray’s Creek for years. Krivit said she does not track where the animals come from, so she doesn’t know whether she is seeing more or different diseases in animals from Gray’s Creek than from other areas.

Krivit said she has no evidence suggesting that PFAS are causing diseases in the animals from Gray’s Creek. But she has her suspicions.

“It’s like logic,” Krivit said. “Absolutely I believe there are greater chances of there being something” to cause diseases in animals with high PFAS levels.

Chloe passed away with higher levels of PFAS in her blood than is considered safe by the EPA. Photo courtesy of her owner.

Studies on laboratory animals have found that elevated levels of exposure to PFAS can damage the liver and the immune system and cause kidney and testicular cancers, birth defects, delayed development, newborn deaths, decreased vaccine response and increased cholesterol levels. Studies on the effects in humans remain inconclusive but some have linked the substances to many of the same diseases.The EPA calls PFOA a possible human carcinogen.

Chloe, a “spunky little thing”

Among the animals Krivit treated was Chloe, a little pomeranian that also died shortly before the study results were revealed. Chloe lived with Audrey Napier on John McMillan Road, about 5 miles northwest of Chemours, for about 15 years. 

“She was this spunky little thing,” Napier said. “Oh goodness, she was a happy dog. Never complained. She loved getting groomed. She knew she was pretty when she came back with those bows in her hair. She would just prance around.

“You could pick her up and she gave you kisses all the time, and we miss her dearly. I’m going to start crying now.”

Chloe was happy despite a lifetime of diseases. Krivit said she suffered early on from kidney disease, followed by heart problems, Cushing’s disease, diabetes and pancreatitis.

The PETS study found total PFAS in Chloe’s blood measuring 743 parts per trillion. That is low compared with the levels detected in Watters’ dogs and some other animals in the study. The total PFAS level in Bruiser, a 12-year-old male labradoodle that lives with Karen Miller on Sim Canady Road, measured 14,563 parts per trillion.

Watters has worked tirelessly to get PFAS information out to Gray’s Creek residents. He is the administrator of a Facebook group that educates residents in the community. Watters thinks two of his dogs – Cesar and another husky named Zeus that died before the testing — had such high concentrations of PFAS because they loved to go outside and lay under vegetation when it rained. Loki, whose total PFAS level measured about four times lower than Cesar’s, didn’t like the rain, Watters said.

PFAS detected in all 31 dogs

Belcher, the N.C. State researcher, said PFAS were detected in all 31 of the dogs tested, and at least two different types were found in every dog. One dog was found to have 12 of the 34 types of PFAS tested. The PFAS called GenX, once so prevalent in the Cape Fear River downstream of Chemours, was not detected in any of the dogs or horses.

Perfluoroalkyl sulfonic acids — PFOS and PFHxS — accounted for 90 percent of the PFAS found in dogs, Belcher said. American companies phased out the use of PFOS by 2015, but the substance does not break down easily in the environment and accumulates in animals and humans. That is why PFAS have become known as “forever chemicals.”

Belcher said the study found that the median serum amount in dogs was three times higher than that of horses and that dogs had a higher number of different PFAS in their blood. For horses, he said, one was found to have no PFAS in its blood and 13 different PFAS were detected in the blood of at least one horse. 

Other studies

Although Belcher cautions against using the PETS study to suggest a causal relationship between an animal’s PFAS levels and disease, the researcher has found that one may exist in alligators and fish in the Cape Fear River.

Belcher recently announced that his studies have found PFAS accumulation in American alligators in the river are associated with adverse liver and immune function. 

His studies on striped bass, which contain high levels of PFAS, conclude that the substances may be disrupting reproduction. Belcher is now concentrating on other fish and their potential effects on human consumption, in addition to expanding his work on testing pets in the Gray’s Creek area.

Meanwhile, N.C. State researcher Jane Hoppin said in an email that she hopes to have results of a PFAS exposure study on Gray’s Creek residents available to participants by late June.

Researchers have taken blood, water and urine samples from up to 230 people living in the area to measure PFAS levels as part of the university’s GenX Exposure Study. Hoppin is the study’s lead investigator and deputy director of N.C. State’s Center for Human Health and the Environment.

A much more limited study of 30 people living in the Gray’s Creek area found in 2018 that some types of PFAS were detected at levels higher than the U.S. population. A larger study of Wilmington residents drew similar conclusions.

N.C. State has also been awarded a three-year, $242,000 grant to study the potential presence of PFAS in hog waste.

Shows hands pouring a chemical into a testing container that labeled "Microfiber filter" These processes - along with mass spectrometry - helped identify GenX and PFAS in the Cape Fear River. NC State will have a research center dedicated to PFAS

Environmentalists say Trump’s EPA fell far short in the fight against PFAS

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Environmentalists say Trump’s EPA fell far short in the fight against PFAS - North Carolina Health News

The EPA released glowing statements in the 11th hour of Trump’s presidency, trumpeting its successes in the fight against PFAS. But environmentalists representing more than 1 million North Carolinians who are potentially drinking contaminated water from the Cape Fear River basin say the EPA hasn’t done nearly enough.

By Greg Barnes

On the eve of his last day as president, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under Donald Trump sent out a glowing news release highlighting its numerous efforts to protect people from toxic “forever chemicals.”

The news release was the last of many from the EPA that touted the agency’s successes in the waning months of Trump’s presidency.

In it, the EPA trumpeted the suite of actions that will “continue the significant progress” it has made to combat per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances — or PFAS — found at elevated levels in drinking water in North Carolina and throughout the country.

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In a study by the Environmental Working Group published last year, scientists said they “now believe PFAS is likely detectable in all major water supplies in the U.S., almost certainly in all that use surface water.” The national nonprofit organization estimates that 200 million Americans may be drinking water containing the potential carcinogens.

In large enough concentrations, PFAS are associated with cancers of the thyroid, liver, testicles and kidneys. They are believed to suppress the immune system, raise cholesterol levels and cause low birth weight. Recent studies have found that PFAS may make people more vulnerable to the coronavirus and less responsive to COVID-19 vaccines.

The compounds are used to make everyday products slippery — everything from nonstick pans, food packaging, rain gear and stain-resistant carpets. They are called “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down easily in the environment and accumulate in the human body.

Paved with good intentions

Which brings us back to the EPA and its glowing news release.

In it, then-EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler outlined the progress the agency made with its PFAS Action Plan, a 72-page document unveiled two years ago that promised to set maximum contaminant levels for two of the oldest and most persistent PFAS — perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) — and to consider regulations on other types of the synthetic compounds.

“I am proud of the work EPA has done over the past two years under the PFAS Action Plan, which has touched every office in the agency and every region,” Wheeler said in the release. “Our commitment to our mission to protect public health and the environment from these emerging chemicals of concern has been unwavering and we have delivered results for every key commitment we made under the plan.”

According to the news release, the EPA plans to take the next step to regulate PFOA and PFOS and to “fast track evaluation of additional PFAS for future drinking water regulatory determinations if necessary information and data become available.”

The news release contains wording that makes it clear the EPA under Trump took a slow, methodical approach to curtail PFAS pollution.

Among many other statements, the release says the agency “is seeking comment about whether it should take any additional regulatory steps to address PFAS contamination in the environment.” That includes whether to declare certain types of PFAS as hazardous substances under Superfund laws.

The Biden administration has already indicated that it will seek to classify PFAS as hazardous substances under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, or CERCLA, and to take additional actions under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

Biden has nominated Michael Regan, secretary of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality, to head the EPA.

At a recent confirmation hearing, Regan vowed to make PFAS a priority.

“I can commit to you that on Day One that this is and will be a priority for this administration to set limits on how much of this chemical compound is entering into our air and our water,” Regan said.

Regan’s final confirmation has not yet come up for a vote.

Moneymakers

Linda Birnbaum, former head of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, thinks the EPA under Trump prolonged significant and substantial PFAS regulations because it cozied up to the chemical industry.

“I think it’s because these are moneymakers for the chemical companies, and chemical companies are very generous in their donations for different congressional campaigns,” said Birnbaum, who retired as head of the NIEHS and the National Toxicology Program in late 2019.

The most recent example of the symbiotic relationship between chemical companies and lawmakers may be found in a petition filed in October by six North Carolina health and environmental groups. The groups asked the EPA to require the Chemours chemical company to have an independent panel of scientists conduct health studies on 54 types of PFAS known to have been manufactured — or produced as a byproduct — at the Chemours plant in Bladen County.

The EPA rejected the petition on Jan. 7, saying the petitioners failed to prove that the requested data was needed. The same groups have now asked the Biden administration for the same requirement and are awaiting a decision.

Environmental groups across the state and the country bemoan the EPA under Trump for failing to do more to handle the PFAS crisis.

“For communities who have been and continue to be exposed to PFAS on a daily basis, the Trump EPA’s plan had far too little action,” Geoff Gisler, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said in an email. “EPA has the tools to stop PFAS, it’s past time for the agency to use them. Nobody in North Carolina is better off following EPA’s actions. My hope is that the next EPA will treat PFAS contamination as the serious threat it is.”

Where are PFOA and PFOS regulations?

Jamie DeWitt is a researcher at East Carolina University who specializes in immune toxicology. She has been studying PFAS for more than 15 years and is firmly in the camp with those who believe PFAS should be regulated as a class.

DeWitt said researchers at the EPA under Trump made significant progress with evaluations of about 150 PFAS compounds at the molecular level and with developing new approach methodologies.

“I know that at least internally, the science is advancing very rapidly,” DeWitt said. “Whether or not that’s a result of the action plan, I don’t know, but I think it does reflect that at least at the scientific level there is time, attention and money given to PFAS.”

On the other hand, DeWitt said, she doesn’t understand why the EPA has yet to set maximum contaminant levels for the two oldest PFAS compounds — PFOA and PFOS — whose health effects have been scientifically studied for decades.

“It seems like, at least for PFOA and PFOS, we have sufficient information on their toxicity, their occurrence and their use that moving forward at high speed with a maximum contaminant level would be possible,” DeWitt said. “I don’t know how long it takes to promulgate a new MCL under the Safe Water Drinking Act but it seems like this is something that could have been done by now.”

DeWitt notes that the European Union is proposing to restrict production and use of  PFAS chemicals that are harmful to humans and the environment, a move supported by almost 18,000 companies in the Confederation of Danish Industries. Last year, Denmark banned PFAS from all paper and cardboard food packaging.

DEQ gets an earful

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality hasn’t moved any faster than the EPA at regulating PFAS. Last month, the DEQ held a public hearing in which residents were asked to respond to proposed changes in the state’s groundwater standards, including those for PFOA and PFOS.

Last year, the DEQ proposed a new rule to the state’s Environmental Management Commission that would set the standard for PFOA and PFOS at a combined 70 parts per trillion, the same level the EPA has used as a health advisory since 2016. The state’s interim groundwater standard for PFOA has been 2,000 parts per trillion since 2006. There is no interim state standard for PFOS, a compound typically used in firefighting foam, stain-resistant carpeting and other consumer products.

Eighteen people spoke at the public hearing, most representing environmental groups, some were just everyday citizens whose drinking water has been contaminated by PFAS.

All of the speakers urged the DEQ to set lower groundwater standards for PFOA and PFOS than what is being proposed. Many said the standards for the two chemicals should be no higher than a combined 20 parts per trillion. Some said the standard should be set at 1 part per trillion, a figure a Harvard study says would be safe. Most said PFAS should be regulated as a class, not individually.

Many who spoke talked about health problems that they, their loved ones, their neighbors and even their pets are experiencing. Three speakers became emotional. Those affected by PFAS have been fighting this battle for years.

Mike Watters, administrator of the Facebook group Gray’s Creek Residents united against PFAS in our wells and Rivers, said an estimated 4,000 people in Cumberland, Bladen and Robeson counties are dealing with elevated levels of PFAS in their well water. The contamination came from DuPont and Chemours and got there through the air. Chemours has been ordered to provide affected homeowners with water filtration systems.

Watters lives about a half-mile from Chemours. He said he has 16 types of PFAS in his well water.

“I had the privilege today to have my first oncology appointment for leukemia and I know it’s caused by this water,” Watters said. “Same with the diverticulitis, the thyroid issues, the cholesterol issues. I’m begging the EMC not to use the 70 parts per trillion … Right now you can go with a lower quantity. It’s proven by science that these numbers are too high.”

Eleventh-hour EPA maneuvers

Detlef Knappe, a researcher at N.C. State University whose team discovered PFAS in extremely high concentrations downstream of the Chemours plant about six years ago, tends to avoid politics.

Instead, Knappe simply sent N.C. Health News an email referencing a Jan. 13 article from Politico about how political officials at Trump’s EPA overruled the agency’s career scientists to weaken a major health assessment for a PFAS compound called PFBS.

Industry uses PFBS — short for Perfluorobutanesulfonic acid — as a replacement for PFOS. The compound has been detected in drinking water from Pittsboro to the coast. It has been associated with potential adverse health effects of reproductive hormones, kidney, lung and thyroid function and high cholesterol at low levels of exposure.

Sources told POLITICO that political officials within the EPA replaced a proposed PFBS reference dose — a single number describing how toxic the chemical is to humans — with a weaker range of values.

“The changes to the safety assessment for the chemical PFBS, part of a class of ‘forever chemicals’ called PFAS, is the latest example of the Trump administration’s tailoring of science to align with its political agenda, and another in a series of eleventh-hour steps the administration has taken to hamstring President-elect Joe Biden’s ability to support aggressive environmental regulations,” Politico wrote.

That “tailoring of science” has contributed to plunging morale and employment at the EPA.

The New York Times reported on Feb. 1 that more than 700 EPA employees quit, retired or took a buyout during Trump’s first year in office, including more than 200 scientists. In a 2018 survey, 81 percent of EPA employees agreed that political interests “hindered the ability of their agencies to make science-based decisions.”

The EPA and 1,4 dioxane

The Cape Fear River basin is not only polluted with PFAS but also other troubling chemicals, perhaps none more so than 1,4 dioxane, which is typically used by industry as a solvent stabilizer. The substance can also be found as a byproduct in household cleaning and personal-care products, such as cosmetics. The EPA lists 1,4 dioxane as a probable carcinogen.

Discharges of high levels of 1,4 dioxane into the Cape Fear River basin have been common, especially in Greensboro, Reidsville, Asheboro and Burlington. The DEQ has proposed a special order by consent against Greensboro in an effort to stop 1,4 dioxane from flowing out of the city’s sewage treatment plant. A decision is pending.

But the issue of 1,4 dioxane may not be going away anytime soon, either.

In another 11th-hour move, Trump’s EPA in December issued a final risk evaluation for 1,4 dioxane, finding that exposure from surface water causes no unreasonable risks to the environment or the health of the general population. The risk evaluation was published in the National Register on Jan. 8.

The evaluation drew the ire of six health and environmental groups from North Carolina, as well as the national Center for Environmental Health based in Oakland, California. The six North Carolina organizations are Advance Carolina, Cape Fear River Watch, Clean Cape Fear, Democracy Green, Haw River Assembly and Toxic Free NC.

The organizations submitted a petition on Feb. 1 with the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals seeking a judicial review of the EPA’s evaluation.

“One in five North Carolinians get their drinking water from the Cape Fear River Basin. The watershed also has some of the highest levels of 1,4 dioxane in the entire country,” Kemp Burdette, the Cape Fear Riverkeeper, said in a joint news release. “1,4 dioxane represents a clear and present danger to millions of residents of the Cape Fear Basin and we cannot afford to sit back and do nothing as industrial pollutants poison our loved ones.”

A woman outside the window talks to her husband who is quarantined for coronavirus.

What we’ve lost to coronavirus

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What we’ve lost to coronavirus - North Carolina Health News

Nearly a year into a pandemic that changed everything, North Carolina's losses continue to multiply.

By Liora Engel-Smith

Dulce Garcia was afraid. The 29-year-old’s coronavirus infection started ordinarily enough. She ran a fever. She had difficulties breathing. And it terrified her.

Everyone, including her sister, Crystal Garcia, 27, thought she’d pull through. The Alamance County resident had everything working in her favor: she was young, healthy and had the kind of vibrant energy that made her someone you could lean on, her younger sister said.

But then, on Mother’s Day, Dulce Garcia wasn’t feeling well. An interpreter at UNC Hospital in Chapel Hill, Dulce Garcia caught coronavirus somewhere in the community. Her family does not know how or where. But these questions quickly lost their significance as the older sister’s condition worsened.

“I’m scared,” she told her younger sister in the last video call they’d ever have.

“Don’t cry,” Crystal Garcia, who was working the night shift at the time, told her. “Your fever broke. That’s good.”

The older sister nodded with a weak half-smile and signed off with an “I love you.”

The following morning, as Dulce Garcia reported she was too weak to stand, Crystal Garcia decided that enough was enough. Her big sister, a headstrong woman who avoided hospital visits for herself because she was scared of needles, needed an emergency room visit.

Crystal Garcia did not know at the time that her sister had already been seen in the emergency room for her coronavirus days earlier, despite her needle aversion. She was given medications to help her breathe and sent home, Crystal Garcia later learned.

“I’m done with this, I don’t care what she says, she is going to the ER,” the younger sister thought.

But it was too late. Dulce Garcia had a seizure en route to the hospital. She died shortly thereafter.

Crystal Garcia can’t begin to tally what she’s lost: a best friend, a big sister to butt heads with, someone who loved and understood her. Dulce, whose name means sweet in Spanish, supported her parents financially. She wanted everyone to know that they mattered. Almost a year after her death, her absence remains a gaping wound.

“We’re doing the best we can,” Crystal Garcia said. “We’re doing the best we can with everything.”

Two sisters are posing for the camera. One of them is Crystal Garcia, the other is Dulce Garcia, who lost her life to coronavirus in May
Sisters Crystal, left, and Dulce Garcia pose for a selfie. Dulce Garcia, 29, died of coronavirus in May 2020. Photo courtesy of Crystal Garcia.
Photo courtesy of Crystal Garcia.

Coronavirus has killed more than 11,200 North Carolinians in the year since the first known case was confirmed on March 3 last year. They were grandparents, parents and siblings. Coworkers, neighbors, volunteers. The pandemic didn’t spare church elders or college students. It brought heartache to cities and tore through small towns and rural enclaves.

The loss has irrevocably changed communities of color, as long-time advocates and community linchpins died, said Randolph Keaton, who heads Men and Women United for Youth and Families, a nonprofit that serves Bladen, Brunswick, and Columbus Counties.

While African Americans make up 22 percent of North Carolina’s population, they account for roughly a quarter of coronavirus deaths in the state. Seventy percent of the state’s population is white, but they make up only 66 percent of deaths.

“I would say we have lost a part of our future,” Keaton said. “You would never know what these folks would have done in their lives for life to be better.”

Keaton has sent more condolence bouquets than he’d care to count over the last year. But flowers aren’t as comforting as grieving with families in person. Social distancing prohibits hugging, kissing or holding a loved one’s hand. Masks make crying together difficult. With chilly winter weather making outdoor funerals nearly impossible, the pandemic took yet another precious thing: It changed the way we mourn.

Digital mourning

Cindy Wechter has seen many kinds of grief. A pastor at Burke County’s Christ United Methodist Church in Drexel, Wechter has supported countless families who have lost loved ones. So when her father, Marvin L. Shepard, 89, died of coronavirus the spring after it arrived in North Carolina, Wechter felt ready.

But the losses began long before her father stopped breathing. Shepard got ill at the end of April, just weeks after Gov. Roy Cooper signed the state’s first stay-at-home order. As the virus spread through the nursing home, Wechter worried about her dad.

“He kept saying, ‘I’m not going to catch that stupid virus,’” she recalled. “But then it started going down the hall … and we kind of knew.”

The lockdown confined Wechter and her mom to the lawn outside of Shepard’s window. They wrote notes to hang on his window. They used a walkie-talkie to play his favorite songs. But neither mother or daughter could touch or hug him. They sent vicarious hugs through the facility’s nursing staff.

Once, when the sun glare obscured their faces, Wechter and her mom hung a tarp as a makeshift canopy to allow him to see them.

Wechter posted regular updates on her Facebook page. She also told her dad about the comments.

“We weren’t alone,” she said. “While we were isolated, at least on Facebook we were able to bring all of dad’s friends and all of his community and all of our friends.”

An older man sits in a wheelchair outside. It is the last time he visited the outdoors before he died from coronavirus.
Marvin L. Shepard, 89, on his last outing with his daughter. Shepard liked beer and cookies. Photo courtesy of Cindy Wechter.

Digital media also brought the family together after Shepard’s death. The service took place outside, and family members set up a memorial table with photos and other keepsakes. They parked his favorite ride — the lawn mower — nearby. A procession of cars, filled with neighbors, friends and loved ones rode by. Family members who couldn’t attend in person joined the service over Zoom. And at 2 o’clock sharp, everyone raised a glass in honor of Shepard, who loved beer.

“We knew that all over the country, his friends were doing that,” she said. “Even the nurses from the nursing home sent us videos of themselves lifting up and doing a cheer for him.”

Jimmy Kirksey, who is an associate at the Sossoman Funeral Home in Morganton, has seen a similar shift among his clients. Kirksey, who has been in the funeral business for decades, said many clients opt for virtual funeral services. Demand for memorial live-streams has increased so much that Kirksey has invested in a permanent webpage for videos on the funeral home’s website. He’s also in the process of buying a mobile hotspot to offer the same service to his more rural clients.

A sizable chunk of clients still prefers to cremate their loved ones and hold memorials when large gatherings are permitted once again. But demand for virtual funeral services is growing. Customers request virtual services once or twice a week on average, he added.

“It seems to be the new way of doing things,” Kirksey said. “I think a lot of the personal touch is not there anymore but that’s just my opinion.”

At the same time, business picked up significantly since the pandemic began. In a normal year, Kirksey and his staff of 10 work with roughly 400 clients. Since the pandemic began, that number jumped to the low 500s.

One thing remains constant, he added. A death is still a death.

“The pain’s still there,” he said. “It’s just different, the way they celebrate their loved ones.”

A life cut short

Jamesha Waddell was close with her grandmother, Janice Waddell, 67. The Livingstone College senior would come home and clean Janice Waddell’s house from top to bottom. There was nothing the 23 year old couldn’t do: she cooked, cleaned and helped her grandmother with paying the bills.

But in November, the two Columbus County residents shared something else: a coronavirus diagnosis that has landed them both in the hospital. Janice Waddell lived to return home, her granddaughter didn’t make it.

If not for coronavirus, the criminal justice major would have been the first among her siblings to walk across the stage in a college graduation gown just a few weeks later.

“I think about her every day,” said her grandmother, who is still on oxygen since her coronavirus infection.

A woman in a striking red dress stands in a hallway. She's Jamesha Waddell, a 23-year old college student who died of coronavirus last year.
Jamesha Waddell, 23, died of coronavirus in November. Waddell was a senior at Livingston College. Her college awarded her a degree posthumously. Photo courtesy of Janice Waddell.

One day soon, a Livingstone College diploma bearing Jamesha’s name will arrive in the mail. The family will likely frame the ornate document and hang it somewhere special. The diploma should have been the start of a promising career in law enforcement.

Instead, it will be the 23 year old’s final accomplishment.

A lonely end to a full life

Most of the people lost to the virus weren’t young like Jamesha Waddell or Dulce Garcia. Almost 3 in 4 people who died were over the age of 65, state health department data shows. For many in this group, the social distancing measures that preceded their passing meant no face-to-face family visits as they sickened and died.

Out in the western part of the state, 86-year-old Rita Hulkower spent the last year of her life in quarantine. There would be no visits to see her children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren. No outings on a sunny day. Despite these measures, however, she contracted coronavirus in December, during an outbreak at her nursing home.

A woman hugs a child and they're both smiling
Rita Halkower, seen here in an old wedding photo, died of coronavirus at a North Carolina nursing home. Also in the photo is her granddaughter, Rachel, now 37 years old.

She died roughly a week later. Had she lived another two weeks, Rita Hulkower would have become eligible to receive the vaccine that could have saved her. Her son, Steve Hulkower, got his first dose the following month. A family physician who heads a department at the Asheville-based Mountain Area Health Education Center, Steve Hulkower felt a rush of relief tinged with sadness.

His mother, a passionate early childhood educator who retired after a 30-year career, loved children, most of all her own. But she didn’t get to play with them, hug them or even touch them for almost a year. Because of his medical credentials, Steve Hulkhower was allowed to visit his mother before she died but no one else in the family could say goodbye in person.

“That’s quite a way to end a life, for people who had meaningful relationships to be basically in lockdown for the last year of their lives,” he said. “To die and to die alone is just a tragedy.”

This story has been altered to change the name of Jimmy Kirksey’s place of employment. 

The Smithfield Foods processing plant in Tar Heel employs up to 5,000 workers and slaughters 30,000 to 35,000 hogs a day: Photo credit: Melissa Sue Garrets, The Fayetteville Observer

Congressional subcommittee launches investigation into coronavirus outbreaks at meatpacking plants

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Congressional subcommittee launches investigation into coronavirus outbreaks at meatpacking plants - North Carolina Health News

The subcommittee says the plants refused to take basic precautions to protect workers and showed a “callous disregard” for their health.

By Greg Barnes

A congressional subcommittee is investigating multiple coronavirus outbreaks at meat and poultry processing plants in North Carolina and throughout the country.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis announced Feb. 1 that it is seeking internal documents from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and three of the nation’s largest meatpackers — Smithfield Foods, Tyson Foods and JBS USA. All three companies have plants in North Carolina.

In letters to OSHA and the three meatpackers, the subcommittee’s chairman, James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), requested documents related to the coronavirus outbreaks, including worker complaints, inspections and the number of infections and deaths at individual plants. The documents are due to the subcommittee by Feb. 15.

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Clyburn wrote that public reports indicate the companies “have refused to take basic precautions to protect their workers, many of whom earn extremely low wages and lack adequate paid leave, and have shown a callous disregard for workers’ health.”

Clyburn also wrote that inaction by the meatpackers appears to have resulted in thousands of workers getting infected with the coronavirus and hundreds of them dying as a result. He said the outbreaks at the plants spread the coronavirus to surrounding communities, infecting and killing many more people.

Clyburn blasted OSHA, as well, saying it “failed to adequately carry out its responsibility for enforcing worker safety laws at meatpacking plants across the country, resulting in preventable infections and deaths. It is imperative that the previous (Trump) Administration’s shortcomings are swiftly identified and rectified to save lives in the months before coronavirus vaccinations are available for all Americans.”

Smithfield Foods defended its response to the pandemic, saying the company has met or exceeded federal, state and local health and safety guidance.

In a statement, Keira Lombardo, Smithfield’s chief administrative officer, said the company has invested more than $700 million in measures to protect employees during the pandemic.

“It is unfortunate that there are inaccuracies and misinformation in the media on this issue and we look forward to providing the Subcommittee with correct information,” Lombardo said in the statement.

JBS USA released a similar statement, saying it, too, has spent millions to protect workers and welcomes the opportunity to present information to the subcommittee. Tyson Foods could not be reached.

Coronavirus raced through plants

In his letters, Clyburn wrote that nearly 54,000 workers at 569 meatpacking plants in the country have tested positive for the coronavirus, and more than 270 had died as of July 21.

In his letter to Smithfield Foods, Clyburn noted that a single case of the coronavirus spread to 929 employees at a South Dakota plant in just five weeks.

Citing an article in the journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Clyburn wrote that meatpacking plants were associated with between 236,000 and 310,000 coronavirus cases and 4,300 to 5,200 deaths, indicating that the plants were responsible for transmitting the virus to people in nearby communities.

The Tyson Foods, JBS and Smithfield Foods plants in North Carolina did not escape widespread coronavirus outbreaks.

In late April, the world’s largest hog slaughterhouse, a Smithfield Foods plant in Tar Heel, almost shut down because of the pandemic.

In May, 570 of the more than 2,200 workers at Tyson’s poultry plant in Wilkesboro tested positive for the coronavirus.

Read the letter sent from Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) to Smithfield Foods asking for information about COVID-19 outbreaks in the company’s plants. 

Workers scared

At the height of the pandemic last spring, workers at meat and poultry plants in North Carolina reached out to NC Health News and other media outlets to complain about unsafe working conditions.

An employee of the Smithfield Foods plant in Bladen County said in April that she hadn’t returned to work for almost a week because she didn’t think the plant had done enough to keep workers safe.

“I just want them to shut down for a while to make it better for everybody else and their families,” the worker said, declining to be named out of fear that she could lose her job.

A worker at a Mountaire chicken-processing plant in Siler City expressed similar fears in April.

“When this pandemic started, Mountaire was doing nothing,” that worker told NC Health News. “They just started giving employees face masks/shields & putting up glass between people about two weeks ago. The distance between people on the lines is literally elbow to elbow. The risk of the virus spreading in the company is extremely high because of this.

“It’s scary. I’m putting my life at risk going to work and Mountaire is only worried about profit from their chicken.”

The majority of workers at the Mountaire Farms plant are Black or had Latin American roots. In May, the ZIP code that includes the plant had the highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the state.

At that time, a third of all COVID-19 patients at UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill were transferred there from Chatham Hospital in Siler City. An internal UNC Hospitals report from back then shows 41 percent of all patients treated for COVID-19 at UNC Hospitals were Latino.

Smithfield fines less than $11 per infected worker

In his letter to OSHA, Clyburn wrote that the agency’s mission is to ensure safe and healthy working conditions by setting and enforcing standards.

“Yet under the previous Administration, OSHA did not set a single new standard or regulation requiring employers to protect meatpacking workers from the coronavirus—and did not meaningfully enforce existing standards,” Clyburn wrote.

Clyburn noted that OSHA issued more than $3.9 million in penalties related to the coronavirus but only eight citations and $80,000 in penalties to meatpacking companies.

Clyburn wrote that on Sept. 8, OSHA cited Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls “for failing to protect employees from exposure to the coronavirus.” OSHA concluded that at least 1,294 Smithfield workers there contracted the coronavirus, and four employees died.

The agency cited Smithfield for a single violation and fined the company $13,494, which amounts to less than $11 per infected employee. Smithfield’s chief executive officer earned $14 million last year, Clyburn wrote.

“Although OSHA’s citation identified four distinct actions Smithfield failed to take to protect its workers, the agency lumped them together as a single violation and declined to classify the conduct as ‘willful’ — decisions that reduced a potential $2.7 million penalty down to just a few thousand dollars,” Clyburn wrote.

Clyburn also said coronavirus testing at the meatpacking plants has been inadequate.

“Many plants reportedly rejected testing offered by state authorities without arranging for alternative testing,” Clyburn wrote to OSHA. “Others reportedly told employees they needed to get tested ‘on their own.’ “

Tyson managers place bets

In his letter to Tyson Foods, Clyburn noted that more Tyson workers have been infected and killed by the coronavirus than at any other meatpacking company — 12,413 infections and 39 deaths.

Clyburn wrote that Tyson “does not appear to have taken basic precautions to prevent these outbreaks,” saying the company “did not carry out facility-wide testing at many facilities.”

Clyburn also wrote that some of the meatpacking companies “have shown a callous disregard for the health of their workers.”

At a Tyson plant in Waterloo, Iowa, he said, managers ordered workers to remain on the job and then “organized a cash-buy-in, winner-take all, betting pool for supervisors and managers to wager how many plant employees would test positive for COVID-19.”

Tyson fired seven of the managers but has not released a report on an independent investigation it had commissioned.

N.C. regulators remain mum

In his letter to Smithfield Foods, Clyburn wrote that 3,554 of its meatpacking employees have been infected with the coronavirus, and eight have died. Citing the outbreak at the South Dakota plant, Clyburn said OSHA found that Smithfield failed to provide a workplace that was “free from recognized hazards that were causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to employees.”

It’s impossible to know how many of those infections and deaths happened at individual Smithfield Foods plants in North Carolina. State Department of Health and Human Services officials won’t say, despite repeated requests from NC Health News and other media outlets.

Early in the pandemic, NC Health News requested the information under the state’s open records laws. The nonprofit news publication believed — and still does — that workers are entitled to the information so they can learn about infections in their workplace and take precautions.

State officials denied the request. In May, Mark Benton, deputy secretary of Public Health for DHHS, said revealing the outbreaks at individual plants could jeopardize the department’s working relationship with the private meatpacking companies, as well as the privacy rights of its workers. The department does reveal outbreaks at private nursing homes in the state.

“We are grappling with that,” Benton said in an interview with NC Health News in May. “These are not long-term care settings. These are not residential care settings. The workers don’t reside in the facilities 24/7 and so, I assure you, we are looking at this from a multitude of angles.

“First and foremost, what is in the best interest of the public health. What’s also in the best interest of those that are diagnosed and also what’s in the best interest of ensuring that, in the long run, we have been able to assemble a group of people, a coalition, a partnership that is going to sort of drive us toward a successful resolution to this pandemic.”

Petition rejected

As founder and executive director of The Hispanic Liaison in Chatham County, Ilana Dubester has fought for workers rights at the Mountaire Farms plant in Siler City and other meat and poultry-processing facilities throughout the state.

Dubester acknowledges that conditions have improved at Mountaire since the pandemic began, but she said much more could be done. She said Mountaire workers often gather in large groups, and the company still doesn’t monitor whether they are wearing masks.

“There are hundreds of workers in the room together, and not everybody’s wearing a mask,” she said.

Dubester said contract workers still get paid less and receive fewer benefits than regular employees, and they can still lose their jobs at will.

In an emailed statement, Mountaire spokeswoman Catherine M. Bassett countered that the company “has been aggressively fighting this virus with every tool in our arsenal.”

In October, Dubester’s organization and five others in North Carolina filed a petition for rulemaking with the North Carolina Department of Labor. The petition asked the department to adopt an emergency rule that would protect workers during the pandemic by putting an end to dangerous workplace conditions.

The department rejected the petition in December, saying in part that it believes collaboration among state agencies and meatpacking companies is more effective than “aggressive regulatory actions” specific to COVID-19.

The group of safety advocates has since filed civil action against the labor department in a Wake County court. A hearing is pending.

North Carolina now counts 4,455 cases of the coronavirus and 22 deaths at meat and poultry processing plants in the state.

shows a bridge over the Cape Fear River, photo taken at the level of the water. GenX has been contaminating the river with PFAS for years, it's been revealed.

DEQ cites Chemours for PFAS treatment system failures

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DEQ cites Chemours for PFAS treatment system failures - North Carolina Health News

The chemical plant in Bladen County receives notice of violation for problems with a new treatment system that is expected to remove 99 percent of residual PFAS before they reach the Cape Fear River.

By Greg Barnes

By the end of September, a treatment system the Chemours chemical company had just installed was supposed to stop 99 percent of residual contamination of “forever chemicals” from escaping an old outfall and flowing into the Cape Fear River.

Only the system did not work properly and toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances known as PFAS continued to flow into the river at levels exceeding the threshold.

On Tuesday, state regulators slapped Chemours with yet another notice of violation, this time for failing to abide by a 2019 consent order requiring the treatment system to be fully operational and removing 99 percent of residual PFAS by Sept. 30.

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A notice of violation is a serious enforcement action that comes with civil penalties and requires a company to take immediate steps to resolve the problems. This is the third notice of violation the DEQ has issued Chemours for its treatment system, and one of many since the public became aware of the contamination from the plant.

The state Department of Environmental Quality, which issued the notice of violation, said it found several instances of noncompliance with the consent order — including design and operational problems — in September, October and November.

The DEQ said the violations of the Environmental Protection Agency’s pollution permit for Chemours include “exceeding an effluent limit, failure to meet flow requirements, improper operation and maintenance and failure to mitigate during storm events.”

System now working properly

The notice of violation says the DEQ’s Division of Water Resources staff conducted site visits on Sept. 30, Nov. 6, Nov. 17 and Dec. 18. The notice says Chemours told the DEQ about some of the problems it was having.

“DWR’s review has confirmed problems with Chemours’ design of the treatment system, operation of the treatment system, failures to mitigate problems associated with the entrained sediment, and violation of an effluent limit in the Permit,” the notice says.

In a news release, the DEQ said that as of Dec. 18, inspections and data confirmed that the treatment system at what is commonly referred to as Old Outfall 002 is online and working as intended.

The treatment system pumps water from the outfall and sends it through tanks to settle the sediment. The water is then sent through ultrafiltration units to remove fine particles and then a series of three granulated activated carbon filters to remove the PFAS. After treatment, the water is discharged back into the outfall, where it flows into the river.

The outfall had been used for decades by DuPont —  and by Chemours after it spun off from DuPont in 2015 — to discharge processed wastewater into the Cape Fear River.

The DEQ ordered Chemours to stop discharging its wastewater in 2017 after the public became aware that high levels of GenX and other PFAS from the plant were contaminating the drinking water for an estimated 250,000 people downstream. Blood studies of Wilmington residents found that some types of potentially cancer-causing PFAS were far higher in residents who participated in the study than the national average.

In 2019, Chemours entered into a consent order with the DEQ and the advocacy organization Cape Fear River Watch. Among many other things, the consent order set the parameters for the chemical company to stop residual PFAS from reaching the river. The contamination continues to leach from groundwater, sediment and runoff into streams near the plant and into Old Outfall 002. The treatment system Chemours just finished installing is supposed to stop that.

In a statement, Chemours said it is reviewing the notice of violation and will respond accordingly to the DEQ’s request for information. The company blamed the PFAS that continued to get into the outfall on “unordinary stresses, including excessive solids” caused by above-average rainfall. The statement went on to praise the company for its environmental stewardship, saying “we are not aware of any other company in our industry or other industries who has taken the steps we have taken.”

Other Chemours violations

In June, the DEQ cited Chemours for hauling tree stumps and other debris from the treatment system site to an unlined landfill that was not authorized to accept materials that contained PFAS. The notice of violation came after Mike Watters, an administrator of a Facebook environmental group, saw truck after truck hauling the debris to the landfill and complained to the DEQ.

In early January, the DEQ issued Chemours another notice of violation, this time saying the company had violated the N.C. Sedimentation Pollution Control Act and the EPA’s stormwater discharge permit. The notice of violation says inspectors found land disturbance outside the limits of an erosion control plan for the treatment system.

The DEQ said in its news release that it will evaluate the responses and additional information provided by Chemours in determining the civil penalties for all of the violations, as well as assess penalties stipulated under the consent order.

“DEQ is committed to holding Chemours accountable, and ensuring they meet the requirements of the Consent Order and their permit conditions at all times,” DEQ Secretary Michael S. Regan said in the release. “DEQ will continue to take all appropriate actions, from increased oversight to enforcement, to ensure the company meets its obligations to prevent PFAS from entering the Cape Fear River.”

President Joe Biden has nominated Regan to head the EPA.

Beth Markesino, administrator for a Facebook group called “North Carolina Stop GenX in Our Water,” said the state should hand Chemours notices of violation for each infraction of the EPA’s pollution permit.

“Our communities are tired of Chemours getting away with violating the law and polluting our river,” Markesino said in an email. “We depend on DEQ to do what is right and protect us.”

The EPA now estimates that there are 9,252 different types of PFAS. Among other things, the synthetic chemicals are used to produce non-stick and water- and grease-resistant products, including food packaging, rain gear, Teflon pans, stain-proof carpets and even dental floss.

Large consumption of PFAS over time may cause kidney, liver, thyroid, testicular and pancreatic cancer, high cholesterol, pre-eclampsia and immune suppression. PFAS are called “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down easily and accumulate in the human body.

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