NEW HANOVER COUNTY — An expert panel discussion on Cape Fear region water contamination included new research finding high levels of PFAS in local sea foam samples.
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Clean Cape Fear partnered with the Women’s Ministry Team of St. Andrew’s Covenant Presbyterian Church to host an expert panel discussion Saturday on upstream PFAS and 1,4-dioxane pollution in the tri-county region.
NC State senior research scholar Jeffrey Enders, one of the event’s four panelists, presented his findings after analyzing 13 tri-county sea foam samples collected by Clean Cape Fear co-founder Emily Donovan over a nine month period.
“When Emily and [NC State researcher Drake Phelps] brought sea foam samples to me for the first time,” Enders told Port City Daily, “I was like, surely nobody’s ever published on sea foam — I’ve never heard of this.”
Enders said previous research has primarily focused on freshwater waterways; recent studies led the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to issue an advisory recommending residents avoid contact with foam in waterbodies impacted by PFAS contamination.
“People are playing in the foam,” he said. “They don’t realize it’s probably got dangerous levels of these toxins.”
The NC State scientist told Port City Daily he needed to obtain permission from a scientific journal currently reviewing his findings before he could share the full results. But he noted researchers found the highest PFAS concentration — PFOS at around 800,000 nanograms per liter — on the coast of Sea Breeze in Carolina Beach. A sample from Caswell Beach in Brunswick County detected the compound around 200,000 ng/l.
“The levels that we detected are almost certainly higher than what’s been previously published on in any kind of foam,” he said.
Enders added the results were linked to a certain period of time because a separate sample at the Sea Breeze site showed almost no PFAS.
“These samples were collected when foam was observed,” he said. “So we didn’t collect these samples at regular intervals and then track their rise and fall. You can’t really do that with sea foam because it isn’t generated every 12 hours on the dot.”
The Sea Breeze sample was collected upstream from Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point, which Enders noted as a potential source due to its use of PFAS-containing firefighting foam. PFOS proliferated through the use of firefighting foam largely produced by 3M Company, which concealed studies on the compound’s toxicity for decades.
Researchers also repeatedly found specific PFAS-compounds discharged by Chemours’ Fayetteville Works Facility upstream of the tri-county region. The facility is located along the Cape Fear River, which eventually opens up to the Atlantic Ocean.
“I think Chemours-specific compounds being so prevalent is pretty impactful,” Enders said. “There’s a series of compounds that come out of the chemistry that’s specifically performed at the Fayetteville plant.”
Seafoam occurs naturally in the environment but Enders noted its PFAS-laden variant may take on a bright white, sticky, shaving cream-like appearance.
“We’ve all seen it,” Commissioner Rob Zapple said. “Especially after storms or high tides, the foam that builds up along the river.”
Cape Fear River Watch Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette identified PFAS pollution — and later fish tissue contamination — from Lear Corp’s Kenansville facility after observing abnormal foam discharges from the plant. The facility is one of the top known PFAS polluters in the state with discharges flowing into the tri-county region.
The Department of Environmental Quality has received approximately 1,000 comments requesting PFAS limits for the plant; its current draft permit includes PFAS monitoring requirements without limits.
Other panelists at Saturday’s event — Donovan, CFPUA executive director Kenneth Waldroup, and Southern Environmental Law Center attorney Hannah Nelson — advocated the state and federal government take action to regulate industrial PFAS pollution at the source.
“[The sea foam] is a symptom of the cancer,” Enders said. “Which is all of these pollutants getting dumped into waterways.”
Tips or comments? Email journalist Peter Castagno at peter@localdailymedia.com.
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