{"id":178996,"date":"2018-06-23T19:05:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-24T00:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/06\/23\/support-your-fighting-men\/"},"modified":"2018-06-23T19:05:00","modified_gmt":"2018-06-24T00:05:00","slug":"support-your-fighting-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/06\/23\/support-your-fighting-men\/","title":{"rendered":"Support Your Fighting Men"},"content":{"rendered":"
Trump’s EPA has been aggressively suppressing a study that reported massive problems with groundwater contamination at military bases<\/a>:<\/div>\n

The Trump administration feared it would be a \u201cpublic relations nightmare\u201d: a major federal study that concluded contaminated groundwater across the country, especially near military bases, was more toxic than the government realized. Political aides to President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt pressured the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry against releasing the results.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe public, media, and Congressional reaction to these numbers is going to be huge,\u201d an unidentified White House aide wrote, according to Politico<\/a>. \u201cThe impact to EPA and [the Defense Department] is going to be extremely painful. We cannot seem to get ATSDR to realize the potential public relations nightmare this is going to be.\u201d The study was not released.<\/p>\n

That is, until Wednesday. Amid a media firestorm about the administration\u2019s immigration policy, the ATSDR\u2014a division of the Department of Health and Human Services\u2014quietly published its 852-page review<\/a> of perfluoroalkyls, or PFAS, which are \u201cused in everything from carpets and frying pan coatings to military firefighting foams,\u201d according to ProPublica<\/a>. \u201cAll told, the report offers the most comprehensive gathering of information on the effects of these chemicals today, and suggests they\u2019re far more dangerous than previously thought.\u201d<\/p>\n

These chemical compounds<\/a> pose health risks to millions of Americans. They\u2019re in roughly 1 percent<\/a> of the nation\u2019s public water supply, according to the EPA; in roughly 1,500 drinking water systems<\/a> across the country, according to the Environmental Working Group. People who drink from these systems, even if their exposure to PFAS is low, now have a potentially increased risk of cancer; of disruptions in hormones and the immune system; and of complications with fetal development during pregnancy.<\/p>\n

But military personnel and veterans are particularly at risk, because PFAS compounds are in firefighting foams, which have been used in training exercises at military bases across America since the 1970s<\/a>. Those foams have leached into the groundwater at the military facilities, and often the drinking water supply. Nearly three million Americans<\/a> get their drinking water from Department of Defense systems.<\/p>\n

The DOD has reported widespread contamination at its bases and posts, as well as their surrounding areas. In a March report<\/a> to the House Armed Services Committee, the department provided a list of 126 military facilities where nearby water supplies contained PFAS levels above the EPA\u2019s standard, and 36 bases with drinking water contamination on site. \u201cIn all, 25 Army bases<\/a>; 50 Air Force bases<\/a>, 49 Navy or Marine Corps bases<\/a> and two Defense Logistics Agency sites have tested at higher than acceptable levels for the compounds in either their drinking water or groundwater sources,\u201d the Military Times reported<\/a>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is amazingly f%$#ed up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump’s EPA has been aggressively suppressing a study that reported massive problems with groundwater contamination at military bases: The Trump administration feared it would be a \u201cpublic relations nightmare\u201d: a major federal study that concluded contaminated groundwater across the country, especially near military bases, was more toxic than the government realized. Political aides to President …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,364,379,688,437],"class_list":["post-178996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-evil","tag-military","tag-pollution","tag-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178996"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}