Confronting fluoroethers

Abstract

Larry Cahoon found out two weeks before most of his neighbors that their tap water held a cocktail of never-before-seen industrial chemicals. Last May, Cahoon invited a handful of scientists to talk with a local group working to restore striped bass and other migratory fish in North Carolina’s Cape Fear River. At that event, one of the panelists discussed a recently published study that found perfluorinated ethers in a municipal drinking water system that draws from the river (Environ. Sci. Technol. Lett. 2016, DOI:10.1021/acs.estlett.6b00398). Cahoon, a University of North Carolina, Wilmington, biology professor who studies aquatic ecology, had read the paper and surmised that the chemicals came from a Chemours plant on the outskirts of Fayetteville, N.C. But the study did not name the town with the contaminated tap water. The panelist, however, did name the locale: The affected city was Wilmington, N.C., said Detlef Knappe, a North Carolina State