In his February 16th article, “Overshadowed by ‘forever chemicals,’ PCBs remain a toxic threat to Chesapeake waters” Wheeler discusses the ongoing threat to public health caused by Polychlorinated biphenyls or PCB’s despite these proto- “forever chemicals” not having been produced since 1979.
The problem is their persistence: PCBs do not readily dissolve in water, so they settle into sediment. Like PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) they accumulate in living tissue where they can cause serious health problems.
While PFAS are a major problem in drinking water due to their solubility, PCBs remain a problem because they work their way into the food chain, first by being ingested by smaller organisms before being ingested by fish, which would then be ingested by people if not for the fish consumption advisories posted by agencies like Maryland Department of the Environment.
Wheeler states about our watershed,
In 2016, Maryland regulators concluded only natural attenuation could sufficiently reduce the PCBs responsible for fish consumption advisories in the Gunpowder and Bird rivers, which might take 49 to 93 years.
In Tim Wheeler’s previous Bay Journal article on our work with PCB’s titled “PCB cleanup makes uneven progress” He updated folks on our litigation with the Environmental Protection Agency for approving the MDE Pollution Diet as we took issue with the lack of Waste Load Allocation for Sediment in the document. In that article, he quoted Gunpowder RIVERKEEPER® Theaux Le Gardeur, who finds that intolerable and said,
“In many cases, that’s three generations of Marylanders subject to fish consumption advisories due to PCBs,”
Thanks to Tim Wheeler and the Bay Journal for covering this ongoing issue in many of our local waters. Gunpowder RIVERKEEPER® remains concerned about these legacy pollutants and Maryland’s missed opportunities to make fish consumption advisories more accessible to the angling public, particularly with subsistence fishers.
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