Emerging Contaminants and Environmental Health

Health and the Environment in North Carolina

“…One such contaminant that has emerged to be of importance to North Carolina residents is GenX, based on potential pollution from the Chemours Plant at the Cape Fear River and the surrounding water supplies. In a sidebar about GenX, Dr. Stanley Meiburg of the Graduate Program of Sustainabilty at Wake Forest University writes that sampling beginning in 2012 detected GenX in surface water in the Cape Fear River and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ) later detected GenX in groundwater and well water near the Chemours facility [14].…”

“…Emerging contaminants result from products we depend on, but there is a lot we don't know know about their effects. Meiburg asks readers to consider an important question [14]: "How much risk, in exchange for what benefits and under conditions of uncertainty, are we willing to tolerate? "…”

Environment and Health at a Crossroads

“…Tensions remain, however, among competing uses of the state's waters for drinking water; commercial, agricultural, and recreational activities; and ecosystem protection. Industrial activities can still create downstream threats, as evidenced by releases of per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances from the Chemours facility on the Cape Fear River or coal ash releases due to infrastructure failures or flooding in extreme weather [10,11]. Nutrient concentrations in estuaries or freshwater lakes can create harmful algal blooms that threaten both human health and aquatic life [12,13].…”