S. 4049

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, I come to the floor today to speak in support of Senate amendment No. 1729, which I hope will be added today to the National Defense Authorization Act. The goal of this amendment is to finish--what I hope is to finish a public health study that we began with legislation in 2017 to address the contaminant known as PFAS. I know the Presiding Officer knows about this because she has that chemical in her State as well.

I want to begin by commending the work of the Armed Services Committee--both Chairman Inhofe and Ranking Member Reed for working with me to establish the first ever human health study of PFAS and to institute policies that will phase out the Defense Department's use of these chemicals over the next several years.

We began this journey in 2017 when we put $10 million into a health study--the first of its kind in the country--to look at the impacts of PFAS on humans. At that time, we authorized $10 million for 3 years. Unfortunately, because of the coronavirus pandemic, it is taking longer to complete the study than we had hoped, so we are going to need some additional funding.

There is real urgency in addressing PFAS. As many of us know, PFAS chemicals have emerged as widespread pollutants in the drinking water sources of military bases across this country. The main reason is because PFAS chemicals were used in firefighting foam that was used by the armed services.

The number of military installations with known or suspected contamination from PFAS continues to rise. In March, DOD updated its count of military installations impacted by these materials from 401 across the country to 651--651 military installations-- which means that they are in almost every State in the United States, and other studies have reported that this is actually a conservative estimate.

We don't yet know what the long-term risks of exposure to PFAS are because we are still trying to get research into that, but studies have already linked these chemicals--and there are hundreds of chemicals in the PFAS category--to a number of adverse health effects.

The potential ties between PFAS and various forms of cancer are of particular concern to firefighters who may have experienced exposure during firefighting and fire-training exercises.

On June 11, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, ATSDR--works as part of the Centers for Disease Control--issued a statement expressing concern about how PFAS exposure can impact the risk of COVID-19 infections. Now, for all of us who have constituents who have been exposed to PFAS, we know this has caused a lot of sleepless nights for countless American families both in New Hampshire and across the country who have been living and working near sites contaminated by these materials.

In my State of New Hampshire, the city of Portsmouth, which was the home of the former Pease Air Force Base, closed a major water supply well located at that airbase after the Air Force found PFAS in the drinking water at levels 12\1/2\ times higher than the provisional health advisory from the Environmental Protection Agency at that time. That number has changed since then.

Moreover, State health officials determined that more than 1,500 people, including children who attended daycare centers near the site, have elevated levels of PFAS in their blood from drinking contaminated groundwater at Pease. I have heard from so many parents who are terrified of what this contamination means for the health of their children.

One woman, who has been a real leader in responding to the PFAS emergency, Andrea Amico of Portsmouth, remembers feeling like her world was crashing down when tests showed that her two children, exposed to PFAS in drinking water at Pease, had elevated levels of these materials in their blood. She said: ``[T]o actually see it on paper, to know it was true, was very devastating for me, and the wide range of emotions I experienced with those results ranged from anger to fear, frustration and guilt.'' Andrea's children attended the childcare center--one of the two childcare centers at Pease.

I also heard from Alayna Davis of Dover and Michelle Dalton of Durham, both of whom are mothers with children at a daycare center near the former base at Portsmouth. Alayna said that she was exposed to PFAS at Pease when she was pregnant with her son. She and her husband were devastated when they learned that their son had high levels of PFAS in his blood. Michelle was exposed to the contaminated water in January of 2011 when she started working on the base. Her youngest child has attended daycare at Pease since he was 12 weeks old, but, of course, he was exposed to contamination since conception.

Stories like Andrea's, Alayna's, and Michelle's are not limited to Portsmouth, sadly. Contamination from PFAS is not limited to military bases and airports. That is why this long-term health study is so important, and it is so critical that we complete it. We need to know what the research says are the dangers of PFAS.

Since Congress authorized the study in 2017, the ATSDR and Centers for Disease Control have been working to identify the health effects of PFAS exposure, starting with the former Pease airbase in Portsmouth. There are other--I believe there are seven other sites around the country that have been designated as part of this study. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, as I said earlier, the agencies expect additional costs associated with continuing the study, as well as a 1-year delay in finalizing the results.

I think we could all agree that families who have been exposed to these chemicals deserve answers. What my amendment would do is provide additional funding for the PFAS health study to ensure that ATSDR and CDC can complete their work and do it without delay.

The safety of our drinking water is essential, and it is nonnegotiable. The potential serious health effects associated with exposure to PFAS chemicals demand moving forward with policies that will protect our communities, especially our men and women in uniform. Senate amendment 1729 would help to do just that.

Of course, this is just the beginning. This gives us a baseline study to tell us what the health effects are. Once we get that study and as we continue to move forward, we have a lot of work to do to ensure that PFAS--not just on military bases but in communities across this country, which appear in so many different products--that we can address that in a way that provides some sort of insurance and protection to families across this country so they know what they are dealing with and so they know they can get help.

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